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John F. Kennedy

On Dec. 20, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) voiced his opposition to the Build Back Better Framework, President Biden's plan to "rebuild the middle class." Although Manchin publicly stated that fiscal concerns including inflation had driven his opposition, he also allegedly told fellow lawmakers behind closed doors that Americans would use paid sick leave to go on hunting trips. Manchin also apparently claimed that people would buy drugs with money from child tax credits. 
Left-leaning journalists including the Nation's Joan Walsh and HuffPost's Tara Golshan and Arthur Delaney compared the senator's ideas to the "harmful myths," in Walsh's words, driving the Clinton-era welfare reforms. These ideas led to the imposition of conditions on beneficiaries such as mandatory drug testing. 
But these historical ties — while accurate — miss the even deeper history behind Manchin's argument that poor and lower middle-class individuals should not be trusted to make their own decisions. In many ways, it ties back to Plato's argument against representative democracy in "The Republic" (c. 375 BC). 
Manchin's claims also echo the ideas of one of the strongest critics of direct democracy in American history: Sen. Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, D-Miss., also the only Supreme Court justice from Mississippi. Lamar's history serves to remind Americans that a lawmaker's willingness to oppose popular opinion or take a lonely stance can be courageous — or it can reflect elitism and bias. 
Throughout his life, Lamar took part in secession, raised a regiment for the Confederate States in the Civil War, opposed Reconstruction and had a role in the organization of the Western territories. As a lifelong legal and political scholar, Lamar ended his career with a tenure as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He remained committed to states' rights throughout his life and often amended his politics to secure home rule and sectional gain. 
Lamar's politics were complicated: He was liberal on issues such as education and conservation. Responsible for the preservation of millions of acres of land, Lamar specifically argued against corporate interests to protect Yellowstone National Park from development. His most famous political act was a call for reconciliation in an 1873 eulogy for abolitionist Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass., which earned him the label of being a moderate. 
Yet, on two key issues — race relations and political representation — he remained a conservative. In 1877, Lamar became one of the architects — in the words of historian Joel Williamson — of "an unwritten contract . . . in which the South exchanged 'home rule' for the surrender of economic and political power in the nation." To Northerners, Lamar personified "a South that could be trusted." In this way, the South won the battle for home rule and states' rights, despite losing the Civil War. 
Although his political philosophy evolved over the span of his career, Lamar remained a critic of increased political representation based on his belief that the masses of all races needed the direction and support of elites. For example, in response to an investigation of Southern elections led by Sen. James Blaine, R-Maine, Lamar argued that Black Southerners had realized they were not "ready to vote." Put more bluntly, not long after his return to Congress in 1873, Lamar claimed that Black Americans had "no idea of a principle of government or, of society, beyond that of obedience to the mandate of a master." 
This contempt for Black Americans and average citizens of all races also meant that Lamar didn't think public opinion should factor into policymaking. In 1878, he refused to vote for the Bland-Allison Act. This legislation proposed an expansionary economic policy in which the federal government would purchase and circulate silver to produce inflation (which was seen as a good thing) and increase crop prices, among its intended positive outcomes. Part of the agenda embraced by the Free Silver movement, this populist policy drew support from Americans who were in debt, as well as from Western miners and many farmers in Deep South states such as Lamar's Mississippi. Capitalist interests in the Northeast opposed the legislation, while the nascent labor movement and working people largely supported it. 
Despite this support for the legislation back home, Lamar concluded, "Between these resolutions and my convictions there is a great gulf." He saw himself as taking a principled stand, invoking politicians including former senators John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, who had disagreed with popular majorities at different points in their careers. To Lamar, it was "better to follow the example of illustrious men . . . than abandon altogether judgment and conviction in deference to popular clamor." The young Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass., went on to cite this quote in "Profiles in Courage" (1955). 
Seen from another angle, however, Lamar's refusal to support the legislation was no act of courage. Instead, it was an example of callous indifference to the needs of his constituents. Lamar's vote conveyed his disregard for democratic governance and a failure to recognize the dignity of the farmers and working people of Mississippi who wanted Free Silver — and whose interests he was supposed to represent. 
Though Bland-Allison passed over President Rutherford B. Hayes' veto, the populist successes of the 1870s and 1880s were ultimately short-lived and foreshadowed many of the major blows to the populist movement that occurred in the following decade and early 20th century. 
Today, Manchin, like Lamar, voices his stance as a principled refusal to acquiesce to the majority in his party. In an interview the day after announcing his opposition to the BBB Framework, he noted that other Democrats "figured, surely to God we can move one person. We can badger and beat up one person." 
Yet, some of the arguments Manchin allegedly made in private indicate that the senator from West Virginia may be channeling Lamar's opposition to legislation like the Bland-Allison Act. Far from being courageous, Manchin's stance on this particular bill could hurt average Americans, including his own constituents. Despite the inevitable — but rare — instances of fraud, working people would benefit from policies such as the expanded child tax credit and paid family leave. 
Ashley Steenson is a Ph.D. student in American intellectual and political history at The University of Alabama, where her research considers the connections between political ideologies in the South and Northeast during the early 20th century.

