New Yorkers regroup and restock in the wake of Sandy
By Claire Ward - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - 0 Comments
Claire Ward reports from the East Village where residents are cleaning up from the superstorm
NEW YORK — A sense of bewilderment was apparent in the East Village today, as people rose to see the aftermath of the Sandy superstorm. Widespread power outages caused by an explosion in the Con Edison power plant on 14th Street left some 200,000 New Yorkers without power, including just about everyone south of 34th Street. Residents of Alphabet City and Stuyvesant Town lined the East River seawall, holding cellphones to the sky, vying for reception. The FDR highway just behind is closed, and emergency vehicles rush past, making waves in large deep, pools of water.
“This is major,” says Phill Morley, 65-year-old engineer from Liverpool, UK. “When you think about that many people without hot water, electricity, and food. This will make the front pages back home, there’s no doubt.” Morley and his wife, Cath, witnessed the blue flash of the Con Ed explosion through the window of the eighth-floor apartment in Stuyvesant Town where they’ve been staying. “I knew immediately what it was, and then, of course, the lights out.”
Marlene, a ConEd employee wearing a neon yellow safety jacket, stands guard outside the steam plant as workers clean up the large piles of soaking debris that surged ashore in the night.
“We saw the water come up 10 feet, right up against that door,” she says, gesturing at the large, river-facing entrance of the East River Generator Station. Marlene also says she “raced the water” in her car as it surged, watching in her rearview mirror as it filled the streets.
Confusion is apparent among residents standing on the street on either side of police tape — which, like the debris, is in abundance — unclear of which side is meant to be blocked off.
Colin Fox, 55, is a resident of Stuyvesant Town, which is situated next to the Con Edison plant and next to the East River. Fox, who prepared for Sandy by buying extra supplies and water, is planning for days without power or hot water. “I respect the weather conditions,” he says. “I don’t take them for granted. In 1994, I lost my car in an unnamed storm when it was parked just there in what used to be a parking lot.” He gestures to the boardwalk along the East River where we’re standing.
Along Avenue C, cars are eerily strewn at odd angles, leaning up against bus shelters or post boxes—the positions they landed in after the water receded. People with cameras, walking dogs, and lugging grocery bags fill the sidewalks, exchanging stories. “My dog was swimming down 7th Avenue,” says one man; “The entire basement of my building is filled to the ceiling,” says another. The air smells of saltwater and gasoline, and puddles show gleaming swirls of oil. Other unusual sites include people using payphones, people yelling from the street up at people’s windows, and bodegas lit by candlelight. Some restaurants have placed boxes of free produce out front, while other shops charge $1 per litre of milk, to get rid of stock.
A line formed on 11th St. and Avenue B, just around the corner from a bodega that had its windows smashed in by a street sign. A handwritten sign that says “Free Pizza—let’s say goodbye to Sandy together” hangs in the window.
“When I came in this morning, I realized we still had gas,” says Vincent Sgarlato, owner of 11B Express Pizzeria, in a thick Italian-New Yorker accent. “So I thought, why don’t I make pizza for the neighbourhood? Everyone’s hurting. It’s the least I can do.” Sgarlato’s pizzeria has been serving the neighbourhood for the past six years. “We have a 24-hour span til supplies spoil—or till the cheese runs out.”
Farther uptown, on 42nd street, which is just north of the boundary of the blackout, lower Manhattan residents scramble for electrical outlets on the street. People can be seen huddled around trees in the sidewalks, which are decorated with Christmas lights, using the power outlets to charge iPhones and laptops. One woman in a red windbreaker stands outside a closed Starbucks, laptop in one hand, trying to access WiFi. This reporter filed her story from a personal iPhone hot spot in Tudor City—and got lucky enough to find a free seat in a café actually open for business.
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New Yorkers shrug at Sandy
By Claire Ward - Monday, October 29, 2012 at 7:44 PM - 0 Comments
Claire Ward reports from New York City where residents are decidedly casual about the superstorm
The Naked Cowboy stands tall Monday in the face of the storm. (Claire Ward, Maclean's)
NEW YORK — Ambivalence was widespread in Manhattan on Monday—even as street signs and trees crash to the ground in the East Village, and Hurricane Sandy’s high winds knocked over a crane on top of a 65-storey condo tower in Midtown. A brief chat with two NYPD officers in Times Square confirms what has been widely reported by local media: many residents in New York’s mandatory evacuation zone have ignored the calls for evacuation and instead are talking about how they’ll spend their hurrication. “We were knocking on hundreds of doors last night,” says one officer in a Zone A apartment complex. ”We got maybe 20 people to leave.”
