My office was invaded by the Occupy Protesters today & all I saw were $1000 laptops & vomit on the carpet. Thank God for #febrezeWed Dec 07 03:49:02 via TweetDeck

Rep. Joe Walsh
RepJoeWalsh

I’ll just leave this here. Oh, okay, how about a review of Joe Walsh’s work activity this year, his first in Congress? Well, it’s pretty amazing actually.

Here’s every bill he’s sponsored.

• Joe Walsh, West Bank Expert: In April, he was the sponsor of H.R.1501, which reads: “To withhold United States contributions to the United Nations until the United Nations formally retracts the final report of the ‘United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.’” You can read the UN report here; it’s from 2009, perhaps you’ve already read it. (Summary: “UN Fact Finding Mission finds strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza conflict.”) But let’s retract it!

• Joe Walsh, Language Police: In July, he was the sponsor of H.R.2457, called the “Palestinian Accountability Act.” The gist of that is a “PROHIBITION ON USE OF THE TERM `PALESTINE’ IN UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS.” It also includes a prohibition on funding the Palestine-supporting U.N.

• Joe Walsh, Economic Theorist: September brought H. R. 2945, the “Capital Gains Inflation Relief Act.” Here, let “Americans for Tax Reform” (AKA Grover Norquist) explain that to you:

If an investor purchases a stock for $100, and later sells that same stock for $400, he must report and pay taxes on a $300 capital gain. However, some of that gain is merely due to the effects of inflation over the years. In many cases, much or all of a capital gain is merely inflation. With an historical inflation rate of 3%, inflation halves the real value of all assets every 24 years. While this is bad enough, it adds insult to injury to have to pay taxes merely on inflated gains.

• Joe Walsh, Lonely Scientist: H.R.3396 seems self-explanatory: “To abolish the Office of Polar Programs of the National Science Foundation.” LOL: “Cosponsors: None.”

• Joe Walsh, Christmas Lover: H.R.3403: The “Save Christmas Act.” Spoiler: it has to do with Christmas trees.

• Joe Walsh, Constitution Amender: H.J.RES.54 and H.J.RES.56 are incredibly hilarious attempts to ensure a balanced U.S. budget — wherein yearly spending would not exceed 18% of GDP and some other wacky things.

• Joe Walsh, Annexer of Palestine: And then there’s H.RES.394, “Supporting Israel’s right to annex Judea and Samaria in the event that the Palestinian Authority continues to press for unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.”

That’s what Joe Walsh did this year. Two bills were referred to committee; the rest were referred to subcommittees, so they can laugh at him.

“Researchers studying a species of freshwater fish called the Trinidadian guppy found that females uninterested in mating with males chose to spend more time with fish more attractive to themselves, thus dramatically reducing harrassment and mating attempts from notoriously lusty male guppies.” The Daily Mail, naturally, frames this as advice for how you can keep from getting groped at the office Christmas party, which seems remarkably unfair to your sexier friends, but I guess those pretty bitches have it coming, right?

You know, why wouldn’t someone who pays money to have her pet spray-painted name the dog Snooki? It makes perfect sense when you think about it.

by Jaime Green

We hear a lot about eating seasonally. I bet Maira Kalman’s illustrating a Michael Pollan rule about it RIGHT NOW. In fact, I bet she already did. And I love eating seasonally — yes, it makes me feel superior and in tune with Mother Earth, ohm, but also it just tastes good. Like, a seasonal tomato versus a February tomato, those are two different vegetables. Two different planets. Two different galaxies. Two different universes that only Brian Greene can explain the simultaneous existence of. One is a vegetable, and one is gross, tasteless nonsense. Okay and also I do enjoy feeling sort of touchy-feely at-one with the planet, eating in-season, because otherwise, in the city, I barely know what the seasons are. I can see a slice of park trees from my bedroom window, three blocks away, and they are orange for a month, but otherwise I don’t really notice them. I am usually terrible about knowing how heavy a jacket I need, sweater or scarf. So vegetables are really all I have.

Most people trying to seduce the world into eating seasonally like to ooh and aah and induce salivation about summer fruits like peaches and plums and those late-July tomatoes. Or the ramps and fiddleheads and other useless garnishes that are the first products of spring. Now it’s fall, and late fall at that. You’re out of luck, right, it’s just you and frozen creamed spinach until June. What can you do but go lay out $3 for a sad bunch of swiss chard at Whole Foods while lamenting all of the produce you missed during the growing season. It’s cold and the trees have no leaves, and don’t you remember when it snowed two weeks ago?

Wait! Stop! Get thee to the farmers market! And not just for the maple syrup cotton candy, not at all, because we are too old for that, aren’t we. There is still plenty of produce there, lovingly sold to you by farmers who’ve been up since 4 a.m. Obviously, first of all, there are apples, duh. My mom has this new obsession with farmers market apples. I’ve been telling her for years, like I’ve been telling lots of people who don’t care, that they really taste different, better, like apples. But she had to find her own path, and she did, straight to the honeycrisps. So apples, yes. And then winter squash. There are all these glorious foods that keep for months in a cold cellar, if you happen to be living before the invention of supermarkets and trans-continental trucking routes. (Winters of apples, onions and squash. Oh my, I roll my eyes. How did you not just off yourself around February, you imaginary New Englander of 1875?) These long-storing fruits and vegetables taunt us at this time of year, like, Sure, you’re real excited about me now. Lol. But it’s not only those hardy ones that you are left with — there is still plenty right now that is fresh from the ground and sometimes even green. This is actually the time of year for what I would argue are the tastiest vegetables out there. (Tastiest and easiest to prepare, bonus.) I’m not even gonna listen to that class clown in the back of the readership, tastiest vegetable? oxymoron! You’re the oxymoron, bro. Vegetables are delicious, and they help you not die. Shut up.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS
I was watching an episode of “Chopped” the other day, because the “Iron Chef: America”-shaped hole in my heart is too vast for the Food Network’s programming choices to fill, and a contestant, a chef, said that he hates Brussels sprouts. He was like, “I don’t know what to do with these, because I hate them, because they are gross,” more or less.

