With the expiration of Title 42 on May 11, 2023, we thought it apt to share the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver April 30, 2023 episode “Biden and the Border” which examines President Biden’s failure to deliver on a key campaign promise to asylum seekers allowing them back on US soil to file for asylum. The British-American comedian, political commentator, and television host, appropriately notes “we’re just entering a different phase of an immigration dystopia, particularly for asylum seekers.” Mr. Oliver shines a light on the administration’s “bad policy and s*itty apps”, namely the “CBP One” app.
Read moreGeorge Rickey on the Highline
One of the most influential American sculptors of the twentieth century, George Rickey spent much of his long career fascinated with the movements of the wind. He was captivated by “the waving of branches and the trembling of stems, the piling up or scudding of clouds, the rising and setting and waxing and waning of heavenly bodies.” His most famous sculptures reflect this preoccupation with movement. Rickey developed a distinct style of kinetic sculptures: simple, large-scale forms that were carefully balanced and calibrated to move with the slightest breeze. Several of these simple, gently moving pieces are currently on view at Kasmin Gallery’s rooftop sculpture garden in Chelsea, viewable from the High Line. The three works visible there, Five Lines in Parallel Planes, Peristyle II, and Two Red Lines, are all made up of elegant steel spikes, precisely balanced to sway and dip with the movements of the air. All created in the 1960s and 1970s, these pieces are emblematic of the sculptor’s signature style.
Chinese Ribbon Dance for Lunar New Year
Lunar New Year celebrations are in full swing in New York City! At Hudson Yards in Manhattan, public performances are taking place each weekend to bring people together for the holiday. These performances, put on by the New York Chinese Cultural Center, include traditional lion dances and ribbon twirling performances. Ribbon, silk, or scarf dancing can be traced back to the Han Dynasty in China, over 2000 years ago. The art form requires incredible strength and grace to perform the captivating, fluid motions of the dance.
President-Elect Joe Biden & Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris
Last Saturday, major news organizations projected that former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris would win the 2020 presidential election. Their election comes after the Trump administration’s unrelenting attacks against immigrants, refugees, and the US immigration system over the last four years. In the coming days, we will be posting more about what changes to US immigration policy and law we might expect under a Biden/Harris administration. In the meantime, many Americans are celebrating this historic victory. Vice President-Elect Harris, the daughter of two immigrants, will be the first woman, the first African American woman, the first Indian American, and the first Asian American to hold the office of Vice President. In her victory speech last Saturday, Vice President-Elect Harris spoke of her mother: “When she came here from India at the age of 19, maybe she didn’t quite imagine this moment. But she believed so deeply in an America where a moment like this is possible. So, I'm thinking about her and about the generations of women — Black women, Asian, White, Latina, and Native American women throughout our nation's history who have paved the way for this moment tonight.”
This Is Us
As we draw closer to the final tally for the 2020 presidential election and reflect on how our fellow Americans voted, it’s an opportune time to revisit Dr. Eddie Glaude, the Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, speaking about President Donald Trump and racism in the United States. Stay safe, everyone.
Asylum: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
With only a few days left until the conclusion of the 2020 election, John Oliver discusses how the Trump administration has handled asylum seekers over the past four years, noting how the administration has been in this area “truly disciplined about being truly evil.” Oliver discuss how asylum is supposed to work and how the Trump administration has subverted it. He focuses in particular on the so-called “Migrant Protection Protocols” that the administration instituted that have led to asylum seekers living in makeshift camps in dangerous conditions where migrants face kidnappings and violence and how the administration has “all but shut off the pathway for many asylum seekers to enter the country.” Oliver says: “[T]he asylum process has never been easy, but this administration has made it absolute hell.”
Immigration Nation
The six-part Netflix docuseries Immigration Nation, which the Trump administration tried to block the release of until after the election, offers an in-depth look into the inner workings of US immigration agencies under the Trump administration. The series focuses on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency that increased arrests of immigrants by forty-two percent in the first eight months of the Trump presidency. Filmmakers Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau were granted rare access to ICE agents working in New York City, Charlotte, North Carolina, and on the border outside Tucson, Arizona as well as inside detention facilities. The show follows immigration officers, supervisors, administrators, and judges as well as immigrants, including one elderly asylum-seeker detained for fleeing gang violence, a former cop from El Salvador who fled to America, and war veterans who have been deported, as well as parents separated from their underage children. After viewing the series, Sonia Saraiya writes in Vanity Fair: “There still exists the idea of America as a nation that welcomes all—and then there is the country we actually live in, where we send refugees back to near-certain death at the hands of vicious gangs. It seems we’ve gotten so busy punishing people for wanting to be here that we’ve forgotten to be a country worth immigrating to.”
After Migration: Calabria
“After Migration: Calabria” documents the experiences of a young man who left his home in The Gambia at the age of fifteen as well as a Nigerian single-mother who gave birth to her child in a refugee camp as they integrate into Calabria in southern Italy. “Too often, stories about irregular migration are centered on trauma, and depict seekers of asylum as hapless victims in need of rescuing,” the film’s description states. “This film subverts this commonly accepted narrative by illuminating the regality of those whom we commonly disregard as outsiders.” Directed by Walé Oyéjidé and Jake Saner, the film celebrates “the lives of refugees in ways that dispel tropes” and show them as “nuanced contributors to their new societies, while journeying in search of safe places to call home.”
Surfing Beneath the Surface
The Flatiron Building is exhibiting a fascinating new video installation by artist Diana Lehr. Curated by the Cheryl McGinnis Gallery, the video installation sits in the prow of the building on the north side and features a dreamlike leaf floating on a surface of water. The videos have the feel of a graphic novel, as the description notes, and it was lovely to get lost in the beautiful colors and movement for a few minutes one morning on our commute this week. Lehr is known for bringing into “view micro-realities and things that often go unnoticed” and in incorporating “illusion and the defining line between what is real and what is not[.]” Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections and has been exhibited in New Orleans, San Diego, Philadelphia, Seattle, NYC, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. It’s the perfect antidote for this cold weather!
Last Week Tonight: Family Separation
John Oliver recently examined the Trump administration family separation policy on his show. While noting that “immigration has been dominating the news all week long, as a caravan of migrants from Central America continues to head north,” he focused on the family separation policy, which has “faded from the headlines.” Oliver looked at the incompetence and miscommunication between government agencies that resulted in children getting lost in the system as well as parents being removed from the US without their children. Demonstrating the devastating human cost of the family separation policy, he played footage from an investigation by The Atlantic showing a traumatized boy crying, angry at his mother because he thinks she doesn’t love him. “This separation was so long,” the mother said in the footage. “My son has changed so much. With so much trauma.” Oliver, concerned that family separation may happen again, concluded: “I would argue the biggest threat to our status as the greatest nation on earth is not a caravan a thousand miles south of us it’s whoever thinks doing this is an acceptable f—king response.”