And while yellow taxis still dot the slick avenues, transportation has all but ground to halt, as many of the bridges and tunnels connecting Manhattan to the rest of New York are being closed. Public transportation has been shut down since Sunday evening and over 9,000 flights from LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports have been cancelled. Most retail shops are closed, too, but a surprising number of businesses have remained open, including wine stores, bodegas, restaurants and notably, bars and pubs throwing “Hurricane parties.” One bar in Alphabet City, which is within Zone B—an area that is at flood risk if the hurricane intensifies—hosts a smattering of locals who, like many others, decided not to evacuate. Watching the overhead TV, as it shows the crane hanging precariously off the side of the condo building on 57th St., one man jokes, between sips of his Guinness, “Someone should invent a Twitter account from the crane’s perspective.”
Indeed, the mood is distinctly casual in Times Square, where tourists dressed in plastic ponchos, grasping soaking wet city maps, are defiantly sightseeing despite the relatively high winds and rain. “Happy Hurricane” has become the greeting of the day. The Naked Cowboy wears a bright red life preserver, but is still otherwise naked save for his guitar, speedo and cowboy boots. Standing nearby, a Belgian couple in their sixties, dressed in matching red rain coats, see Hurricane Sandy as more of an inconvenience than a threat.
“Our flight is tomorrow, and I’m worried it may be cancelled” says 64-year-old Claine Danielle. “We want to go home. New York is dirty, it stinks, and the weather is terrible.”
Nearby, a longtime newsstand clerk is similarly unmoved. “The media scares people, and then it turns out to be nothing” says Yahya Tai, 37, a New Yorker who has worked at this newsstand for 16 years. “Last year with Irene, there were people out in Times Square dancing in their wet t-shirts.” (Officials worry that New Yorkers are conflating the two storms, Sandy and Irene—which turn out to have very little in common.) Tai’s kiosk—which is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and, he says, will likely stay open through the night—sits across from a clothing store, which like many nearby businesses, has placed sandbags along the doors. “It’s overkill,” he shrugs. “Even if they close the bridges, I’ll just walk home.” That is, he’ll walk over the Queens bridge to his home in Queens, which would take somewhere around four hours on a good day.
Tai’s almost stereotypically tough New Yorker attitude is echoed by several locals who stop by his newsstand for a snack. Matthew Lebourne, 22, who works in communications at the Scientology Center around the corner, complained of long lines at the grocery stores. “It’s just ridiculous,” he says. “If anything, we’ll need food for what, two days?”
Back in Times Square, a Spanish tourist approaches a Public Safety Officer. “Excuse me, do you know where the nearest Subway is?” he says, drenched by the steady rain.
“They’re all closed!” responds Const. Margarita Torres, 50, who has been on the job since Sunday evening and will stay on until the subways are open again, which could be as late as Wednesday morning.
“No, no, I mean the sandwich shop,” replies the tourist. As he walks off in search of lunch, Torres chuckles, referring to approaching Hurricane Sandy. “She’s going to sneak up and bite everybody.”
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Partnering with Coke for the greater good?
By Claire Ward - Friday, September 7, 2012 at 4:51 PM - 0 Comments
(Yes.)
Photo: Guy Godfree
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. She is blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at:www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Read Claire’s previous posts here.
As anyone in marketing will tell you, branding can make or break a product. And branding, in ColaLife’s case, has caused a bit of controversy — while the charity isn’t funded or coordinated by Coca-Cola, its nominal association with the Coke name, its brand colours (the website’s dominant hue is Coke-red) and its general chumminess with the soft drink company have raised eyebrows in the health sector. On the one hand, the relationship provides a practical way for ColaLife to deliver its medicines and share supply chain knowledge, not to mention raise its public profile; but on the other hand, the charity with a health mission appears to be dealing with the corporation that in large part makes its profits selling sugary, unhealthy soft drinks.
Indeed, in an online forum entitled “ColaLife or ColaDeath,” water and sanitation expert Cor Dietvorst questions whether it is appropriate for ColaLife to be nominally associated with the beverage, when one of its key ingredients, high-fructose corn syrup, has been linked with numerous health problems in the developed and developing world alike. He points out that the World Health Organization estimates 80 per cent of deaths in developing countries are now attributable to non communicable diseases (NCDs), and refers to a report noting that the poor are increasingly exposed to alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy diets, while they continue to have limited access to “preventive and curative services.”
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An African health minister’s dilemmas
By Claire Ward - Friday, August 24, 2012 at 2:58 PM - 0 Comments
The Cola Road, Week 3: Claire Ward in conversation with Dr. Joseph Kasonde
Zambia Minister of Health Joseph Kasonde. Photo: Claire Ward.
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. She is blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at: www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Last week, I sat down with Zambia’s minister of health, Dr. Joseph Kasonde. At his offices in Lusaka, we discussed aid, the benefits and perils of public-private partnerships, and specifically U.K. charity ColaLife’s idea of teaming up with Coca-Cola to distribute medicines to rural areas in this country. He had lots to say:*
Q: Can you talk about the challenges of access to medicine in Zambia?
