04 June 23
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It’s fascinating to come back home and observe the tides of change. Rural Minnesota is still Lake Wobegon except more fiercely so, more defensive, as they watch Democratic socialists take over Minneapolis, which Republicans call “woke” and dismiss out of hand, but it’s the young overthrowing the old, and there’s a sort of inevitability about it.
They take a dim view of corporate interests just as I did when I was their age, back when I was broke and IRA to me meant “Irish Republican Army.” I was a writer and dressed like a revolutionary though I was, and still am, a confirmed coward, but then people bought my books and I was shoved into the middle class. So here I am.
On Memorial Day, some relatives and I went up to the country graveyard north of Anoka where my dad’s family is buried, his parents James and Dora, the seven siblings and their spouses, and some young ones, tragic deaths, Alec and Shannon, and we put flowers on some graves and then went to Susie’s for rhubarb pie. Rhubarb pie is not found in Manhattan that I’m aware of and it was a staple in the Keillor family, a sour weed stalk sweetened by strawberries, a delicacy known to rural people of limited means.
They were devout gardeners who loved the Lord and studied the Bible and knew something about hard times and I was lucky to know them. I spent time in homes with outhouses where cooking was done on a woodstove and you took a bath in a tin tub of hot water on the kitchen floor. A glimpse of the 19th century.
I don’t need Memorial Day to remind me of my ancestors, I think of them all the time because there were storytellers in the family who loved to visit and talk about their great-grandfather who went to Colorado for the silver rush, a farmer with the urge to keep moving, a self-contradiction, and of his father-in-law, a British seaman who jumped ship and escaped hanging, and how James Keillor, a skilled carpenter left New Brunswick to help his sister Mary whose husband died of TB and took over the farm and raised her kids and then married Dora, the schoolteacher in the school across the road.
I was a boy when I heard the stories and they stick with me. Uncle Lew and Aunt Ruth sat in our living room and talked and talked and I lay on the floor and hung on every word. They were circumspect and much was not mentioned — their cousin Berniece Keillor is in the cemetery, dead from a botched abortion, and there were some hasty marriages in which the woman was already pregnant. And I’m sure there’s more. As my mother, in her 90s, once said to me, “There’s so much I’d still like to know and there’s nobody left to ask.”
It has nothing to do with pride, everything to do with sympathy and feeling our common humanity. They endured, they prayed for their children, they enjoyed their piece of pie. Grandpa James bought the first Model T in Ramsey township, drove it home and turned in at the yard and forgot what he was dealing with, and he pulled back hard on the wheel and shouted “Whoa!” and the car went in the ditch and he had to hitch up his horses and pull himself out. He was laughing when the car went into the ditch and he was laughing as he towed it out. Aunt Ruth told me.
I want to imitate him. Crash and see it as a joke. Old age is just a continuous comedy. So I feel. I’ve done dumber things than you can imagine and someday if you’re nice I’ll tell you about them.
But I’m off to New York. My dad took me to see it when I was 11 and I loved it then and it’s still pretty magnificent. Every day there’s a good chance you’ll see something that knocks your socks off. New Yorkers make a point of being cool and unimpressed: it takes a Minnesotan to show proper astonishment. So here I go, carrying an extra pair of socks.
From Moscow, former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden addresses a technology conference in Portugal in 2019. Snowden fled the U.S. in 2013 and revealed highly classified U.S. surveillance programs. He's been living in Russia for the past decade, and received Russian citizenship last year. (photo: Armando Franca/AP)
But as a contractor for the National Security Agency, working at an underground facility in Hawaii in 2013, he witnessed the mass collection of electronic data on American citizens, and he thought it was wrong.
"We had stopped watching specific terrorists, and we had started watching everyone just in case they became a terrorist. And this was not something that affected just people far away in places like Indonesia. This is affecting Americans," Snowden said in a 2019 interview with NPR from Moscow, where's he's been living for the past 10 years.
A decade ago, many Americans were still exploring the technological wonders of cellphones and other electronic devices. Few were thinking about how governments or private companies could monitor citizens on the devices.
Then came Snowden's revelations.
Snowden copied files of the NSA's top-secret surveillance programs and fled the U.S., sharing the highly classified information with several Western journalists, including Barton Gellman, formerly of The Washington Post.
"I think Snowden did substantially more good than harm, even though I am prepared to accept (as he does not) that his disclosures must have exacted a price in lost intelligence," Gellman wrote in his 2020 book, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State.