Another time on “Chopped,” the contestants were freaked out by having to cook rattlesnake. Sure, I can buy that. But Brussels sprouts?! What the hell, guy?

Brussels sprouts are the bacon of vegetables. That is not my line! It’s my boyfriend’s! The same boyfriend who blames himself for me quitting vegetarianism, but who should actually feel guilty for rekindling my torrid love for Doritos. He thinks Brussels sprouts are like bacon, okay? Trust him. They are amazing.

They key to Brussels sprouts is to avoid steaming them. Steamed (or boiled, god), they give off that dead-mouse smell common to this family of veggies (see also: cabbage and cauliflower). But roasted, broiled or sauteed, Brussels sprouts are rich, caramelized heaven. They also look adorable, like tiny cabbages or brains.

My favorite way to cook Brussels sprouts is on the stovetop. This recipe covers it, but anything other than salt and olive oil is totally superfluous. Stick with small sprouts, as they’ll cook through without steaming. For something even faster and less finicky, shred them thus.

CAULIFLOWER
There is something wonderfully meditative in cutting up a head of cauliflower, discovering the fractal symmetry and hacking away at it with a chef’s knife. The inner leaves curl around the florets like pale little hands. It’s all very lovely and intimate. Cut up a head of cauliflower, stick your hand into a chicken’s cavity to pull out the bag of organs lovingly placed there by some distant butcher. Column A, column B.

I was on the phone with my mom the other day, figuring out a couple of dishes I could make for Thanksgiving at her house. “I’ve been roasting cauliflower a lot lately. It’s really good.” She said that sounded fantastic. I went on, “I don’t know how everyone would feel about this, but it’s really, really good roasted in bacon grease?” I rushed to add, “It’s not any more fat than you’d have with olive oil. Just different. And it tastes amazing!” (I pictured myself heading out to the suburbs that Wednesday evening with a bag of laundry and a small jar of bacon grease.) She didn’t have to think long before asking if we could just stick with olive oil. But you’re not squeamish, right? (I love you, Mom, you’re not squeamish, either.) So buy some bacon. (The best reasonably priced no-nitrates stuff I’ve found is Applegate Farms Sunday Bacon, for what it’s worth.) Cook it. Eat it. Save the fat. A little glass jar in the fridge will work well. (Oven bacon tastes as good as stovetop and keeps your range safe from the sheen of splattered bacon fat: You need that fat for your cauliflower!)

Preheat your oven to 400 or so. Cut a head of cauliflower into bite-sized florets. Melt a few tablespoons of bacon fat over a burner in a metal measuring cup (or however). Mix the florets in a bowl with the bacon fat and a sprinkling of salt. Lay in a single layer on a foil-covered baking sheet. (Minimal cleanup, lazy comrades!) (If you are a compulsive and lazy comrade, take a minute to put any flat, cut sides of the cauliflower face down on the foil, for extra nice browning.) Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, until nice and caramelized and browned. You can toss/turn/mix around after about 20 minutes if you like.

I am able to eat like two pounds of cauliflower at once like this. I have to restrain myself so that a week’s worth of cauliflower lasts the whole week. In case you are wondering, purple cauliflower keeps its color after roasting, orange cauliflower fades. Both taste like the regular white kind. (I always expect orange cauliflower to taste like cheddar popcorn. I am always disappointed when it doesn’t.) Blue roasted cauliflower is awesome in its strangeness straight out of the oven; it’s a little off-putting in those third-day leftovers.

Advanced cauliflower: mix it into an omelette or frittata. Blue cauliflower will keep its color even then.

N.B.: You can cook broccoli the same way. It is also fantastically addictive. Both roasted lil trees are also very tasty cold or room temp, for all you office workers and grad students and itinerants out there.

BUTTERNUT SQUASH
If we’re not afraid of cauliflower in bacon fat, can we also be brave enough for butternut squash cooked in cream? Butternut squash is intimidating in many ways, let us comfort ourselves with some warm milkfat, yeah?

Butternut squash intimidates because it’s a pain and a half to cut up. You can buy it diced in the supermarket, sure. But that is not the point! The point, the whole point, of butternut squash is to buy it in November and leave it on your kitchen table and forget about it for three months until there are no vegetables in season, and you get to say, sayonara, supermarket, I got a seasonal vegetable right here!

I do this with butternut squashes from my mom’s garden. She gives them to me in July, and I save them for when I’m desperate. Also I’m pretty sure the marks on one are from some woodland creature that had tried to gnaw its way in. And this is part of why the butternut squash languishes until desperation strikes. If that beaver couldn’t gnaw into the squash, what chance does my knife have?

Well, it’s easier, at least, than the coconut I once impulse-bought at the supermarket. I tried a hammer. I tried a hammer and a screwdriver. I took the thing out to my building’s courtyard and bashed it against the concrete (admittedly gingerly, lest my Dominican neighbors hear and laugh at the white girl’s travails). Eventually my boyfriend broke the coconut open. Butternut squash is easier than that.

You just need a big sharp knife, a steady hand, a cutting board that DOES NOT SLIP AROUND ON YOUR COUNTER, and a little patience. Have at it!

This is where the cream comes in. And sage. The sage will come from the supermarket. The cream will taste better if it comes from a local dairy at the farmers market. I’m sorry, this is not snobbery, it is just true. But cream is delicious no matter what, because, come on, it’s cream! And this is heavy cream. None of that half-and-half stuff, and, seriously, none of this weirdo fat-free creamer. Heavy cream is milkfat, which, bonus, means it will not bother you (we) lactose intolerants. All fat means no sugar and lactose is sugar! And fat doesn’t make you fat, etc etc, we can talk about this later if you want.