A: What happens is the medicines are delivered to a place some 200 kilometres away, and you have to find a way to get them from there to the village to the people who live around it. When you send a lorry from the centres like Lusaka and Ndola, they can only so often. They can’t do this on a very regular basis. And if you want deliveries weekly or daily then you’ve got to do something local. And that is where the private sector comes in. They have shown, as ColaLife has taken up, that you will find Coca-Cola in any village, at any time, in the course of the year. But you’ll not find medicines. What’s the difference? There is something there to learn from. And that’s what we’ve done.
Q: What potential do you see for ColaLife? Do you think the idea of delivering anti-diarrhea kits containing oral rehydration salts through Coca-Cola’s distribution network is sustainable?
A: It’s a very interesting project which we support as a ministry, because the whole idea of distributing these important salts has been lacking for a long time. (…) I’m trying to build on their concept for the delivery of medicines in general, as it applies particularly to the rural areas.
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The Cola Road, Week 2: An aid project’s dress rehearsal
By Claire Ward - Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 9:09 AM - 0 Comments
Of flat tires, sudden darkness and rays of hope
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. She is blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at:www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Read Claire’s previous post. Watch the photo gallery.
Boys will be boys, and men will be boys. My dad’s favourite adage plays in my head as I cling to my seat in the back of the Land Rover, this time in a southern province about 20km down a craggy dirt road west of Kalomo. Simon drives with the confidence of someone who has been manning offroad vehicles for years — that is, with startling speed and an apparent taste for plunging into crevices, letting out little “woos!” when big dips catch us off guard. Rohit Ramchandani sits shotgun — he’s the Canadian public health PhD candidate leading the monitoring and evaluations team conducting research in ColaLife’s targeted communities. Four of us — Albert, Tracy (my new crewmate) and Elizabeth, a researcher conducting an evaluation of ColaLife’s targeted communities — are crammed into the backseat. We make small talk as the sun tucks itself under the horizon, leaving behind dramatic silhouetted trees and a gleaming pink and orange sky. We pass a young man on a bicycle with a goat tied to his back. Simon calls out, “Is that your dinner?!” The man grins and replies, yes, flashing a row of perfect white teeth.
We continue on and as the pink sky fades to inky black, which happens alarmingly fast in Zambia. At once the road begins to feel considerably bumpier. Within minutes — minutes, that is, and not seconds — Albert and Simon determine it feels like we have a flat tire. We pull off the road and I grab my camera, ready for action. When I step out, my leg is nearly seared by the burning, smoking back tire, which is completely shredded, the rim bent and deformed. I’m quickly ushered away from danger by the half-dozen young Zambian men who swarm our vehicle — they belong to Elizabeth’s group of researchers and have been traveling by pick-up truck behind us. Simon is managing the repair by second nature, handing a tire iron here, a carjack there, urging the young men to be safe as they play mechanic. He and Albert hoist the spare tire off the back and before we know it, we’re off again.
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The Cola Road, Week 1: How Coke crates could save lives
By Claire Ward - Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments
Documenting the launch of a radically new aid distribution model in rural Africa
Photo: Getty Images; Editing: Maclean's
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. For the next five weeks, she will be blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at: www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Photo: Guy Godfree
“Claire, are you enjoying?” says Albert, in sing-song Zambian English. He’s passed me a handful of “African apples”—tart, cherry-sized fruit that are crunchy and addictive—as we pull away from a roadside market town along the Great East Road in Zambia. The town is filled with stalls displaying brightly coloured textiles, hand-woven baskets and fresh fish drying on grills; meandering goats and pigs wobble in front of cars slowly making their way toward the bridge across the Luangwa river. What was once a Coca Cola container houses a makeshift mobile phone shop that also sells soft drinks. As we drive off, Albert points out the approaching hills of Mozambique. “Yes Albert, I am enjoying!” I declare—it’s true: these roadside fruits put to shame the varieties I pull off the shelves at the bodegas back in New York. “So have you decided to stay with us in Zambia?” he says, smiling. It’s a passing comment, but it tugs at an inner struggle of mine—am I just another mzungu (read: white person) taking a fleeting interest in his country’s troubles? I shrug good-naturedly, my cheeks full of African apples, trying not to choke as we dive into the next crater-sized pothole.
Albert is a thirty-something social worker for Keepers Zambia, a Lusaka-based NGO that has partnered with Colalife, the subject of the documentary I’ve come here to film. A year ago, I wrote an article for Maclean’s about this up-and-coming U.K. charity, which wants to piggy-back on Coca-Cola’s far-reaching distribution network in the developing world to distribute medical supplies to far-flung rural areas. The basic premise: Coke gets everywhere, aid doesn’t; so why not pack those crates of pop with medicines? Colalife came up with a wedge-shaped container—which they christened the “Aidpod”—that fits between rows of Coke bottles. When I interviewed Colalife co-founder Simon Berry at the time, the project was still in a highly theoretical phase, but I knew I’d be revisiting this story as it evolved.