Opinion

Commentary

WEBOP2220127

Joe Manchin might be principled. Or he might scorn his own constituents.

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The daily number of COVID-19 cases reported in the nation has surged over the past two weeks, now surpassing 1 million, with 95% of them from the omicron variant. At such a rate, every week, over 2% of the entire population becomes infected. 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports such data, as well as hospitalizations and deaths attributed to COVID-19. Hospitalization numbers continue to increase, now matching previous highs set in early 2021. 
The big difference today is that vaccines are available to prevent severe outcomes, providing a layer of protection for our nation’s hospitals and health systems. Nonetheless, medical resources are being stretched to the breaking point, with embattled health care workers having to withstand the worst of the weight. 
The one piece of good news is that omicron is producing less severe outcomes than delta and other variants. However, with more people resorting to at-home testing to assess their infection status, the true number of infections remains shrouded. 
To estimate such numbers requires a surrogate group to be identified that represents the status of COVID-19 in the entire population. One such group is Transportation Security Administration screeners at the nation’s 400-plus airport security checkpoints. 
The TSA provides daily updates on the number of active COVID-19 cases among its screeners. The agency also provides a running case total, as well as the number of deaths. As of Jan. 21, there were 19,930 infections among TSA employees, with close to 92% of them airport screeners. This represents almost 40% of the TSA airport screening workforce. 
The five airports with the most TSA screeners infected are Miami, New York’s John F. Kennedy, Newark, Los Angeles and O’Hare International Airport. In addition, 34 TSA employees have died from COVID-19. 
The past month has been particularly brutal for the TSA. On Dec. 27, the TSA reported 1,147 TSA officers with active infections, or around 2% of its workforce. By Jan. 3, this number jumped to 2,609, an increase of over 125% and over 5% of the agency’s screening workforce. By Jan. 12, this number peaked at 3,783, or over 7.5% of its workforce. Recent data suggests that new infections have plateaued. 
Keep in mind that these are active cases, so many of these people likely have mild symptoms and will not be active after five or 10 days, depending on which CDC guidelines they follow. 
Given that these officers are testing frequently, their infection rate provides a window into what is likely occurring across the nation. With the prevalent use of at-home tests to determine infection, the number of cases reported by the CDC undercounts the true number of infections. As such, the TSA numbers may be providing useful insights into actual nationwide numbers. 
The 40% of the TSA screener workforce that has been infected would translate into over 130 million confirmed cases in the nation, around double the CDC’s official count. More recently, the 7.5% of active cases among screeners would translate into close to 25 million people across the nation being currently infected. 
With around 93% of TSA officers vaccinated, which is higher than the vaccination rate in the nation’s adult population, this suggests that these infection estimates for the general population are likely underestimates, hence providing lower bounds. 
Given the large number of TSA screeners, the rate of false negatives from at-home tests (estimated to be around 15% for some tests) means that many TSA officers are certain to be working while infected, risking the spread of the virus to other TSA screeners and passengers passing through checkpoints. This means that at large and medium-size airports, with multiple security checkpoint lanes, there is a high likelihood that one or more TSA officers are screening passengers while infected. 
If omicron were to cause severe diseases comparable to delta and no vaccines were available, our health care system would have already collapsed under the weight of the accompanying demands. Having vaccines that diminish the severity of infections is what is keeping our nation’s health care infrastructure afloat, albeit barely. 
Tracking TSA cases is one way that omicron infections can be estimated for the nation. As TSA infections begin to moderate and drop, as they now appear to be, it will provide a clue that the same phenomenon is occurring across the nation, providing a beacon of light that the current surge of infections is abating. 
Sheldon H. Jacobson is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