Gellman portrays Snowden as a loner filled with zeal and a black-and-white worldview. He describes Snowden as precise and accurate most of the time, though sometimes prone to self-aggrandizement and exaggeration.
U.S. officials still describe Snowden as a 'traitor'
Meanwhile, many in the national security community, then and now, regard Snowden as a traitor. Most all say he should return to the U.S. and face the criminal charges against him.
"He's clearly an individual who betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. This is not an individual who is acting, in my opinion, with noble intent," said Keith Alexander, the NSA director when Snowden leaked the files.
"What Snowden has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies," Alexander told ABC shortly after the breach.
When Snowden felt he was about to be detained in Hong Kong, he flew to Russia. His final destination was Ecuador, but the U.S. government canceled his passport and charged him with violating the Espionage Act.
Those charges still stand, and Snowden's been in Russia ever since. He received citizenship there last year.
Still, Snowden provoked a fierce debate over government surveillance, personal privacy and the power and perils of technology.
New laws, and a move to encryption
"In the years that have passed, we have seen the laws changed. We have seen the programs change," Snowden said.
In 2015, Congress rewrote the law that allowed the NSA to scoop up everyone's records. The U.S.A. Freedom Act now prohibits the bulk collection of phone records by American citizens.
"The act also includes other changes to our surveillance laws, including more transparency to help build confidence among the American people that your privacy and civil liberties are being protected," President Barack Obama said shortly before signing the USA Freedom Act.
There's been another big shift as well. Many Americans now better understand how governments and private companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google collect personal data. This in turn has led to a much wider use of encryption. Snowden says 2016 marked the first year that a majority of Internet traffic was encrypted, a trend that continues.
There's no sign Snowden's case will be resolved anytime soon.
Snowden said when he landed in Moscow in 2013, he expected to have a one-day layover in Moscow.
But in his 2019 autobiography, Permanent Record, Snowden wrote: "Exile is an endless layover."
Snowden's critics often attack him for living in Russia, all the more so in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He says his attempts to move to other countries have been thwarted by the U.S. government.
"It is not my choice to be in Russia. I'm constantly criticizing the Russian government's policy, the Russian government's human rights record - even the Russian president by name," Snowden said.
From his Moscow apartment, Snowden initially gave online interviews to news outlets around the world. He's been much less visible in recent years. He's now married to American Lindsay Mills, and they have two young sons born in Russia.
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School children touring the 'Victory Museum,' which is dedicated to Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. (photo: Nanna Heitmann/NYT)
The curriculum for young Russians is increasingly emphasizing patriotism and the heroism of Moscow’s army, while demonizing the West as “gangsters.” One school features a “sniper”-themed math class.
A swim meet in the southern city of Magnitogorsk featured adolescents diving into the pool wearing camouflage uniforms, while other competitors slung model Kalashnikov rifles across their backs.
“Snipers” was the theme adopted for math classes at an elementary school in central Russia, with paper stars enumerating would-be bullet holes on a target drawn on the chalkboard.
As the war in Ukraine rolls into its 16th month, educational programs across Russia are awash in lessons and extracurricular activities built around military themes and patriotism.
These efforts are part of an expansive Kremlin campaign to militarize Russian society, to train future generations to revere the army and to further entrench President Vladimir V. Putin’s narrative that “a real war has once again been unleashed on our motherland,” as he declared in a sober address at a ceremony last month.
The drumbeat of indoctrination essentially started with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, but the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has accelerated it. The Ministry of Education and Science releases a constant stream of material, including step-by-step lesson plans and real-life examples — like a video of a student concert that used poetry, dance and theater to explain the history of Russian foreign intelligence.
“It includes all levels, from kindergarten to university,” said Daniil Ken, the head of the Alliance of Teachers, an independent Russian union, who works from voluntary exile. “They are trying to involve all these children, all students, directly in supporting the war.”
For years, Russia’s leaders sought to condition its citizens to accept Moscow’s leadership, partly by barring politics from schools. Now the Kremlin hopes to persuade the public to actively back the war effort, and when it comes to younger males, to fight.
Yet it also wants to avoid fanning too high a patriotic flame, lest it push Russians to start questioning the purpose of the war. Much the way Mr. Putin has refrained from enacting multiple conscriptions of soldiers to avert prompting antiwar sentiment, the Kremlin has left parents some leeway to avoid propaganda lessons.