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New York’s ‘Lowline’ project: a radical idea for a subterranean park
By Claire Ward - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 11:57 AM - 0 Comments
The Delancy Underground project proposes to channel sunlight underground
Danny Fuchs; Raad Studio
In a city as dense as New York, architects and urban designers look to rooftops, abandoned buildings, and even obsolete elevated railways to create new public spaces. Architect James Ramsey and his partner Dan Barasch have a new idea that’s exciting the design community’s imagination: they want to turn a defunct, underground streetcar terminal into a park using solar technology. The Delancey Underground project—named after the street that runs above it—would employ a simple system of fibre optic cables to channel enough sunlight underground to support plant and tree growth.
“It’s kind of like irrigating the sunlight,” says Ramsey, a former satellite engineer with NASA. “We’ll concentrate sunlight at the surface, channel it down and redistribute it underground.” Projected animations of the public green space show thriving trees and plant life, a pond, park benches and a futuristic ceiling that simulates the sky. The sunlight would pour in through what looks like upside-down satellite dishes. The technology, which Ramsey invented, is called the “remote skylight.” “We’ve taken out the UV and the infrared,” he says. “So you won’t get a tan down there, but you won’t get a sunburn either.” Ramsey had been “fiddling” with the technology for a few years when he met a city engineer who mentioned that there are nearly 30 unused spaces in the underground transit system. When it occurred to Ramsey that his design could support photosynthesis, the green angle sprang to life.
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Young Russian oligarchs take Manhattan
By Claire Ward - Thursday, March 22, 2012 at 2:01 AM - 0 Comments
Russian billionaires are buying up high-end real estate in New York for their young daughters
Jean-Claude Cohen/Visual Press
The exotic accents floating in and out of the gilded doors of 15 Central Park West betray the 19-storey limestone building as the home of well-heeled foreigners. The two-towered private residence overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park is next door to the flashy Trump International Hotel and Tower. The tight-lipped, uniformed doormen won’t say who lives here, but recent headlines confirm that Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the 22-year-old daughter of Russian billionaire and potash king Dmitry Rybolovlev, has purchased the 6,744-sq.-foot penthouse for a cool $88 million. A three-bedroom rental in the same building is currently listed at $40,000 a month. One doorman, whose own accent casts him firmly as a local, looks over his shoulder before chuckling, “Well, they ain’t from Brooklyn.”
Rybolovleva is the latest in a string of scions of oligarchs—Russian business magnates—whose families are buying up high-end real estate in New York. The cash-rich crowd has been taking advantage of the economic downturn, investing in the top tier of available properties, according to Edward Mermelstein, a lawyer specializing in high-end real estate for wealthy Russian clients. “New York has gained in popularity,” he adds. “We’re seeing a reverse of what was happening 10 years ago, where London was attracting foreign investment and keeping its immigration policies much looser than the U.S.”
Real estate prices aren’t New York’s only draw. Until recently, most of Russia’s business elite landed in London, earning it the nicknames Londongrad and Moscow on Thames. But Russia-U.K. relations have cooled considerably since the poisoning in London of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Immigration policies have tightened, and minigarchs have recently become a target of scorn, not just for their tabloid lifestyles. In August, four wealthy Russian youths were convicted of raping a young woman and filming the assault at south London’s Bellerbys College. Add the political unrest following Vladimir Putin’s recent election win, and it’s no wonder that the Rybolovlevs went looking further afield.
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Best employers: The dragon dishes
By Claire Ward - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 1 Comment
Arlene Dickinson on her darkest hour, the art of persuasion and motivating workers
Photography by Andrew Tolson
In a red leather jacket and black slacks, arms folded over her chest, Arlene Dickinson cuts an imposing figure on the Dragons’ Den billboards towering over Toronto’s downtown. Her dark red hair, with its signature grey streak, falls around her shoulders as she casts a no-nonsense stare down the barrel of the lens. At 55, she is a self-made millionaire, CEO of Venture Communications—a marketing agency whose blue chip client roll includes Toyota and Red Rose Tea—mother of four, divorcee and most recently, an author.
In her new book, Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds, Dickinson gets personal: she writes about everything from her bad track record as an employee to the affair that led to her messy divorce. “Allowing who we are personally to come through makes us better leaders,” she tells Maclean’s. “You need to let people see you for who you really are.” Pretty bold thinking for a public figure. Most would downplay mediocrity or infidelity. But for Dickinson, transparency is power. “It’s about controlling your own narrative,” she says.
Dickinson was born in South Africa to Mormon parents of modest means. They immigrated to Calgary when she was three, and later divorced. Dickinson married at 19 and had four children in short order—an attempt, she speculates, to create the domestic bliss she never really knew growing up. She and her husband lived paycheque to paycheque, scarcely earning enough to support their young family. And she was a lousy employee, she admits—fired “more times than I care to remember.”