WEBOP2220125

TSA worker omicron data can help gauge pandemic's severity

TSA worker omicron data can help gauge pandemic

stTRAVEL200724_photos

It can sometimes feel like partisanship and polarization have never been worse in the United States. 
We argue about masks and elections, voting and science, crime and education, with so many conversations misled by misinformation. Surveys find that majorities believe the country is going in the wrong direction. We agree on little, and we rail on stagnant D.C. politics. And opinions on racial injustice continue to be an enduring dividing line. 
It is worth remembering, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that our nation has been in worse straits. 
Certainly, we were at a deeper national low after the 1968 assassinations of MLK and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, which followed the murders of Malcolm X and President John F. Kennedy. Those years saw protests against an unpopular war and summers of unrest as Black neighborhoods exploded with the dynamite of decades of mistreatment and poverty. As the 1968 Kerner Commission observed, "Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American." 
It is unwise to honey-coat that period or our path out of it. Those protesting the established and often inimical order were not polite or shy about their efforts. As King said in his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, "The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges." 
The levels of discrimination across so many facets of American life, from employment to housing, were stunning compared to now. The challenges against Black voters were violent and state-sponsored, and the American Dream was dim for so many who were not white men. 
We have come so far today, with the arc of the moral universe continuing to bend toward justice, as King prophesied. That does not mean our challenges are minor: There is too much poverty and insecurity in the richest country in the world. Many communities remain deeply segregated and educational opportunities are denied. Fairness in our criminal justice system remains a challenge, and it should be easier for Americans to vote and harder for politicians to play dangerous games with electoral counting. Those are long-standing issues. New and pressing ones like climate change and a two-year pandemic, which exposed dramatic inequities in health care, underscore how much we have to do and how little we can afford to be divided. 
We would do well to remember King’s warning on that front. The religious and civil rights leader famously wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." But especially after the pandemic, the sentences that follow should be as well-memorized and understood, among all those who have a hard time seeing the other side: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Editorials