I follow this recipe. Don’t let the title fool you — parmesan cheese is just an accent here. It is all about the cream. And sage. This is like butternut squash ravioli, minus the pasta nonsense.

For brownie points: save and rinse the seeds; roast in salt and a little oil in your toaster oven.

KALE
Kale and Brussels sprouts (and broccoli, and cabbage too) are all in the same family, they’re all cruciferous vegetables (family: Brassicaceae). These guys are full of vitamins (C, K, et. al.) and buckets of anti-cancer compounds. Thank you, science.

And I don’t know the science behind this part of it, but these Brassicaceaes taste awesome with three things: high heat, oil and salt. That’s it. That’s all those Brussels sprouts needed, that’s what you’re doing roasting cauliflower (or broccoli), and that’s how you turn kale from vegan health food to oh man that’s delicious. This is like that book Jerry Seinfeld’s wife wrote a few years ago about tricking your kids into eating vegetables, except instead of stirring a tablespoon of sweet potato puree into brownie mix, we’re transforming green vegetables into delicacies with the simple application of salt and high heat.

Tear up some kale leaves to the large side of bite-size. Discard the stems. (Into your compost collection, obvs.) Rinse them and, with a salad spinner or other piece of ingenuity, get them pretty dry. Heat oil in a hot skillet. Add the kale, sprinkle some salt. Toss as it cooks. Let some bits get almost burnt-looking. Taste as you go, until it’s as done as you like. (Get to know your vegetables!)

Varsity kale: tear up a leaf, sans stem, and add that to a fruit smoothie. You know — milk (soy, cow, coconut, what have you), berries, banana, yogurt. Whatever. And that handful of torn kale? It will turn the smoothie green. This will be weird, but you will not be able to taste the kale. (If you have sweet fruit in there, go ahead and add a quarter — a half! — of an avocado. And laugh, because who know eating vegetables could be like this!)

APPLES
Not a vegetable, yes, I know, but oh so tasty! (I guess butternut squash are technically a fruit as well, carrying their seeds, as they do, inside them.) Do like my mom did and get to know some weird little apples. Supermarket Red Deliciouses have always made my mouth feel tight and dry. And what conformity in the supermarket fruit aisle: Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith. Ew ew ew. Go see some of the crazy stuff that farmers are bringing you from upstate or whichever direction the farms are from your particular city. They also have amazing names: Macoun, Gala, Lady, sure, but also Ashmead’s Kernel, Black Gilliflower, and, my apple of the year, Stayman Winesap. And pears! Have a Bartlett and think of “The West Wing.” Have an Anjou and think of Elizabeth — “I am Anjou!” Or maybe we don’t have all the same sorts of media associations. I’m sure you will find some of your own.

There is a lot you can do with a few apples, other than eat them raw. (Eventually you might get bored of that, or maybe sometimes it gives you a weird stomach che. Or you might just want to feel fancy.) Baked apples, apple crumble, apple pie (there are a billion recipes, but I swear by this crust), applesauce. Apple butter, if you have a food mill. I bet your grandma does, and I bet she will let you borrow it.

This Thanksgivng I made a Honeycrisp Apple Crisp. If you have ideas for other weakly clever, not-really-even-pun names for desserts, please let me know.

***

I was a vegetarian for thirteen years. For the first chunk of being a vegetarian I was also a teenager, and I ate things like chik’n patties on hamburger rolls with mayonnaise, and that was a meal. Weirdly, getting to know and love vegetables may have been the beginning of the end of the meatlessness. Learning to cook vegetables was learning to cook was learning to love cooking was learning to love vegetables. It all kind of happened together. There are bajillions of awesome things at the farmers market, but after a few years they’d all become familiar. I got bored. I wanted more new things to cook, and that’s a big part of why I made my way back to meat.

Demographically, odds are that you, reading this, eat meat. So think about all these vegetables you could get to know. They’re really friendly, and they’re around for a little while longer, still, too.

Jaime Green is going to make a steak now, the way Alex Balk said to.

Photos by, from top: Chris Martin, JMacPherson, Clay Irving, Jeremy Keith and SummerTomato.

It gets a little Burning Man/ravey there at the end, but this trailer for something called Timescapes is certainly more enjoyable to look at than what is currently going on outdoors, which is what meteorologists refer to as “relentless, soul-crushing gloom.” Enjoy. (The video, that is, not the current weather, because, good lord, if you ever want an accurate representation of how the majority of your consciousness actually feels it is right outside your window.)

by Michael Tracey

New York City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez had arrived on short notice to observe the sudden raid of Zuccotti Park on November 14th. But witnessing the removal of Occupy Wall Street’s original encampment proved impossible. Instead, officers forced Rodriguez to the ground, cutting his face; “a senior NYPD official with whom he has worked in the past was nearby,” the Village Voice reported.

At least ten journalists trying to cover that day’s events were arrested. Freelancers and people attempting to shoot video were threatened. Officers in riot gear hit demonstrators with batons, barring anyone from even approaching the park. Later, the New York Times general counsel wrote a stinging letter of complaint to the NYPD, co-signed by the Associated Press, local network television stations, and even the New York Post, which had openly mocked Occupy Wall Street from the beginning.

The NYPD’s aggressive, ad hoc approach to counteracting Occupy-related activities has attracted considerable attention since the demonstrations began. This has reanimated debate over the department’s day-to-day tactics away from Lower Manhattan. For some who have been harassed or arrested by police around Wall Street, the past few months have been their first personal experience treading the system at its least friendly — from rough arrests to being held overly long without arraignment. For some others, navigating the NYPD’s presence has long been a basic survival skill. The only thing that’s changed now? Demonstrators from privileged backgrounds are also getting a taste of the truncheon.