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The dark side of Steve Jobs
By Claire Ward - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 10:28 AM - 25 Comments
An off-broadway show in New York looks at what it takes to make all those iPods
In what seems like an endless stream of Steve Jobs tributes and devotions, one voice stands out as a reality check. Mike Daisey, New York-based author and monologuist, is hoping to cut through the nostalgia and remind people of the nastier side of Jobs’ legacy.“I’m almost tired of hearing what a genius he is,” says the 37-year-old creator and performer of The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a one-man show about the life and work of the former Apple CEO that opened off-broadway at the Public Theater in New York City on Tuesday. “I think he’d be disgusted by this level of nostalgia. He was a very unrelenting, unwavering person—focus was really the centre of his skill set, his genius.”
Daisey’s show touches on everything from Jobs’s mastery of industrial design to the objectionable practices of iPhone and iPad manufacturing plants in China. The monologue tells the story of Jobs’s obsessions and his impact on humanity—from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen. Daisey’s style is semi-improvised, or what he calls “extemporaneous monologing”—which means the show differs from night to night, often depending on the mood of the room. “The work happens in the room so it’s hard to say what is going to change,” says Daisey. “At the same time, the fundamentals of the story aren’t affected by his death. In fact, they’ll be amplified. The end of an era, the loss of individual personal power in the face of corporatism.” Continue…
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War on Wall Street
By Claire Ward and Nicholas Köhler - Monday, October 10, 2011 at 10:40 AM - 29 Comments
A new protest movement, with Canadian ties, is taking shape, and spreading
Andrew Holbrooke/Corbis
Last Sunday, just before 7 a.m., as the sun cast its first light on Manhattan, cold, damp Zuccotti Park, just south of Ground Zero and north of Wall Street—those twin poles of a shattered American psyche—looked like little more than a junkyard. Shopping carts, blankets, garbage bags, sodden pizza boxes, piles of cardboard protest signs. Most of the two or three hundred anti-Wall Street protesters camping out there were wrapped in sleeping bags and under tarps, the pigeons pecking about their heads. A couple snuggled together on an air mattress. An elderly man in combat fatigues, his grey hair tied back in a bandana, slept against a concrete wall, a German shepherd at his side. Such were the moments of first light, before the makeshift village in Zuccotti Park came to life.
When the people awoke they gathered in groups to discuss ideas: corporate control, securitization, debt and credit, the environment, the Federal Reserve. There was heated debate and a lot of hugging. “I see it as a mathematical improbability to have a growth-based system based on finite resources,” said Tim, a 57-year-old bassist from New Haven, Conn., with long grey dreadlocks. “It’s kind of depressing, to be honest with you. I think the bottom is going to have to fall out of the economy.” When a protester approached asking for rolling papers, Tim promptly produced some from his pocket. “The solution is money,” said Rick DeVoe, 54, an environmental activist from East Hampton, Mass. “If the dollar doesn’t work for us, let’s create something that does.”
Over by the info booth a mousy girl in her 20s handed out a newspaper—The Occupied Wall Street Journal, a deliciously tongue-in-cheek jab at Rupert Murdoch’s business broadsheet. On a nearby table, various pamphlets lay strewn beside a Macdonald’s coffee cup and a well-thumbed copy of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. A white-haired soccer mom on vacation from Tennessee, all smiles and glasses, asked if there was a petition to sign. Volunteers distributed food from the kitchen—concrete benches laden with donated bagels, coffee, juice. At the media centre, marked off with caution tape, youths sat on cement benches glued to MacBooks, spreading the word on various social media networks. @OccupyWallStNYC, one Twitter handle among many here, had some 39,000 followers as of Tuesday.
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All grown up: the Occupy Wall St. movement takes shape
By Claire Ward - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 12:18 PM - 36 Comments
The once-ramshackle, disorganized group of protesters is evolving as it gains traction
Guy Godfree/Maclean's
“The whole world is watching.” Roughly 1,000 protesters were chanting as much on the Brooklyn Bridge this Saturday, after they were kettled by the NYPD (some may recall the technique from the G20 protests in Toronto), and shortly before 700 of them were arrested. They were right. As Jeff Jarvis put it on Twitter, “The beauty of the #occupywallstreet Pied Piper arrest is that the demonstrators’ video cameras outnumbers the cops’ and media’s.”
Two weeks in, the once-amorphous Occupy Wall Street protest in downtown Manhattan has begun to take form. The NYC General Assembly—the activist group central to the protest—finally published a mission statement late Sunday, which reads like a declaration of human rights. Labour unions and college students across New York City are planning walkouts to join the group in a solidarity march this coming Wednesday.
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700 arrested on Brooklyn Bridge in NYC
By Claire Ward - Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 9 Comments
Occupy Wall St. protesters say they were duped by police
Guy Godfree/Maclean's
About 700 of the demonstrators taking part in the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City were arrested late Saturday during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge.