In that, they may be hoping to avoid the disconnect that emerged in the Soviet era, when the education system portrayed the country as the land of Communist plenty, even as ordinary Russians could see that the shelves were bare.
“They want enthusiasm, but they realize if they push too hard it could galvanize an organized opposition,” said Alexandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist who studies public reactions to the war. “They do not want people to protest.”
Interviews over the past month with sociologists, educators, parents and students, and a review of extensive material online posted by the schools themselves and by local news outlets, show a comprehensive government effort to bolster military-patriotic content through all 40,000 public schools in Russia.
The cornerstone of the initiative is a program called “Important Conversations,” started last September. Every Monday at 8 a.m., schools are supposed to hold an assembly to raise the Russian flag while the national anthem is played, and then convene an hourlong classroom session on topics like important milestones in Russian history.
The minister of education, Sergei Kravtsov, did not respond to written questions. When the program was introduced last fall, he told the official Tass news outlet, “We want the current generation of schoolchildren to grow up in completely different traditions, proud of their homeland.” Both an official Telegram channel and a website disseminate materials for the classroom.
“Important Conversations” has been supplemented by programs with names like “Lessons in Courage” or “Heroes Among Us.” Students have been encouraged to write poetry extolling the Motherland and the feats of Russian soldiers. Myriad videos show elementary school children reciting lines like, “All the crooks are fleeing Russia; they have a place to live in the West; gangsters, sodomites.”
Lessons draw heavily on earlier conflicts, particularly the Soviet Union’s success defeating Nazi Germany. Suggestions based on that earlier time sometimes seem antiquated, like encouraging students to knit socks for the troops.
“It is very theatrical,” said Ms. Arkhipova, the social anthropologist. “It serves as a kind of proof that the entire war is the right thing to do because it mirrors World War II.”
Countless schools have been renamed to honor dead soldiers, and memorials are rife. They include a “Hero’s Desk” in classrooms that often displays the picture of an alumnus who is supposed to be honored.
Veterans are trotted into classrooms frequently to detail their experiences. In late April in Dmitrov, a small city near Moscow, three soldiers addressed a roomful of students aged 10 to 15, some waving small Russian flags. A video of the session shows one fighter talking about wanting to protect his homeland against “fascist filth.”
Overall, however, there is no monolithic propaganda machine because the decision on how to implement “Important Conversations” has largely been left to local school administrators.
Some teachers take a hard ideological approach. A video posted by the Doxa news outlet showed a teacher demanding that students pump their fists in the air while singing a popular song called, “I Am Russian.” The teacher barks: “The thrust should be to the sky, to NATO.”
Other teachers do not even mention the war, particularly in places like Moscow, where many parents disapprove of attempts to indoctrinate their children.
Yuri Lapshin, formerly the student psychologist at an elite Moscow high school, said in an interview that while researching a paper, he found examples of unique interpretations of the program. One math teacher, for example, told students that the most important conversation in the world was about algebra, so he dedicated the class to that. On a day supposedly focused on the concept of “fatherland,” a biology teacher lectured about salmon spawning in the rivers where they hatched.
Even when the war lessons occur, they sometimes fall flat. At an assembly with two fighters, students from a St. Petersburg technical college basically mocked them. They questioned why fighting in another country meant they were defending Russia, and how God might view murdering others, according to a recording of the assembly. Administrators rebuked at least five students for their questions, local reports said.
Sasha Boychenko, 17, a high school senior, attended four “Important Conversations” sessions in Vladivostok last fall before her family left Russia. Bored students laughed at the historic displays, she recalled. “After the class, we wondered why we had come,” she said in an interview.
Alexander Kondrashev, a history teacher in Russia for 10 years, said he was awaiting a revised version of the textbooks this fall. An early copy obtained by the Mediazona news organization found one fundamental change; all references to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, as the springboard for Russia as a Christian nation have been expunged.
“Nobody perceives ‘Important Conversations’ as learning something that will come in handy in life, like physics, math, geography or the knowledge from history lessons,” Mr. Kondrashev said in an interview.
Noncompliance takes various forms. The Alliance of Teachers advised parents that they can formally opt out of the classes, while some have their children show up late or call in sick on Mondays. Defiance makes certain parents nervous, experts said, especially given about a dozen cases where school officials reported on unenthusiastic parents or students.