“That’s a good thing,” said Malik Rhasaan, co-founder of Occupy The Hood. “To be in the shoes of others. So you can see — ‘Wow, this is really going on. They maced a white girl out here, who did nothing.’ But that happens in my neighborhood all the time.” Founded in September as one of many OWS offshoot groups, Occupy The Hood’s aim was to enfranchise black and Hispanic communities within the broader Occupy movement. Early on, Rhasaan volunteered himself as a sort of emissary between Zuccotti Park and less glitzy areas of New York, where the reality of a “police accountability problem” goes almost without saying.

Born and raised in South Jamaica, Queens, the son of a former NYPD officer, Rhasaan has helped to facilitate the emergence of Occupy the Hood groups around the country — Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit — and translated the meaning of police-related grievances between culturally dissimilar groups. “I think we’re all like, ‘Now you see,’” he said.

Chief among activists’ concerns is the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” policy, which empowers officers to proactively detain people on the street at will. They are then encouraged to cite any number of vague pretexts — with “furtive movements” being a popular choice — as justification for a stop. The NYPD is projected to make 700,000 detentions city-wide in 2011. In 2002, only 73,000 were recorded. This spring, a WNYC investigation revealed that a large portion of stops were yielding arrests for petty marijuana possession, in violation of New York State law. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was compelled to issue a directive, ordering that officers cease apprehending people who commit no infraction other than producing the drug after police instruct them to empty their pockets.

In some neighborhoods designated as “high crime” — which excludes Wall Street — “stop-and-frisk” has become the NYPD’s primary policing tactic. Consequentially, attitudes toward law enforcement are almost universally disdainful.

And system-wide police strategy becomes indistinguishable from individual misconduct. “My question is,” Councilman Jumaane Williams of Brooklyn said to me, invoking the popular cliched defense of police wrongdoing, “how many ‘bad apples’ does it take to make a bushel?”

Williams has also been roughed up by the NYPD, but earlier this year, at the Haitian West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn. On their way to a function for city officials, one senior officer granted Williams and a colleague permission to enter a restricted area. Moments later, despite their repeated attempts to identify themselves, another group of officers wrestled both men to the ground and placed them in handcuffs. Police soon claimed — without merit, as it would later turn out — that an officer was punched during the episode. Williams said this was a “bald-faced lie.” The NYPD’s Internal Affairs bureau later sanctioned a captain, Charles Girvan, for his role in the altercation.

On November 3rd, Williams convened a press conference at One Police Plaza with State Senator Eric Adams and Assemblyman Hakeem Jefferies. The three warned of “a police culture that is being allowed to fester and grow,” Williams said. Senator Adams, himself a former police officer, called on the Justice Department to intervene and launch a federal probe.

“The NYPD is not accountable to anyone,” Williams told me. “That’s a very dangerous thing.”

In and around Zuccotti Park, demonstrators have become almost inured to arbitrary police intervention. People have been arrested for wearing bandannas, for using sidewalk chalk, and for standing in areas that can be deemed restricted at officers’ discretion. An NYPD panopticon unit still looms over the park, even post-eviction, surveilling occupants 24/7. But however disconcerting or over-reaching the NYPD’s tactics might be, they’re not even in the same realm as what goes on everyday in Harlem, Brownsville or Jamaica.

“The police in minority communities are accustomed to stopping anybody they want to stop,” said Ron Kuby, a civil rights attorney who has followed the NYPD closely for years. He’s now representing one of the women who was pepper-sprayed by Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna in September during an OWS march to Union Square. “I know young people who have committed no crimes, who have done nothing wrong, who have been stopped five, ten, twenty times — before they get out of high school,” Kuby said. “That’s a regular occurrence for young men of color. And the police do it with impunity.”

* * *

So all this came together when, on October 22nd, a group affiliated with OWS set out specifically to protest the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” policy by way of nonviolent direct action. Around 150 people gathered in the center of Harlem for the first of its events. Things proceeded with a familiar Occupy feel — a General Assembly-type gathering, hand motions and “mic checks” all included. John Hector, a 25-year-old Navy veteran, addressed the group, telling of when he was subjected to “stop-and-frisk” after returning from Iraq.

“He decided he was going to be funny,” Hector said of the officer who had stopped him one night, “and asked us if we knew how to do the ‘chicken noodle soup.’ He asked us to dance for him. He said that was the only way we were going to be let go. It was humiliating, embarrassing, and I hate being represented like that in front of my community.”

Hector later marched with students, clergy, and criminal justice professors to Harlem’s 51st police precinct building, passing the iconic Apollo theater en route. “Bring back the Fourth Amendment,” one marcher’s sign simply read. Hector, who had no previous criminal record, was arrested when he and 35 others attempted to block the precinct building’s front entrance.

Richard Brown, another Harlem native who addressed the crowd that day, told me of his own experience with “stop-and-frisk.” As he walked home one morning in 2009 from his construction job, a plainclothes sergeant approached him in the street. Without warning, Brown said, the sergeant punched him in the throat, and within seconds he was on the ground. “I fit the characteristics of somebody else,” Brown said. “After they beat me down and realized I was the wrong person, they had to pursue the case.”

So when Brown arrived at the station, he said, “heroin magically appeared.” That, naturally, landed him at Rikers Island for 20 days. A judge eventually dismissed the charges and reprimanded the presiding officer, but Brown’s life was turned upside down. He’s now in the process of suing the city. “Ever since my case, I’m more aware of what’s going on with the police department,” Brown said. “I’m actually scared of them. I got beat up, man. I was bleeding. They wouldn’t take me to a hospital.”

* * *

Joanne Naughton, a former NYPD narcotics detective, told an audience at the New York City Students for Liberty Conference in October that the practice of planting drugs on suspects was not something she regularly observed over her 20-year tenure. “But when you have unenforceable laws,” she said, “it doesn’t surprise me.”