In a statement, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne said protesters received multiple warnings by police to stay on the pedestrian walkway, and were told that if they took the roadway they would be arrested. “Some complied and took the walkway without being arrested,” Browne said. “Others proceeded on the Brooklyn-bound vehicular roadway and were.” Continue…
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How Dutch women got to be the happiest in the world
By Claire Ward - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 76 Comments
Few Dutch women work full-time—does this mean they’re powerless, or simply smarter than the rest of us?
Photo by: Thomas Schlijper
Like many Dutch women, Marie-Louise van Haeren views herself as liberated. “Every woman in Holland can do whatever she wants with her life,” says Van Haeren, 52, who lives just outside of Rotterdam and rides her bicycle or the train to work three days a week at a police academy, where she counsels students. She has worked part-time her entire career, as have almost all of her friends—married or unmarried, kids or no kids—save one or two who logged more hours out of financial necessity. Van Haeren, who wasn’t married until last year and has no children, says she’s worked part-time “to have time to do things that matter to me, live the way I want. To stay mentally and physically healthy and happy.”
Many women in the Netherlands seem to share similar views, valuing independence over success in the workplace. In 2001, nearly 60 per cent of working Dutch women were employed part-time, compared to just 20 per cent of Canadian women. Today, the number is even higher, hovering around 75 per cent. Some, like Van Haeren, view this as progress, evidence of personal freedom and a commitment to a balanced lifestyle.
Others, however, view it as an alarming signal that women are no longer seeking equality in the workplace. Writer and economist Heleen Mees, for example, argues that the stereotypical Dutch woman has become complacent. “Even at the University of Amsterdam—the most progressive university we have—I had a 22-year-old student say, ‘Why is it your business if my wife wants to bake cookies?’ and the female students agreed with him! I was like, what’s happening here?”
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‘The Help’: A feel-good flick that sugar-coats segregation
By Claire Ward - Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 5:21 PM - 4 Comments
(l-r) Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in 'The Help'
Director Tate Taylor’s adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s wildly popular bestseller, The Help, is bright, funny, and at times uplifting. But those aren’t necessarily desirable traits for a film about the lives of black maids in segregated Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s—a town that saw some of the worst oppression and disenfranchisement of blacks in the South.
The Help centres around a young, white college graduate, Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan, and two black maids—Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. Skeeter (Emma Stone) is an atypical Southern belle—frazzle-haired, career-driven, and full of righteous indignation. She returns from university to find that her friends have all gotten married, had babies, and embraced an ugly, casual racism toward their black maids. Skeeter aspires to become a novelist and hopes to catch the notice of a New York book editor (played by a canny Mary Steenburgen) with a controversial book pitch—she will interview a group of black maids who spend their lives looking after white families.
The Help is an disturbingly palatable account of the beginnings of the civil rights movement in America. The depiction of Jackson is candy-coated, never lingering on the truly awful realities of segregation and oppression before a punchline or an endearing moment cheers you up. Major moral questions are glossed over with throwaway lines. I found myself wondering: why are the lives of these black maids filtered through this naive white girl’s story? At one point, Minny says to Skeeter, indignantly, “Why do you think black people need white peoples’ help?” She storms out, only to turn right back around and agree to cooperate. Later, when Skeeter publishes her book and the maids are implicated, I wondered what would happen to them. “Don’t worry Skeeter, we can take care of ourselves,” Minny reassures our white heroine, nodding and grinning. I wasn’t so reassured.
Nonetheless, the film showcases some fine performances. Viola Davis performs in a league of her own, bringing some real depth to Aibileen. The Oscar-nominee (Doubt) is complex in front of the camera, conveying deep sadness and hope at the same time. Octavia Spencer, as Minny, steals more than a few scenes as the eyebrow-raised, misbehaving maid who can’t contain her opinions. Playing opposite Minny is a delightful Jessica Chastain (Tree of Life), the loopy, white-trash outsider Celia Foote (their fried chicken lesson is laugh-out-loud funny). Surprisingly, the much-touted Emma Stone didn’t really stand out, but that may have been the fault of the script. Skeeter is a two-dimensional character seemingly designed to reassure us that not all whites were racist. Where her moral compass comes from (Her liberal arts education? She was born that way?) is never explained. It’s as if she’s the only sane white person in the movie—everyone else seems incurious, brainwashed, or wholly unreasonable. Her evil nemesis, Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), is a cartoonish mean-girl villain whose motivations are similarly unexplained. There is no grey area—only good white people and bad white people.
The screening I attended had people laughing and crying (and had the critic next to me scowling with indignation). Frankly, I felt manipulated in much the same way I do after watching a particularly poignant episode of Grey’s Anatomy. The writer pulled my heartstrings, put the bad people in their place, and gave me a hero to look up to. The Help may have its heart in the right place, but ultimately it skims the surface. A movie about the Jim Crow laws and those who suffered under them just shouldn’t be this cute.
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‘The Future’ looks, well, depressing
By Claire Ward - Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 7:30 PM - 2 Comments
From left to right: Jason (Hamish Linklater) and Sophie (Miranda July). Photo courtesy of Mongrel Media.