A woman named Zarema, 47, said she worried about her three sons in school in Dagestan. While she sends her youngest son, a sixth grader, to the “Important Conversations” class, she told him never to engage politically. “We are all scared of everything here now,” she said, asking that her full name not be used while criticizing the war.
Russia has largely presented the war as an economic opportunity in poorer areas, while being far less aggressive in major cities.
“They are trying to target the people who have fewer resources,” Greg Yudin, a Russian sociologist doing research at Princeton University, said in an interview “They give you an option that promises money, status, benefits and in addition to that you will be a hero.” Even if they persuade only 20 percent of the youth to join the army, that is still a lot of brigades, he noted.
Toward that end, the Ministries of Education and Defense have announced that military training will be mandatory next year for 10th-grade students. Girls will learn battlefield first aid, while the boys will be instructed in drill formation and handling a Kalashnikov, among other skills.
At universities, the curriculum in the fall will include a mandatory course called “The Fundamentals of Russian Statehood.”
The course is still in development, Mr. Yudin noted, but he said that what details have emerged tended to echo Mr. Putin’s worldview of Russian exceptionalism and the idea that the battle waged against Western dominance for the past 1,000 years would continue for another 1,000.
“The single best possible way for them to get this society mobilized is to brainwash the young,” Mr. Yudin said.
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Chuck Todd. (photo: William B. Plowman/NBC)
The host announced his replacement at the end of Sunday morning’s episode.
Todd confirmed his exit from the program on his show Sunday. In a memo to staff Sunday morning, NBC News President of Editorial Rebecca Blumenstein and NBC News Senior Vice President of Politics Carrie Budoff Brown told staff that Kristen Welker will take the helm in September.
During his closing monologue, Todd said he’d rather leave “a little bit too soon than stay a tad too long” and let his work consume him, which would ultimately pull him away from his family. He commended the show’s successes throughout his tenure and lauded its continued longevity.
“When I took over Meet the Press, it was a Sunday show that had a lot of people questioning whether it still could have a place in the modern media space,” Todd said at the end of his show Sunday. “Well, I think we’ve answered that question and then some.”
Todd took over the show in 2014 from moderator David Gregory, turning the brand into a franchise for the network. Last year, NBC launched a dedicated website for the outlet alongside the daily MSNBC show’s move to NBC News Now, the outlet’s streaming service.
“Under Chuck’s thoughtful and passionate leadership, Meet the Press has sustained its historic role as the indispensable news program on Sunday mornings,” Blumenstein and Brown wrote in their memo. “Through his penetrating interviews with many of the most important newsmakers, the show has played an essential role in politics and policy, routinely made front-page news, and framed the thinking in Washington and beyond.”
Yet, throughout his tenure, he has also been criticized as deferential in his approach toward Republican lawmakers. During his White House Correspondents Dinner monologue last year, Trevor Noah chided Todd for his interview style.
“How are you doing?” Noah asked Todd. “I’d ask a follow-up, but I know you don’t know what those are.”
Todd will become NBC News’s chief political analyst, the two wrote, and continue producing his Chuck Toddcast and Meet the Press Reports podcasts.
The move for Welker, NBC News’ chief White House correspondent and a co-anchor of NBC’s Weekend TODAY, isn’t entirely unprecedented. She has often served as a fill-in host for Todd and hosts Meet the Press NOW on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Daily Beast also reported last year that Welker was being groomed to take over for Todd.
“[Welker] has masterfully moderated primary and general election presidential debates and her sharp questioning of lawmakers is a masterclass in political interviews,” Blumenstein and Brown wrote. “She is a dogged reporter who relishes getting big scoops and is widely admired throughout the bureau and the network for her deeply collaborative nature.”
Todd also sang her praises in his monologue. “I’ve had the privilege of working with her from essentially her first day and let me just say she’s the right person in the right moment,” he said. “This is exactly how I always hoped this would end, that I’d be passing the baton to her.”
Todd signed off by brushing off the criticism he’s received, marking them as indicators of a proper performance as a political journalist.
“If you do this job seeking popularity, you are doing this job incorrectly,” he said. “I take the attacks from partisans as compliments. And I take the genuine compliments with a grain of salt when they come from partisans. The goal of this and every Meet the Press episode is to do all of the following in one informative hour: make you mad, make you think, shake your head in disapproval at some point, and nod your head in approval at others. If you do all of that in one hour of this show, we’ve done our job.”