VPMLK220117

King's words still resound

Film Review - MLK/FBI

On Dec. 14, 2020, 20 prominent Pennsylvania Democrats gathered in Harrisburg — in a ceremony shorn of some of its pomp and circumstance because of COVID-19, but witnessed by a gaggle of reporters — to cast the state’s Electoral College votes for the president-elect, Joe Biden. They dropped their ballots in a wooden box designed by Benjamin Franklin. 
Then-Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, who had certified that Biden defeated Donald Trump here in Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes, told the gathering, "Today you will follow the tradition of the first Electoral College that convened in Pennsylvania 231 years ago and cast your votes based on the outcome of that election, to carry out the will of the voters of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." 
But at another undisclosed location in Harrisburg, with no press coverage, a band of 20 top state Republicans had other ideas. Meeting at what they said was "the request of the Trump campaign," the GOP luminaries — including two men now running for governor, former Congressman Lou Barletta and consultant Charlie Gerow — cast what they called "a procedural vote" that claimed Trump as the winner. The documentation claimed the ballots were cast just in case a court ruling or some other proceeding overturned Biden’s victory. 
The existence of this vote was not a secret. It was even heralded by the Pennsylvania Republican Party in a news release, and mentioned by The Inquirer that day. But what wasn’t yet known on Dec. 14, 2020, was the full extent of plotting among Trump’s inner circle to have Vice President Mike Pence and Congress somehow invalidate Biden victories in battleground states like Pennsylvania — or that a violent pro-Trump mob would overrun the Capitol on Jan. 6, in an attempted coup to stop the certification of the legitimate electors. 
<h3>A sinister revelation</h3> 
Now, a revelation that Republicans in five other states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia — took the Dec. 14 gambit a step further is placing the entire operation in a new light. By sending paperwork to Congress and the National Archives that falsely claims, without qualification, that they were the "duly elected" members of the Electoral College in states where Biden got the most votes, the entire operation looks more sinister. A recent report in Politico found the House select committee on Jan. 6 — which is weighing whether the actions of Trump and his aides were part of a conspiracy to obstruct Congress — is looking at some of this paperwork. 
Beginning with the Politico report, the flames of controversy have been fanned by nightly updates on the bogus certification letters by MSNBC’s highly rated nighttime host Rachel Maddow, who has noted not just similar language in the letters filed with the National Archives but even similar font styles — suggesting the effort was centrally coordinated. 
Right now, there are a lot more questions than answers, including: 
<ul> 
 <li>Who exactly in the Trump campaign requested that the Pennsylvania Republican Party, and presumably the GOP electors in other states, hold these votes and submit documentation, which includes the formal signatures of the Trump electors casting these ultimately meaningless ballots? Was Trump himself — as well as others in his White House and campaign inner circles — aware of this scheme? And how did his allies envision ultimately putting these election claims to use?</li> 
 <li>Although Pennsylvania Republicans seem to have wisely hedged their bets, did GOP officials and would-be Trump electors in those five states making false "duly elected" claims cross a line and commit a criminal act such as forgery or fraud?</li> 
 <li>What actually happened behind closed doors in Harrisburg on Dec. 14, 2020? Specifically, why did as many as seven veteran party insiders who ran as Trump electors — such as former Chester County Sheriff Bunny Welsh, ex-party chair Rob Gleason, longtime GOP big shot Bob Asher, and others — ultimately not sign the paperwork, only to be replaced by others?</li> 
</ul> 
<h3>The road from 12/14 to 1/6</h3> 
In the December 2020 official Pennsylvania Republican Party statement announcing the "procedural vote," Trump state chair Bernie Comfort cited the precedent of a 1960 vote taken by Democratic electors in Hawaii when the GOP’s Richard Nixon was leading the vote count, although Comfort’s statement failed to note that Democrat John F. Kennedy actually did win the vote recount there. 
"We took this procedural vote to preserve any legal claims that may be presented going forward," Comfort said at that time. "This was in no way an effort to usurp or contest the will of the Pennsylvania voters." The Republican vote was sent to the National Archives but apparently not to the chief judge of Pennsylvania’s Middle District, as is normally done and was done with the legitimate Biden tally. 
Yet arguably the vote fit into scheming underway in Trump’s Washington orbit to do exactly that. As Team Trump lost court case after court case in the late fall of 2020 contesting Biden’s victories in key states, the focus shifted to efforts to bully Pence on the dubious legal argument that he could use his power as presiding officer over the Jan. 6 election certification to not accept Biden slates in states such as Pennsylvania. Ultimately, 145 Republicans — 138 House members and seven senators — voted unsuccessfully that night to reject the Keystone State electors, a scenario that could have put the alternate slate in play. 
Now, there is mounting evidence that the House select committee is looking at the role these alternate slates played in a broader plot — and, possibly, one that crossed the line into a criminal conspiracy — to disrupt the Jan. 6 certification. This includes whether the deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill was part of this scheme after nonviolent maneuvers failed. 
<h3>Meadows: 'I love it!'</h3> 
In its recent memo seeking criminal contempt charges against Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff at the time of the insurrection, the House committee said, "Meadows received text messages and emails regarding apparent Republican efforts in certain States to send alternate slates of electors to Congress." The committee’s referral — citing evidence uncovered in its months of so-far behind-closed-doors investigation — said that when a Congress member told Meadows this scheme was "highly controversial," Trump’s top aide replied: "I love it!" The committee also said it has a Team Trump email from Nov. 7, 2020 — the day the TV networks called the election for Biden — that alternate slates of electors would be part of "a direct and collateral attack" on the Democrat’s win at the ballot box. 
Just under two months later, the collateral damage from this unprecedented effort to contest an election victory around a Big Lie of nonexistent voter fraud was five people dead or dying on the grounds of the seat of a badly tarnished U.S. government. On Dec. 14, 2020, the alternate votes, like the one held in Harrisburg, were ignored because they looked ridiculous and pathetic. 
But now we know better. 
These false-pretense certifications matter for two reasons. The first involves getting to the bottom of what really happened on Jan. 6, 2021 — and what did a president know and when did he know it? Investigators are trying to learn whether Team Trump’s plans amounted to an attempted coup — with talk of invoking the Insurrection Act, shutting down the Capitol before a Biden certification, and seizing ballots. In that scenario, these bogus electoral votes could have been inserted into the jigsaw puzzle of autocracy. 
But arguably, these bizarro-world electoral votes matter even more as America braces for 2024. In the 2020 election, Republicans largely lacked the legal mechanisms that would have been needed to make these pro-Trump electoral votes in states where Biden won actually matter — so there’s a concerted effort to change that. In the months after Jan. 6, GOP lawmakers in at least eight states enacted laws that moved more control over election results to more partisan bodies like state legislatures. Additional extreme measures are still being debated ahead of November’s midterms and the 2024 race for president. 
In December 2020, the idea that state lawmakers could reject the presidential electors of the candidate who won fairly and squarely at the ballot box and replace them with electors from their own party on trumped-up grounds was too far out for most Americans to take seriously. After Jan. 6, it’s no laughing matter. There must be consequences for the people who actually thought this scheme could work in the 2020 contest, or else democracy may be murdered in broad daylight on or about Jan. 6, 2025.

WEBOP1220114

What fake 2020 Electoral College certificates tell us about America's fragile democracy

What fake Electoral College certificates say about our democracy

Election 2020 Pennsylvania

<h2>Shock after verdict in Rittenhouse trial </h2> 
Having retired as a deputy inspector after 31 years in the Suffolk County Police Department, with a fundamental belief in the American system of justice, my faith has just been shattered ["Full acquittal for Rittenhouse," News, Nov. 20]. 
The Kyle Rittenhouse jurors chose to ignore the fact that an unstable teenage vigilante, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, killed two people and injured a third who posed no threat to anybody. 
The greater question is why did the Wisconsin police agencies and "civic leaders" do nothing to intervene? Standing in a distant street-blocking line obviously was not a deterrent. 
Shame on all of them. They need new leadership. 
— Howard Mandell, East Northport 
 