“Officers may do a frisk only if they have additional reasonable suspicion to believe a suspect is armed,” Naughton told me after the speech. “Not carrying drugs, but armed with a gun. I’m sure they don’t have reasonable suspicion to believe that everybody they stop — hundreds of thousands a year — is carrying a gun.”

“So these stops are illegal, unconstitutional, and in violation of New York State Law,” she said. “But the mayor likes it. It looks good, it looks muscular. It looks tough.”

The OWS-affiliated group’s next action was held in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The Times found that between January 2006 and March 2010, the NYPD carried out nearly 52,000 stops in a single neighborhood there — an area of just eight city blocks. Fewer than one percent of those stops yielded arrests.

Among those addressing the Brownsville rally was Gbenga Akinnagbe, the actor who portrayed Chris Partlow on “The Wire.” “We have to remember,” Akinnagbe told me as the group marched from the Marcus Garvey Housing Projects to the 73rd NYPD precinct building, several blocks away, “The police are doing exactly what they’re trained to do. So you have to go to the source.”

“It’s funny, people get angry at the police, but they’re just fingers to the problem,” he said. “They’re just symptoms. You saw down on Wall Street, when those kids got sprayed with mace? That shit was mild,” he said. “This happens here every day. Literally, every day.”

I lost track of Akinnagbe when we arrived at the precinct building; disparate crowds formed as those willing to risk arrest separated themselves out. Demonstrators again attempted to peacefully block the building’s entrance, as they had in Harlem. Police started taking people into custody. Then I saw Akinnagbe. He was handcuffed, and he smiled as officers loaded him into an NYPD wagon.

The “stop-and-frisk” group’s third action took place in Jamaica, Queens, hometown of Rhasaan, the Occupy The Hood co-founder. “I was raised here, I have children here, I live here today,” he told the crowd gathered outside King Park. “I’ve also been beaten here, stopped here, and frisked here. I have friends who died at the hands of the police here.”

“This doesn’t have to stop now,” he said. “It has to stop right now.”

With Rhasaan at the head, a multiracial and multigenerational crowd of more than 100 people marched through Jamaica, headed in the direction of another NYPD precinct building — this time the 103rd. In 2006, undercover police based there shot fifty bullets at 23-year-old Sean Bell and two friends, killing him on the eve of his wedding. The officers responsible were acquitted, and five years later, the surrounding community still reels; chants invoking Bell’s death broke out intermittently along the march.

As we passed throngs of pedestrians going about their Saturday afternoon routines, some were initially confused at the sight of white people marching alongside blacks and Hispanics through the heart of Jamaica. But when they heard demonstrators talking about “stop-and-frisk,” about Sean Bell, about abuse at the hands of the NYPD, it didn’t take long for something to click. “Damn, I can get behind that!” one onlooker said. He pocketed a “stop stop-and-frisk” leaflet, after showing it to a friend.

The man’s sentiment — instinctive hostility to the police — seemed utterly ubiquitous. Everyone in these parts of the city has a story involving an abrasive officer and a cousin, or a neighbor, or themselves. This typically breeds cynicism and disillusionment — and from time to time, the anger and mistrust gets politicized. Recently, more have come to recognize that police abuse is not just some minor nuisance, but a critical component of a legal and political system that routinely degrades the dignity of citizens who happen to live in blighted urban areas.

About halfway through the march, Rhasaan told the crowd to pause, and we did. He wanted us to look around, to really understand where we were standing at that moment. “I am your tour guide,” Rhasaan said. “And this the hood.”

* * *

Last Friday brought another meeting of Occupy Wall Street’s Spokes Council, the “governing body” that grew from the General Assembly in Zuccotti Park. (Working groups like Housing, Direct Action and Sanitation select a “spoke” to attend, and they deliberate proposals among the entire group.) “Stop Stop-and-Frisk” was as permanent a participant in the Spokes Council as, for example, Sustainability or Outreach, and the representative that night happened to be a white woman. Rhasaan was also there with the People of Color subgroup. “Stop Stop-and-Frisk” reported that its student-led march earlier that afternoon through Wall Street and some housing projects on the Lower East Side had been a success.

This relatively small group — bolstered by Occupy Wall Street at large — is having a big impact. That matters, because when politicians are asked to comment on police misconduct, of course, the platitude they most often trot out is some variation of the classic “just a few bad apples” rationalization. Wrong-doing committed by a small minority of individuals, the logic goes, ought not to tarnish an entire department’s good name. In recent weeks, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has demonstrated a particular fondness for this line of reasoning. But when an official department policy is at question, the “few bad apples” argument becomes manifestly incoherent.

The NYPD will undoubtedly set their record for stop-and-frisks in 2011. Couple that with the department-wide ticket-fixing scandal, its unprecedented harassment and arrests of journalists, internal allegations of sexual violence by female officers, interstate gun smuggling rings, straight-up racism — and, oh yes, that nighttime paramilitary-style raid on the symbolic center of a worldwide political movement, now formally requested to be the subject of a Department of Justice investigation — and you have a police situation in New York City that has gone awry system-wide. “Stop-and-frisk” embodies the NYPD’s methods of daily policing; “Stop Stop-and-Frisk” is the only appropriate response.

Michael Tracey writes for myriad publications, typically on matters of spiritual significance. Photo by Shira Golding.

Tamagotchis are fifteen years old. Do with that information what you will.

It’s a Christmas miracle! Or, you know, a holiday miracle. It’s some kind of miracle, anyhow. I mean, I guess.

“A joint study by researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Georgia in the US found evidence that self belief was important for a woman’s performance in spatial tasks which might naturally favour men. It suggested that confidence-knocking jokes were likely to reduce a woman’s performance behind the wheel while they performed better when it was boosted, the study suggested.” This article helpfully includes a list of sexist jokes that you can use to reduce the confidence of the women in your life.