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Activists protest outside a Target store on Thursday in Miami. Retailers have drawn backlash from the far right for stocking items that extol equal rights and acceptance for LGBTQ+ individuals. (photo: Joe Raedle/WP)
Some shoppers have become more emboldened to engage in confrontational, even threatening, behavior over polarizing social issues.
This episode — recounted by an employee to supervisors — was just one of several tense encounters that workers have reported over LGBTQ+ items at the South Florida location, said the manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity over fear of losing his job. Target is the latest brand to be engulfed in culture wars, as polarizing social issues spill into store aisles and shoppers become more emboldened to engage in confrontational, even threatening, behavior.
Though Pride Month and other inclusivity initiatives have been around for years, they’ve increasingly become litmus tests for consumers, forcing companies to fully commit on social issues or yield to critics.
Retailers such as Kohl’s, Walmart and PetSmart have also felt backlash from the far right for stocking items that extol equal rights and acceptance for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.
In Target’s case, though, it has pulled its Pride merchandise and promotional materials back from store windows in recent days after a string of threats and harassment against employees. The move then sparked multiple bomb threats, targeting stores in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah, from people claiming to be angry about the removal of merchandise.
“It’s not like any of this is all that unpredictable,” said Lindsay Schubiner, who studies violent movements for the Western States Center, an anti-extremism watchdog. “We don’t always know exactly where these sort of anti-democracy actors are going to point to next, but the increase in threats and harassment from anti-democracy movements in the U.S. has become so frequent that this is something that absolutely just needs to be planned for.”
At the Target in South Florida, shoppers have called employees “child groomers,” a far-right slang term for pedophiles, and accused them of “shoving your woke agenda down our throats,” according to the manager who spoke to The Washington Post.
When he donned a bright safety vest over his company-issued Pride-themed T-shirt to help a customer carry goods to his car, the shopper looked at him and said, “Oh, is that so I could shoot you easier?”
That interaction leaves the supervisor with conflicting feelings about Target’s decision to pull back its Pride merchandise. “It’s 50-50,” he said. “I hate it, but I kind of understand it.”
On one hand, he felt the company had abandoned its LGBTQ+ employees. But he also can see reasons for backing down because the harassment from customers makes him feel unsafe.
Target, one of the largest American general-merchandise retailers, said it has offered products celebrating Pride Month for more than a decade. Chief executive Brian Cornell has touted his company’s efforts regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. Initiatives in that area have “fueled much of our growth over the last nine years” and “added value,” he told Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast last month.
Target representatives did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The Target controversy follows the backlash and boycotts that Anheuser-Busch faced in April over its Bud Light partnership with transgender actress Dylan Mulvaney. Republican lawmakers chastised the brand and angry consumers posted videos on social media of themselves dumping the beer into the street.
The company later pulled back the campaign, and chief executive Brendan Whitworth posted an open letter on the company’s Twitter account: “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.” But the reversal also angered the LGBTQ+ community, and sales have dropped.
Some companies have moved forward with their plans for Pride Month despite the high-profile incidents. Nike, North Face and PetSmart have so far ignored the backlash targeted at them. Kohl’s and Walmart have also gotten heat from far right fringe activists, who have called for boycotts over the stores’ LGBTQ+ merchandise, but have not given in. Walmart Chief Merchandising Officer Latriece Watkins said at a panel discussion Wednesday the company has not “changed anything in our assortment.”
Kohl’s did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and chief executive of LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD, sees a great risk if companies back down in the face of growing attacks on the LGBTQ+ community and see stores come under threats of violence.
“As soon as you cede ground to extremists, you give them more permission,” she said.
According to experts on extremism, the boycotts — and the threats and harassment that have extended from them — are part of a diffused but focused campaign that’s inflamed by influential conservatives exploiting TikTok and right-wing media.
One of those is Matt Walsh, an anti-LGBTQ commentator for the right-wing Daily Wire, who tweeted in April that conservatives should “pick a victim, gang up on it, and make an example of it.”
“We can’t boycott every woke company or even most of them,” he tweeted. “But we can pick one, it hardly matters which, and target it with a ruthless boycott campaign. Claim one scalp then move onto the next.”
Right-wing figures such as Walsh target businesses because corporate actions can suggest broader acceptance of queer individuals, said Schubiner of the Western States Center. Conversely, when companies self-censor their product offerings or promotional materials because of outside pressure, they become well-established weak points in the Pride movement, she said.