Is anyone else as shocked as I am about the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse? A teenager, carrying an AR-style semiautomatic rifle, kills two people and injures a third, who were not allowed by the judge to be called victims but instead had to be referred to as protesters. And the teen faces no consequences? 
What message does this send to other vigilantes out there? Self-defense? Please. 
He would have done the victims a favor by staying home and minding his own business.   
— Jo-Tina DiGennaro, Bayville 
Now that we’ve seen white justice at work (again and again), just imagine what would have happened if Kyle Rittenhouse had been a Black kid brought up on the same charges. 
— Gus Franza, Setauket 
<h2>U.S. immigration policy a disgrace </h2> 
The Afghan refugee situation illustrates the disgrace that the U.S. immigration policy has become ["Afghans’ kin fearful over entry bottleneck," Nation &amp; World, Nov. 20]. 
The Afghan refugees who are attempting to enter the United States legally are exactly the future Americans that we want. They have experienced firsthand the terrorism of extremism and the evils of radical Muslim fanaticism. America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. People come here for freedom and a better life for their families. 
The solution is simple, as our courts have done in other cases: allow Zoom-type meetings to count as face-to-face meetings. Many immigrants are our hardest-working and best future citizens. 
— Alan Cohn, Nesconset 
<h2>GOP inaction on Gosar is frightening </h2> 
I served in the military for eight years. I have lived through the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I lived through the Cuban missile crisis, Gulf and Iraq wars, and 9/11.   
However, I have never been so frightened for our country or democracy as I am now. 
The Republican Party has brought me to this dark place. Except for two members, the Republican Party refused to censure Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who thought it OK to depict himself killing another member of Congress and threatening the president of the United States with swords ["Rep censured by House for violent video," News, Nov. 18].   He also spread  the lie that the presidential election was stolen. 
 Republicans ignore those in their party who incite violence. Now they are trying to fix elections by making it more difficult for people to vote. We have one party upholding our democracyand the other trying to destroy it. 
We have seen the damage and corruption that the prior four years  brought us. One more Republican administration like that and we will lose our democracy. 
Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) speaks the truth. I pray that more in her party listen to her before it’s too late. 
— Richard T. DeVito, Long Beach 
<h2>Own up to voting for ‘the other guy’ </h2> 
 A reader took exception to what he called the misleading characterization of Republicans by Lane Filler ["Don’t mischaracterize who Republicans are," Letters, Nov. 17]. 
In an election between two people, you don’t get to "vote for the other guy" in a vacuum. A vote against one candidate becomes a vote for the other — a "lesser of two evils" vote. At election time, former President Donald Trump carried four years of documented baggage . That’s what you voted for. 
If you still support Trump today, you can add attempting to overturn an election  to a laundry list of misdeeds. If that’s what you voted for when you "voted for the other guy," you should at least have the courage to own it.   Filler was absolutely right in his characterization. 
— Robert Emproto, Huntington 
CORRECTIONS: Trial evidence showed that Kyle Rittenhouse drove himself from his home in Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse got the rifle used in the Aug. 25, 2020, shootings at the Kenosha home of a friend’s stepfather. Information in a previous version was incorrect.