My Three-Month Facebook Dialogue With A Scammer From Malaysia Pretending To Be A Beautiful Woman

by Teddy Wayne

During Hurricane Irene weekend, while holed up in a friend’s apartment and looking for some stimulation, I got friend-requested and emailed by an obvious scammer on Facebook. The con artist, under the name “Claire Anrie,” used a few professional photos of an attractive young woman (whom I later reverse-image-searched and discovered was a personal trainer in New York) and a typo- and contradiction-filled profile.

“Claire” quickly asked me to send her money by Western Union so she could come back to the U.S. and be with me, her “husband.” Over the next three months, I kept up an ongoing dialogue via Facebook messages and chat in which I continually found ways to irk her by screwing up the Western Union payment, demanding she send me more photos and de-friend the other men on Facebook she’d added in hopes of scamming them, claiming I’d lost all my money during Irene, and repeatedly confiding in her that I had chronic diarrhea and hoped she would still love me.

Our exchange (minus a few superfluous messages) is presented verbatim below, with original grammar and spelling errors intact.

AUGUST 27

Claire Anrie: Hey, Andrie is my name, I am new to this whole online thing, please bear with mm. I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that I am interested in getting to know more about you. I guarantee that I am a nice lady and know how to treat a man… I have a degree in Accounting and minor in Art. you seems to be a very down to earth man and I really admire that! .I guess I will leave you with this for now. I hope your day went well and I hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for reading this! I practically wrote you a book! Hehe! .

the only way you can get back to me is to write to me via my personal email address which is:

[MISSPELLED MALE NAME PLUS FEMALE NAME] at yahoo dot com

Teddy Wayne: Great! Do you need any other personal information from me? My phone number, address, anything like that?

Claire Anrie: do you have yahoo im so we can talk better

Teddy Wayne: I don’t! I have an IM on my bank account but I would need to give you my bank account number and password. Do you want it?

Claire Anrie: where are you from? what do you do for a living and who do you live with?

Teddy Wayne: I am from New York City. I made a lot of money in banking and retired at age 30, and now I give my money away to charities and to friends and loved ones. I live on my own and am looking for someone to share my life with. How about you?

Claire Anrie:– am single
 — i sell art sriptures
 — and gold

Teddy Wayne: Where do you live?

Claire Anrie: florida
(Note: Her profile lists her as living in “Sacramento, California.”)

Teddy Wayne: Which part?

Claire Anrie: am i was tinking of relocating to texas
where i was born
(Her profile lists her birthplace as Miami.)

Teddy Wayne: Come to New York! We have many restaurants, discotheques, nightclubs.

Claire Anrie: can you accommodate me?

Teddy Wayne: Of course!

Claire Anrie: do you think is proper fro you to do that

Teddy Wayne: Why not? We have known each other only a short time, but I feel I already know you well in some ways.

Claire Anrie: — am so much in love with you
 — am cool
 — i like a guy who knows how to treat a lady

Teddy Wayne: I would buy you concert tickets, stereo, red dress.

Claire Anrie: can you do me a favor

Teddy Wayne: I will do anything for you. What is it?

Claire Anrie: can you please loan me some money?

Teddy Wayne: Absolutely. How much?

Claire Anrie: 300dollars

Teddy Wayne: Sure! How do we do this?

Claire Anrie: i promise to pay you back

Teddy Wayne: I know, baby.

Claire Anrie: go to western union office and send it ok

Teddy Wayne: OK! What is Western Union?

Claire Anrie: do you want to tell me you dont know any thing about western union

Teddy Wayne: — I usually just give my friends cash when I see them or I mail it to them. Why don’t we just do that?
 — Also Western Union is probably closed today because of the hurricane, silly.
 — But I can go on Monday when it reopens. OK?

and i will always be there for you my love. honey when are you sending me the money i asked you?

Claire Anrie: — am uae now i will be coming to the state by the next 34hours now
 — now and i will cash the money and make se of it and refund it when i get bakt to the state

Teddy Wayne: Yes, I will send it. Who do I send it to? Do I just give them your name or an address?

Claire Anrie: name olson david [Gives address in Malaysia]

Teddy Wayne: It sounds like you are traveling and might need more funds. I decided to send $2,000 in case you needed extra.

At this point, I decided to start testing “Claire” to see if she had access to more pictures, and make her work a little harder for her money.

Teddy Wayne: Can you send me another picture of your beautiful face while the Western Union delivery gets finalized, baby?

Claire Anrie: my pictures are not on mobile i will send them to you asap

Teddy Wayne: OK! I sent it. The name it is under is Larry David. Can you send me a picture now?

Claire Anrie: — where you not giving mtcn
 — i will be so glad to here from you now because i don’t want to stress you anymore
Teddy Wayne: — Yes, I sent the money
 — I am so excited to see you when you come to New York

Claire Anrie: were you not giving mtcn at the western union office

Now I wanted to see how strong Claire’s love was for me. Would she stick with me through an embarrassing bout of gastrointestinal illness?

Teddy Wayne: Sorry, I had an attack of diarrhea before. The MTCN is [fake number].

AUGUST 28

Claire Anrie: it does not work…western union does not match it

Teddy Wayne: Sorry, one of the numbers was off — my mistake. However, I have just lost my house in Hurricane Irene, and it will cost several million dollars for repairs. Do you need the money very badly right now? I would like to save as much as possible for the repairs.

Claire insisted she needed the money very badly. I promised I’d send it as soon as she sent more pictures. She posted additional photos of the personal trainer on Facebook, but I asked for even more, thinking she had exhausted her supply. I also told her I had only $300 left after the hurricane. She asked me to resend the money to the same Malaysian name and address — she claimed she had “ranted an apartment” from David Olson. It was time to ramp up my supposed illness.