Vocal extremists that companies rebuff or ignore generally move on in search of others to victimize, while businesses and organizations that react, either aggressively or cautiously, position themselves as easier targets, Schubiner said.
“Bigoted and anti-democracy groups try a bunch of different things to see what will stick,” she said. “They’re doing some experimentation.”
Far-right critics have even turned against fast-food chain Chick-fil-A — whose charitable foundation has been criticized by liberals for donations to anti-LGBTQ groups — after a conservative political strategist tweeted that the company has a vice president in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion.
GLAAD’s Ellis noted that violence against the LGBTQ community has been on the rise as GOP lawmakers “demonize our community.” They include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who amplified a transphobic music video on Twitter that accused Target of “targeting your kids.”
More than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills — though most will not pass — have been introduced in states across the country so far this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign. At least 29 bills targeting transgender rights have become law in 14 states so far this year, according to The Post’s analysis of data from the American Civil Liberties Union.
For his part, the Target supervisor has seen the rhetoric amp up over the three years he has worked there: More customers have openly expressed homophobic and sexist views, especially since Florida last year enacted a law backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to limit the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in schools.
“People here are feeling they can really come forward and speak their opinion,” he said.
Wen Parks, who works part-time at a Target in Normal, Ill., said her store has not received any threats. But some customers have become aggressive and are raising their voice when complaining about the store’s Pride merchandise “even after stock was limited,” she said in an email to The Post.
Late last week, managers were instructed to take down the display, Parks said. As a queer employee, she found the decision devastating.
“When I started here at Target, I went through countless inclusivity and anti-discrimination trainings, and they are even required to be taken again at a certain time,” Parks said. “Employees are strongly led to believe that these are Target’s values, that everyone is equal and belongs. But taking down displays sends the exact opposite message. I no longer feel valued as an employee.”
Hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community and businesses that support it has accelerated so rapidly, corporate security experts say, that it’s difficult for businesses to keep pace with evolving threats.
A big-box retailer might position extra uniformed or plainclothes security around a store, especially if the shop is in an area where there is less public support for LGBTQ individuals, said Kristin Lenardson, vice president of embedded intelligence services at Crisis24, a corporate security consultancy that works with major businesses. Crisis24 does not work with Target.
The retailer could also stage security in the parking lot, or at another location nearby to more quickly respond to disturbances, Lenardson said. Corporate security teams also frequently draft employee guidance to help managers de-escalate tense interactions.
Despite an increasing number of confrontations at the manager’s store in south Florida, Target has not brought in more security or implemented new policies when interacting with customers, the manager said.
“Retail workers, like everybody else, are living in a highly volatile and politicized environment right now,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “They’re seen too often as being invisible and disposable and not as people who should be treated with respect.”
Appelbaum noted that companies need to make these changes to better protect its workers and customers — and retire the idea that “the customer is always right.”
Some groups that study extremism and extremist actors online have begun encouraging employers to instruct staffers to simply walk away on grounds that it’s not worth drawing a staffer into a potentially violent interaction or viral video with a right-wing provocateur.
Businesses could also benefit from building relationships year-round with pride event organizers, local elected officials and law enforcement, who can provide logistical and public support in the event of an anti-LGBTQ incident, Schubiner said.
“We know when these things are going to be happening and how to plan for them in advance,” Lenardson said. “Does it make it any easier … or any emotionally easier on employees? No, it doesn’t. I think the security part is the easy part.”
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Relatives of Mexicans who disappeared in the country's Dirty War demonstrate at a military base in Naucalpan on June 22, 2022. (photo: Alfredo Estrella/AFP)
Yet nearly two years after the president established a truth commission to pry open the secrets of that dark chapter, signs have emerged that the government’s lead investigator has been targeted with military grade spyware, according to a report obtained by The Washington Post.
Pegasus spyware was detected in the phone of Camilo Vicente Ovalle, according to the forensic analysis by Citizen Lab, a digital research center at the University of Toronto. Vicente Ovalle, who coordinates the work of the truth commission, had received an email in December from Apple warning he might have been targeted by “state-sponsored attackers.”
The alleged hack is part of a mounting trove of evidence that civilians looking into human rights abuses by Mexico’s armed forces — including activists, journalists, even officials close to the president — are being targeted with malware.