Letters

OPLTR211123

Rittenhouse verdict, immigration policy, Paul Gosar and more

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"The Many Saints of Newark," David Chase’s feature-film prequel to his iconic HBO series "The Sopranos," features an ensemble cast playing members of a New Jersey crime family. Michael Gandolfini steps in to play a teenage version of Tony Soprano — the role made famous by his father, James Gandolfini — but there are also familiar faces such as Alessandro Nivola, Vera Farmiga, Corey Stoll and Jon Bernthal. 
Also in the cast are two Long Islanders, both relative newcomers, who are hoping that this Warner Bros. production will help launch their careers. They spoke to Newsday shortly before the film’s release. 
GABRIELLA PIAZZA 
Gabriella Piazza, an actor making her major-studio film debut in "The Many Saints of Newark," may look familiar to Long Islanders, perhaps from her brief role as resident Elise Gasecki in NBC’s medical drama "New Amsterdam. Or maybe you’re noticing a certain family resemblance. 
"I’m a Suozzi," Piazza said at the start of a recent interview to promote her new film. Her mother, she says, is the cousin of Rep. Tom Suozzi. "So we have a lot of ties to the Long Island world," the actress added. 
Piazza plays Joanne Moltisanti, wife of the notorious mobster Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola). Working under the show’s critically acclaimed filmmakers — writer-creator Chase and his longtime director Alan Taylor — and alongside such top-notch talent as Nivola, Farmiga and Stoll would be a dream come true for any relatively new actor. For Piazza, who got into showbiz a few years later than most, the movie is proof that her hard work playing catch-up is starting to pay off. 
Acting wasn’t Piazza’s first choice of careers. Born in Glen Cove and raised in Hicksville, Piazza attended Long Island Lutheran High School in Brookville and went to college upstate at SUNY Cortland, where she majored in communications with a minor in management and public relations. Her goal was getting a good job, not getting discovered. 
"I didn’t have anybody around me doing the acting thing," Piazza said. "I entered the corporate world. I worked in Manhattan after college — I became a vice president of sales for a tech company." 
Then she met Blake Rice, an aspiring director who was holding down a day job at her company. A romance began. ("I was actually his boss," Piazza said, "which is hilarious.") Rice encouraged her to explore acting, she said, so Piazza began taking classes at New York Film Academy at night. After graduating, she left her sales career and pursued acting full time. "It was horrifying, but pretty incredible," she said. "I’ve never been happier." 
She quickly discovered a classic Catch-22 of the industry: "Some people will tell you, you need an agent to get a job, other people will tell you, you need a job to get an agent," Piazza said. "So I figured, ‘Let me just make myself the lead in a movie.’" To that end, Piazza started her own production company and cast herself in the 2016 short film, "To Whom It May Concern," about a woman whose photograph mysteriously appears as part of an art showing. After the film played at the Big Apple Film Festival, she said, "I was able to get a manager, and my career was able to take off because people could see me in a lead role." 
Piazza landed her part in "Many Saints" the old-fashioned way — by auditioning. "When it’s a big audition, they code everything so you don’t know who the writer is and you don’t know the characters," Piazza said. "But I’m reading this script, and I’m thinking, ‘This sounds an awful lot like ‘The Sopranos.’ " 
She watched old episodes to brush up and also roped her mother into rehearsals. "I actually called her up and made her read some of the lines so I could hear her Long Island accent," Piazza said. "Because I worked very hard to fix mine." 
With "Many Saints" behind her, Piazza is back to producing her next short film. During this interview, she spoke by phone from her car while scouting locations in New Jersey. "I like to be an advocate to those who are starting later in life," she said. "If this is your true passion, it’s never too late to go after your dreams." 

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CHASE VACNIN 
Near the end of "The Many Saints of Newark," a young Jackie Aprile, played by Long Islander Chase Vacnin, stands around on a street corner with his buddy Tony Soprano, played by Michael Gandolfini. There’s some good-natured razzing between the characters, but all it takes is one wrong comment to set Tony off — and wham! Suddenly, Tony is shoving a massive sandwich right into Jackie’s face. 
It’s a memorable scene, and according to Vacnin, the outtakes are pretty good, too. 
For starters, Vacnin kept eating the prop. "It was just this great sub," he said. "I must have eaten about eight of them." Then, in one botched take, Gandolfini hurled the sandwich and accidentally put a finger in Vacnin’s eye. "And me, as the fiery individual that I am — I was no longer acting," said Vacnin. "I whacked him with that sandwich." 
Director Alan Taylor called cut, the two stars hugged it out and eventually they nailed the scene. 
"I was at the premiere," said Vacnin. "That experience, seeing myself in front of all these people, it was so surreal. And the movie is sooo good." 
The role of Aprile, the future mob boss on "The Sopranos," could be a breakout one for Vacnin, a 19-year-old who was raised nearly from birth in Merrick. He started out as a baby model; one of his first gigs was posing in a stroller for "Babies R Us." As a preteen, he landed the role of Butch in "The Little Rascals Save the Day," a direct-to-video adaptation of the classic "Little Rascals" film series. After that, Vacnin said, calls from agents and managers began to come in. 
"But when I went to high school, being an actor wasn’t quote-unquote cool," Vacnin said. At John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, Vacnin played basketball, football and lacrosse while keeping one foot in the acting pool. He landed a role in "This Is the Night," a limited release starring Naomi Watts and Frank Grillo that began production in 2018 but arrived in theaters just this month. His credits also include the game show "Unfiltered" and the mockumentary series "Drama Club," both for Nickelodeon. 
Vacnin recently struck out on his own and moved to downtown Los Angeles. "I have literally lived in Long Island my entire life except for the last three weeks, when I moved to L.A.," Vacnin said in an interview last month. "I mean, this is the dream. I just feel like I have to work hard, and when luck meets opportunity, I’ll be able to kick that door down."