Perhaps you’ve met this couple. They are attractive, quirky thirty-somethings who are unmarried, despite years of going steady and playing house. They haven’t made up their minds about their careers, about kids, or, it seems, about each other. They seem to fear getting old and, as a result, they resist growing up. They fill their apartment (tree fort) with quirky things, and their relationship (play date) with quirky events, and they seem content to play dress up while their peers drop off one by one into ‘real life’—building careers, buying houses, and making babies. The Future is a tale of this couple.
Written and directed by Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), The Future is a touching and intelligent cautionary tale that should be mandatory viewing for aimless thirty-somethings. It follows in the footsteps of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (notably, they were both scored by composer Jon Brion) in its mixture of a totally bizarre conceit—in this case, a talking cat who narrates—with believable emotional drama.
The film follows one month in the life of Sophie (played by July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater), a couple of 35-year-olds with matching hair and Macbooks. They both have unfulfilling jobs—he’s some kind of IT support guy who works from a headset at home and she is an overqualified children’s dance instructor. After finding an injured stray cat and taking it to the vet, the couple is told they must wait thirty days before they can bring her home. When they realize that domesticating a wild cat will, at the same time, domesticate their relationship—they panic. “We’ll be forty in five years,” Sophie laments. “Forty is basically 50,” Jason adds. “And then after 50, the rest is just loose change. Not quite enough to get anything you really want.” Yikes. They decide to spend the next month living like it was their last.
The events that unfold produce some good chuckles—both July and Linklater, playing awkward but lovable weirdos, have fine comedic timing. But their respective odysseys paint a pretty bleak picture of what happens when you try to rush finding meaning in life. Sophie is paralyzed by her desire to be exceptional and is ultimately more concerned with being accepted in a conventional way. “I wish I was just one notch prettier. I’m right on the edge,” she says at one point. “I have to make my case with each new person.” Jason discovers that life is long, and often, well, just ordinary. He’s disappointed with his shot at carpe diem, and seems to be resigned to the fact that he’s “not as smart” as he hoped he’d be. Their existential crises are disturbing—why can’t these two moderately talented, healthy, attractive people just get with it? July’s characters just seem to be coasting, forgetting that eventually they’ll have to work hard to get what they want in life. If they can figure out what they want, that is.
July, who was recently profiled in the New York Times, is sometimes accused of producing work too precious and twee. I haven’t seen her other films, but if that has been the accusation, I would argue that, unlike her fictional counterpart, she has matured. With its cutesy cat narration and stylized look, The Future may seem a little goofy, but it’s the kind of goofiness that gently delivers a serious dose of reality. It seems to say: if you’re fumbling at the growing up thing—stop indulging your inner child. For those viewers in the midst of saying goodbye to their twenties, it might even hit a little too close to home.
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A (clashing) Tribe Called Quest
By Claire Ward - Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 6:30 PM - 1 Comment
Q-Tip. Photo by Robert Benavides, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
IN TEN WORDS OR LESS: Worth watching, but leaves you wanting more
You don’t need to love high-speed dubbing (or know what it is), to enjoy this documentary. Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest is an engaging, dramatic portrayal of iconic hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest, even if it sometimes feels like a big screen version of MTV’s Behind the Music. Brought to you by first-time director and actor Michael Rapaport, Beats is a collage of concert footage, backstage drama and present-day interviews with ATCQ members, as well as an impressive roster of well-known musicians, all set to a satisfying soundtrack of the group’s hits.
First, let’s get the controversy out of the way: this doc was released amid a kerfuffle between Rapaport and his subjects. The band, who were initially supportive, ultimately disagreed with Rapaport’s direction. Half of them didn’t show up to the L.A. premiere. Band member Q-Tip went so far as to voice his lack of support over Twitter. The hate seems to have died down a bit, though, after Q-Tip has explained himself and Rapaport has said that they’ve agreed to disagree. Okay, let’s move on to the film. Continue…
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Captain America is not on fire
By Claire Ward - Friday, July 22, 2011 at 11:53 AM - 71 Comments
Centre to right: Chris Evans plays Captain America and Sebastian Stan plays James "Bucky" Barnes in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios)
IN TEN WORDS OR LESS: Captain America saves the day, but not the movie.
Hollywood seems to be grasping ever further into the past to dredge up superheroes to reinvent, and it’s becoming clear that the fad has run its course. Captain America: The First Avenger feels like a clichéd blast from the past, lacking the spunk and grit that has made other comic book movies successful. Captain America—the comic book character—was first sketched in 1941 to capture the patriotic imagination of Americans on the homefront. The revenge fantasy let readers watch our boy in red, white and blue smash Hitler’s various super-villain incarnations to pieces. Director Joe Johnston’s (The Rocketeer, Jumanji) big screen adaptation of the classic story is, in a way, too classic. The sepia-toned cityscapes and throwback accents take us back in time, but they also serve to separate us from the action.