Teddy Wayne: i am afraid you will stop loving me once you have to live with my chronic diarrhea. please tell me you will not let it get in the way of our love.

Claire Anrie: i wont i promise you my love

Teddy Wayne: thank you. it has gotten worse with the stress from the hurricane but i am only having “episodes” 12 or 13 times a day now.
 — but enough about me. how are YOU?

Claire Anrie: 24 and you?

Teddy Wayne: 32. i have had the chronic diarrhea since i was 24, though, so we have something in common!

Claire Anrie: what we have in common is love

Teddy Wayne: yes. love, and your age being the age when i developed chronic diarrhea.

Claire Anrie: — and i will always be there for you my love
 — honey when are you sending me the money i asked you?

Teddy Wayne: — i cannot wait. the happiness i receive will overpower this episode of diarrhea i am currently undergoing.
 — i have sent it already and will give you the MTCN when i see the pics and know that your love for me is true

Claire Anrie: dont let it lost the wa you did the last one you sent

Teddy Wayne: — i won’t this time
 — do you need some more money? is that enough?

Claire Anrie: that is okay for me

Teddy Wayne: no, you have been so nice about not leaving me because of my chronic diarrhea, i am going to add another $1,000 to it, ok?

Claire Anrie: honey you are killing me with this

Teddy Wayne: — with what?
 — the diarrhea? i thought you didn’t care about it?

Claire Anrie: the money

Teddy Wayne: you are worth it, baby. where are you now?

Claire Anrie: am still in malaysia and you my husband?

Teddy Wayne: still in NYC. my diarrhea clinic is here so i pretty much have to stay here.

Claire Anrie: am sending the pictures now

Teddy Wayne: great! i was about to run to the toilet but will wait for these because i am so excited.

Claire Anrie: ok

Teddy Wayne: i hope you are not sending pics to the other men you are friends with on facebook, my wife.

Claire Anrie: know i am not the type my love

Teddy Wayne: — will you take them off as your friends then, my love? i cannot bear the thought of other men talking with you
 — or even seeing your pictures up here

Claire Anrie: do you mean you are not giving me any money if you dont see my new pics?

Teddy Wayne: i have to go to my diarrhea doctor’s appointment now, but i will be back later and hope the pictures are waiting for me and that you are no longer friends with these men. goodbye for now, my wife…

Claire Anrie: that show you dont love me as you always says

She quickly sent new photos, but didn’t de-friend the other men. I told her I would send the Western Union details once she did.

SEPTEMBER 12

Claire Anrie: They all wanted to be just friends that all but you are special i can never cheat on you my husband..

Teddy Wayne: It makes me jealous, my wife. I will give you the MTCN when you are fully mine, my love… only you understand me completely, and don’t care about my chronic diarrhea. For that I will always love you.

She de-friended the men, and I sent her another fake MTCN, and later said I may have made yet another mistake on it.

SEPTEMBER 15

Claire Anrie: honey why are you acting this way i can find the money

Teddy Wayne: you said “i can find the money.” so you did indeed find it? great! i hope it’s enough for you. tell me what you’re spending it on! I would’ve spent it on diarrhea medication because I have so much diarrhea! I hope you spent it on something nice, too!

SEPTEMBER 17–19

Claire Anrie: Stop fooling me i found nothing there if you know is hard for you to help me out you could have let me know than fooling me i gave you my heart my soul my everything why treating me like this?

Teddy Wayne: Baby, when you write like that you exacerbate my chronic diarrhea. The money IS there — I told you, it’s under a different MTCN. Do you want the new MTCN?

Claire Anrie: Just tell if you don’t have money to give me than wasting my time

Teddy Wayne: Baby, something scary happened. When I went to Western Union to send the money, they told me they are getting a lot of scams lately, and they said they were working with police in Malaysia to capture a man named David Olson. They asked me if I wanted to send the police after him. I said no, I have only been emailing with my one true love. Please tell me there is no problem with David Olson so that I can tell the police not to go after him! This is making my diarrhea a million times worse from the stress (stress-induced diarrhea)!

Baby, something scary happened. When I went to Western Union to send the money, they told me they are getting a lot of scams lately, and they said they were working with police in Malaysia to capture a man named David Olson.

SEPTEMBER 22

Claire Anrie: Nothing is wrong with him. like i told you he just helping me out…why are you doing this to me despite the promises you have made to me why not furfull it is unfair

Teddy Wayne: The police are so scary and it makes my diarrhea, which as you know is chronic, worse. Western Union won’t let me send to David Olson so I need another name. P.S. My diarrhea has gone down to only eight episodes per day! Maybe by the time you get here I can knock it down to five or six?!

SEPTEMBER 22

Claire Anrie: Why can’t you try money order if western union does not allow you to send the money to me via them do it now cos i can’t wait to see you

Teddy Wayne: Because now they know I was trying to send to David Olson before so they won’t let me send just a regular order. I need another name to give them. Why can’t I send it to Claire Anrie? All these problems give me DIARRHEA!!!

Claire provided me with a different name to send the money to in Malaysia.

SEPTEMBER 30

Claire Anrie: honey please don’t hurt me this time cos i need to get some things done with the money you are sending to me…i love you so much my dear

Teddy Wayne: My love, why are you now friends with men named Brad and Kevin and Cici? You are not cheating on me with them, are you? If not, why do you need to be friends with them? I love you and don’t want jealousy to make me have more chronic diarrhea…

Claire Anrie: We were just friends…have you sent the money

Teddy Wayne: De-friend them and I will give you the new MTCN! I am so excited to see you, my love! My diarrhea is nearly gone — just two episodes in the past hour!