Entertainment

Movies

ETMOVIE211010

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LIers Gabriella Piazza and Chase Vacnin are featured in 'The Many Saints of Newark'

Meet the LIers in the 'Sopranos' prequel

The recent Census Bureau report showing the white population declining for the first time in history rang alarm bells for some Republicans and caused cheers of excitement among some Democrats. The Republican rush this year to pass restrictive new voting laws indicates that the GOP fears the nation's increasing diversity will benefit its opponents in the near future. For the Democrats, demographic trends look promising. As the white share of the electorate has declined in recent decades, the party has won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections. And President Joe Biden won nearly 9 out of 10 Black votes in the November 2020 election. 
But Democrats would be wrong to assume that they can simply run out the demographic clock, and Republicans would be foolish to ignore their own opportunity to change the game. 
In fact, history teaches us that all of this could still change, and demographics aren't destiny. 
Almost 100 years ago, in 1929, the GOP had won the presidency in seven of the previous nine elections, and Black voters overwhelmingly identified with the Republican Party. Most Americans probably didn't anticipate the dramatic political realignment about to take place. 
By the end of the decade, the federal government, under the leadership of 10 different Republican presidents from 1877 to 1929, had failed to enact any new major civil rights laws to protect Black citizens from lynching or discrimination. 
A series of high-profile race massacres — East St. Louis in 1917, the Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa massacre in 1921 and Rosewood in 1923 — made clear the violent ramifications of such failures, leaving many Black voters feeling increasingly unprotected by the Party of Lincoln. 
The Chicago Defender, one of the most influential Black newspapers in the country, had enough with Republicans. A few weeks before the 1928 election, the newspaper took the unusual step of endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith over Republican nominee Herbert Hoover. "If 50 years of support to the Republican Party doesn't get us justice, then we must of necessity shift our allegiance to new quarters," the Defender argued. The newspaper was also concerned about Hoover's support for the "lily white" movement in the GOP and the party's growing affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. 
But by 1932, it was Hoover's response to the Great Depression that caused him to lose reelection to Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new president made good on a promise to implement a "New Deal," and it paid electoral dividends. A few years later, Oscar De Priest, a Black Republican who opposed New Deal programs and represented Chicago as the only African American in Congress, lost his seat to Black Democrat Arthur Mitchell, who supported Roosevelt's aggressive federal intervention and rode a Democratic midterm election wave (rare for the party in control of the White House) to power. Finally, in 1935, after decades of Republican domination, Mitchell became the first African American to serve in Congress as a Democrat. 
The floodgates began opening, and African Americans started leaving the Republican Party in droves. In the 1936 election, Roosevelt became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win the Black vote and received 71% of African American votes. But Roosevelt's record was mixed, at best, as he tried to keep the party's Southern whites within his New Deal coalition. As a result, key programs like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act excluded agricultural and domestic workers, who were disproportionately Black. While Roosevelt was lauded for seeking the counsel of advisers known as his "Black Cabinet," he resisted calls to appoint an African American to serve in his actual Cabinet. And when Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Berlin, Roosevelt refused to invite him and other Black Olympians to the white House. 
As the Democratic Party's Southern-based lawmakers continued to obstruct civil rights progress, the Black vote remained competitive for the next three decades. Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower won nearly 40% of African American votes in 1956, but Eisenhower's success may have been more attributable to his opponent's weaknesses than his own accomplishments. As the two parties courted white Southerners in the wake of the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, both Eisenhower and Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson urged the nation to proceed cautiously on racial integration. 
By 1960, the two parties had tiptoed tenuously on the emerging civil rights issues of the day. "I must make it palpably clear that the dearth of positive leadership from Washington is not confined to one political party," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. announced in a September 1960 speech to the National Urban League. "The fact is that both major parties have been hypocritical on the question of civil rights. Each of them has been willing to follow the long pattern of using the Negro as a political football." 
Just a month later, while King sat in a Georgia jail cell, Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy placed a quick private phone call to King's wife, Coretta, to convey his concern, and that call persuaded King's influential preacher father, Martin Luther King Sr., to support the Democratic candidate over Republican Richard M. Nixon. 
The racial realignment was finally completed when Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the GOP responded by nominating Barry Goldwater for president, just a few weeks after he had broken with most of his Republican colleagues to vote against the bill. For the first time since Reconstruction, one political party delivered major concrete legislation to help Black people. African Americans took note, and many remained pleasantly surprised as Johnson went on to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. 
Today, the roles have been reversed from the 1920s, but Black voters find themselves once again reevaluating their political alliances after giving their votes almost exclusively to the Democratic Party for six decades. 
Like their ancestors from a century before, Black Americans feel increasingly unprotected in 2021 by a government that has already failed Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, George Floyd and countless others. They've watched their voting rights be chipped away since the Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted the Voting Rights Act, and they've watched a mob of angry white insurrectionists try to overthrow the U.S. government. 
Black voters have been the most loyal constituency in the Democratic Party, but Democrats now control the White House and both houses of Congress and yet they have failed to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Instead, party leaders have prioritized universal issues like infrastructure over controversial race-specific proposals like reparations. Yes, bread-and-butter issues such as health care and wages help Black people too, but universal policies don't eliminate centuries-old racial disparities that account for structural inequality in employment, housing, education and the criminal justice system. 
And yet Republicans haven't offered a solution either. Instead they have manufactured controversies about critical race theory, "cancel culture" and Confederate statues as they manipulate the system — the Electoral College, congressional gerrymandering, lifetime judicial appointments and an unrepresentative U.S. Senate — to grasp power as a minority party. 
But here's the thing. In the last election, Joe Biden won 92% of Black voters over 60 years old but only 78% of Black voters ages 30 to 44. Although the youngest group of Black voters, 18-29, were slightly more supportive, some young Black voters have rejected their parents' and grandparents' unflinching allegiance to a particular political party. 
If any political party wants to win Black voters in the future, it could start by redirecting government resources to underserved Black communities and enacting legislation to eliminate racially discriminatory law enforcement practices. If Republicans want to gain our votes or Democrats want to keep them, they'll need to introduce and implement their plans to reach true racial equality. 
Keith Boykin is the author of the new book, "Race Against Time: The Politics of a Darkening America."