Set during WWII, Captain America is the tale of Steve Rogers, a scrawny, sickly kid from Brooklyn with a heart of gold who desperately wants to serve his country. He’s so persistent that he tries—and fails—to enlist in the army at five different recruitment offices in five different cities. Finally, a military scientist by the name of Dr. Abraham Erskine takes note of the boy’s tenacity and offers him the enlistment opportunity of a lifetime. One explosive lab experiment later, we have ourselves an invincible, square-jawed superhero with a jaw-droppingly chiseled torso. His mission: take down Hitler’s supernaturally powerful former second-in-command, Johann Schmidt. Continue…
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The short, underwhelming history of pie-throwing
By Claire Ward - Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 2:14 PM - 0 Comments
Hefty dry cleaning bills may be its greatest legacy
0The short, underwhelming history of pie-throwing
Ann CoulterAnn Coulter (but they missed her)
Assailants: Two University of Arizona students, allegedly of the group 'Al Pieda'
Weapon of choice: Cream pies
Outcome: The two students are reportedly arrested. Coulter continues to gives speeches and appear on television and radio shows across the U.S.1 of 9 Photos
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Raining on the Pride parade
By Claire Ward - Friday, July 15, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 16 Comments
The Toronto event was widely reported to have been attended by a million people—an impossible statistic
MARK BLINCH/REUTERS
As far as estimates go, one million has a nice ring to it. Last week, a number of Toronto media outlets, including Macleans.ca, reported a dramatically inflated statistic: that one million people attended Toronto’s annual Pride parade on July 3. Maclean’s has since determined that this is both physically impossible, given the dimensions of the space, and highly improbable, given previous estimates of attendance. The number of attendees remains unconfirmed by Toronto police, the City of Toronto, and Pride Toronto organizers. So how did the media get it wrong? The erroneous news reports were a case of broken telephone that can be traced back to a 2009 estimate, which states that Pride week drew 1,120,000 visits. But visits, Maclean’s has learned, have little to do with attendance as we understand it.
Read the original online piece
“Attendance is a tricky word,” says Michael Harker, senior partner at Toronto-based Enigma Research Corporation, the research company behind the 2009 report. “There’s a big difference between visits and unique attendees. Visits is, a guy comes three times, we count him three times. Uniques is, he comes three times, we count him once.” That one million figure, then, accounts for total visits to the 2009 festival—multiple returns over the span of four days—and not for boots on the ground at the festival’s flagship parade. The total number of uniques was actually 411,450, which, again, does not represent just parade attendees but all visitors over the course of four days. Enigma did not provide an estimate for how many people were at the parade itself. In fact, no one did.
Const. Victor Kwong, media relations officer at the Toronto Police Service, explains that the police don’t give estimates anymore. “We used to do estimates, but we got a lot of complaints. People would say, ‘Oh, you’re lowballing so that the event gets less press,’ or, ‘You’re highballing so the event gets more support.’ ”
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How many journalists can you fit into one square metre?
By Claire Ward - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 4:12 PM - 2 Comments
The answer is nine. Barely.
Don’t forget to read the article that inspired the experiment about inflated attendance numbers at Pride parade in Toronto
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A million people at the Pride parade? Really?
By Claire Ward - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 1:25 PM - 66 Comments
There’s a good reason the figure is unbelievable: it’s wrong
A reader sent Macleans.ca an email yesterday that called into question a figure we used in Monday’s round-up of ‘Need to Know’ news items. We had claimed Sunday’s Pride parade in Toronto drew an estimated one million attendees. As aggregated news items tend to do, our report used facts and figures from another news outlet. The estimate, wherever it emerged (likely a CP report also highlighting Mayor Rob Ford’s absence), was widely reported by major news outlets.
One million, eh? Really? That’s about one-fifth of the population of the Greater Toronto Area crammed into a 2-km parade route through downtown city streets. The letter writer, Steven Murray of Victoria, BC, whose math is undoubtedly better than mine, points out that this is “physically and mathematically impossible.” “To fit one million people into that space,” he wrote, “would require 25 people for each square metre—4 to 5 times as many as would physically fit.” Continue…
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Coyne v. Wells on what that filibuster was all about
By macleans.ca - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 4:51 PM - 23 Comments
A weekly chat on all things political with columnists Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells
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Happy Canada Day from Maclean’s staff (plus: our thoughts on strawberry shortcake)
By Claire Ward - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 6:00 PM - 0 Comments
Jessica Allen polls the newsroom for shortcake memories
Shot & edited by Claire Ward
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From Fellini to Lady Gaga: a new exhibit showcases the birth of Paparazzi
By Claire Ward - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 11:23 AM - 0 Comments
Long before Gaga’s “Paparazzi”, there was Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”
Shot and edited by Claire Ward & Erica Alini
Interview by Brian D. Johnson
Produced by Claire Ward