OCTOBER 5–8

Claire Anrie: Must i de-friend them before you give me money why are you acting this way you know you are all i have please forget about them i swear i won’t let you down i promise

Teddy Wayne: I do not like the thought of my wife being friends with different men. Once you de-friend them I will give you the MTCN, my love, and my diarrhea will cease flowing like a river in winter…

Claire Anrie: Forget about the money and leave me alone please i beg you

Teddy Wayne: I can’t stop thinking about you, baby. Will you take me back if I send you the money?

Claire Anrie: I don’t want your money keep it to yourself please stay away from me you can’t give me money and you always say you love me

Teddy Wayne: I have sent the money, baby. If you want me to give you the MTCN, just say so. If not, I understand, but know that I will always love you, in part because of how you loved me despite my chronic diarrhea.

OCTOBER 10

Claire Anrie: ok let me have the mtcn numbers so i can get the money

Teddy Wayne: My Internet keeps stopping in the middle of typing, so I hope you get this full email. The MTCN is 1056

OCTOBER 12

Claire Anrie: please tell me what is really wrong with you? why are you fooling me with mtcn please stop this shit

OCTOBER 13

Teddy Wayne: So as you know, I suffer from chronic diarrhea. My medication and treatment costs me a lot of money. I have enough to either give it to you or pay for my medication this month. I don’t know what to do. I need you to help me decide. Should I give it to you, or should I pay for my chronic-diarrhea medication?

OCTOBER 17–19

Claire Anrie: divide it into two pay your bills and sort me out i just don’t want to stay in that country anymore

Teddy Wayne: Sounds great! Which country are you in, again?

Claire Anrie: an asian country called malaysia

Teddy Wayne: I have not heard of it. Is it in Europe?

I was fortunate enough to receive a Whiting Writers’ Award, which comes with a very generous $50,000 prize. I capitalized on the announcement to prove to Claire that I had money I could send to her, and sent a link to an article about the prize.

OCTOBER 27-NOVEMBER 2

Teddy Wayne: Look, baby — I won $50,000! Aren’t you proud of me?!

Claire Anrie: i am so happy for you but honey what matters most is how to get me out of here honey

Teddy Wayne: I can transfer the entire $50,000 to you immediately. Should we do that? I can’t wait to see you and hope that our uniting alleviates my chronic diarrhea!

Claire Anrie: — Just get me out of here that is all i want you to do for me my husband.
 — Just get me out of here that is all i want you to do for me my husband.

Teddy Wayne: My wife, why did you send that last message twice? Did you mean for the second one to negate the first, so that you really DON’T want me to get you out of there? I don’t understand!!!

Claire Anrie: how much do you have with you now so i can ask my friend to add to it and pay her back when i get to the state

Teddy Wayne: I have $50,001. I made another dollar yesterday.

Claire continued to ask for the MTCN, and I continued to claim I’d sent it, until I finally called her on her bluff, linking to the Facebook page of the personal trainer whose photos she used — but feigned continued ignorance.

NOVEMBER 22

Teddy Wayne: My wife, look what I found: more pictures of you! You go by a different name here. Why don’t you use this name instead of Claire Anrie? And it says you are already in New York. I can’t wait to meet you! Do you want to meet for coffee tomorrow?

NOVEMBER 28

Claire Anrie: an not the one who is using those pictures of mine you said you saw

Claire Anrie: honey how are you doing?

Teddy Wayne: — hi honey!
 — how are you doing? that’s what Joey says from “Friends”!

Claire Anrie: lol not me honey

Teddy Wayne: lol! what are we laughing about? and who used those pictures of that girl who looks like you?

Claire Anrie: i swear honey not me

Teddy Wayne: but who is she? why does she have all these pictures of you? is she pretending to be you?

Claire Anrie: — yes honey
 — have i ever lied to you my husband?

Teddy Wayne: no, you have never not lied to me, honey. we should tell Facebook about this — it is a very serious crime to impersonate someone else. we should send her to jail!

Claire Anrie: can you do that my love?

Teddy Wayne: easily. we just tell them someone is pretending to be my wife, and they will track where she is writing from and send the police to find her. it is very easy. the penalty is 10–25 years in jail for cyber-crimes. this will be so fun! should I do it?

Claire Anrie: — ok honey
 — when are you intending to do that for me my heart

Teddy Wayne: OK, I have sent the alert, and they immediately replied that they are investigating the issue. I am so glad you were telling me the truth, my wife, and that we are catching the guilty person who is pretending to be you.

Claire Anrie: ok my love

Teddy Wayne: Look, my left ventricle, she is also using your photos here: [Link to non-Facebook site with the woman’s pictures]

Claire Anrie: honey please am sick and tired of all this

Teddy Wayne: — I know, I am very upset, too. She used them here as well: [another link]
 — Isn’t this awful that she would do this in so many places?
 — What should we do, my aorta?

Claire Anrie: — you know what matters most my dear
 — once you have me on your mind

Teddy Wayne: You mean fears of my chronic diarrhea ruining everything? Or our love, eternal as the universe, vast as the ocean, gentle as a mountaintop spring breeze? Or, again, my chronic diarrhea?

Claire Anrie: honey how do you want me to please you?

Teddy Wayne: Help me put in jail this woman who is pretending to be you! Can you believe people like that exist? She is probably doing it to get money, I bet. I am so glad you would never do that, my loving heart wife human female. Diarrhea.

Claire Anrie: — i will chat with you later honey
 — talk to you later my heart desire

Teddy Wayne: Did you get the money? I sent it last week.

Claire Anrie: i swear my love i cant find the money you have been sending to me my husband

Teddy Wayne: You know what happened? I thought this other woman was a name you went by, so I sent it to her name. Do you think you can get it since it’s under her name?

I have not heard from Claire — my wife, my heart, my love — since, and when I checked recently, she had closed her Facebook account.

Teddy Wayne is the author of the novel Kapitoil and the winner of a 2011 Whiting Writers’ Award.

Photo by AXL, via Shutterstock.