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How either party can win the loyalty of Black voters moving forward

How either party can win over Black voters

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SAN DIEGO — California's parole board voted Friday to free Robert F. Kennedy's assassin after two of RFK's sons said they supported releasing him and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars. But the governor ultimately will decide if Sirhan Sirhan leaves prison. 
Douglas Kennedy was a toddler when his father was gunned down in 1968. He told a two-person board panel that he was moved to tears by Sirhan's remorse and that the 77-year-old should be released if he's not a threat to others. 
"I'm overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr. Sirhan face to face," he said. "I've lived my life both in fear of him and his name in one way or another. And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love." 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken in favor of Sirhan's release in the past and met with him in prison, wrote in favor of paroling Sirhan. 
"While nobody can speak definitively on behalf of my father, I firmly believe that based on his own consuming commitment to fairness and justice, that he would strongly encourage this board to release Mr. Sirhan because of Sirhan's impressive record of rehabilitation," he said in a letter submitted to the board. 
Sirhan smiled, thanked the board and gave a thumbs-up after the decision to grant parole was announced. It was a major victory in his 16th attempt at parole. But it does not assure his release. 
The ruling will be reviewed over the next 90 days by the board's staff. Then it will be sent to the governor, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it. If Sirhan is freed, he must live in a transitional home for six months, enroll in an alcohol abuse program and get therapy.
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Robert F. Kennedy was a U.S. senator from New York and the brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. RFK was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination when he was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after delivering a victory speech in the pivotal California primary. Five others were wounded. 
Sirhan, who insists he doesn't remember the shooting and had been drinking alcohol just beforehand, was convicted of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death after his conviction, but that sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972. 
At his last parole hearing in 2016, commissioners concluded after more than three hours of intense testimony that Sirhan did not show adequate remorse or understand the enormity of his crime. 
This time, prosecutors declined to participate or oppose Sirhan's release under a policy by Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, a former police officer who took office last year after running on a reform platform. Gascón, who said he idolized the Kennedys and mourned RFK's assassination, believes the prosecutors' role ends at sentencing and they should not influence decisions to release prisoners. 
The Los Angeles Police Department, relatives of some of the victims and members of the public submitted letters opposing Sirhan's release, Parole Board Commissioner Robert Barton said at the start of Friday's proceeding, held virtually with Sirhan appearing on camera from a San Diego County prison. 
"We don't have a DA here, but I have to consider all sides," Barton said, noting it would consider arguments made in the past by prosecutors opposing his release, depending on their relevance. 
Sirhan's lawyer, Angela Berry, said the board should base its decision on who Sirhan is today and not what he did more than 50 years ago. She said he is not a threat to the public. 
Sirhan said he had learned to control his anger and was committed to living peacefully. 
"I would never put myself in jeopardy again," he told the panel. "You have my pledge. I will always look to safety and peace and non-violence." 
Sirhan, a Christian Palestinian from Jordan, has acknowledged he was angry at Kennedy for his support of Israel. When asked about how he feels about the Middle East conflict today, Sirhan broke down crying and temporarily couldn't speak. 
"Take a few deep breaths," said Barton, who noted the conflict had not gone away and still touched a nerve. 
Sirhan said he doesn't follow what's going on in the region but thinks about the suffering of refugees. 
"The misery that those people are experiencing. It's painful," Sirhan said. 
If released, Sirhan could be deported to Jordan, and Barton said he was concerned he might become a "symbol or lightning rod to foment more violence." 
Sirhan said he was too old to be involved in the Middle East conflict and would detach himself from it. 
"The same argument can be said or made that I can be a peacemaker and a contributor to a friendly nonviolent way of resolving the issue," said Sirhan, who told the panel the hoped to live with his blind brother in Pasadena, California. 
Paul Schrade, a union leader and aide to RFK who was among five people wounded in the 1968 shooting, also spoke in favor of Sirhan's release.

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RFK assassin Sirhan wins parole with support of 2 Kennedys

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John F. Kennedy -- 50 years later

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