The Citizen Lab report did not address the question of who might have used Pegasus to hack Vicente Ovalle’s phone. The NSO Group, which developed the spyware, says it is licensed only to government agencies. (NSO questioned the Citizen Lab findings). Investigations by digital rights groups and media organizations have pointed to the Mexican army as the institution behind the alleged hacks. They have cited the timing and targets as well as documents on its acquisition of surveillance software in 2019. The New York Times in April reported that the army was the sole agency in Mexico still operating Pegasus, citing sources familiar with the contracts.
Under López Obrador’s predecessor, President Enrique Peña Nieto, the Mexican government aggressively used Pegasus to secretly track drug traffickers as well as journalists, activists and opposition politicians, according to investigations by Citizen Lab, digital-rights groups and journalists. But when López Obrador took office in 2018, he promised to end the illicit spying on Mexicans not suspected of crimes. He raised hopes that the country would finally unravel what happened during the Dirty War and another notorious case, the 2014 disappearance of 43 young men studying at the Ayotzinapa teachers college.
Now the reports of surveillance are casting hopes for a real reckoning into doubt.
“This is incredibly troubling,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the longtime Latin America director for Human Rights Watch who now works for Dentons Global Advisors. He said the latest revelation, along with recent reports that López Obrador’s top human rights official had been hacked with Pegasus, had created a defining moment for the president.
“This is probably the most serious evidence that the military today is not even under AMLO’s control,” he said, referring to the president by his initials.
Vicente Ovalle and Citizen Lab declined to comment. Neither Mexico’s defense ministry nor López Obrador’s spokesman responded to requests for comment.
López Obrador has denied that the military surveils journalists or human rights defenders. Last month, after the New York Times reported the discovery of Pegasus on the phone of Alejandro Encinas, the undersecretary for human rights in the government ministry and a longtime ally of López Obrador, the president reiterated: “We don’t spy.”
The president’s refusal to condemn the attacks suggested he was caught between his pledges on human rights and his increasing reliance on the military. Not only does López Obrador rely on the armed forces to fight drug cartels; he’s also expanded their responsibilities to include overseeing seaports, rolling out coronavirus vaccines and building major public works projects such as new airports.
Carlos Pérez Ricart, a member of the truth commission, said the president is at a crossroads.
“A democratic state has to have control over its security and intelligence institutions. Everything indicates this is not the case,” said Pérez Ricart, a political scientist at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics. “The president has to put a stop to this. His public comments have not been satisfactory.”
Encinas oversees the executive branch’s investigations into the Dirty War and the Ayotzinapa disappearances, which have been attributed to local police and drug traffickers with the alleged complicity of the military. He’s also in charge of efforts to find the more than 110,000 people currently reported as disappeared, a toll that’s risen rapidly since the government launched its war on drug cartels in 2006. Vicente Ovalle works in his office.
Encinas did not respond to a request for comment.
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Adam Savage, host of Tested, and right to repair advocate, shows off the lathe he's fixing at his San Francisco workshop. (photo: Chloe Veltman/NPR)
"We keep going at this pace and we'll reach the heat death of the earth in a few hundred years," said Adam Savage, the leader and host of Tested, a popular YouTube channel and website aimed at makers, and an outspoken advocate for repairing the things we own rather than trashing them. "So time is of the essence."
Throwing things away comes with an environmental cost. Manufacturing processes and decomposing products in landfills emit significant levels of climate warming pollution. Some materials, like plastic, never decompose. Savage said it's time human beings reminded themselves that throwaway culture is a relatively new phenomenon. It started about a hundred years ago with the rise of mass manufacturing.
"We have been repairers and restorers for millennia longer than we've been profligate thrower outer of things," Savage said, as he worked on mending the hulking wood-and-metal-shaping lathe that occupies a corner of the professional tinkerer's cavernous workshop.
Appetite for repair on the rise
Most of us don't have Savage's drive for Extreme DIY.
Nevertheless, the appetite for fixing things is on the rise. From patching jeans to replacing phone screens, U.S. consumers are showing an increased interest in prolonging the life of the things they own, rather than getting rid of them.
This points to a shift in how Americans are defining what it means to be a responsible shopper as global consumption continues to contribute to climate change.
Online how-to videos are getting hundreds of thousands of hits. And people are flocking to community repair workshops in cities across the country. Those started to take off around 2009, with organizations like Fixit Clinic and Repair Cafe now offering well over a hundred repair events in the U.S. each year.
Daniel Leong was among the crowd attending one such event at the San Francisco Public Library. The San Francisco resident has brought two bikes along for the volunteer bike repairers to repair. His wife's has a flat tire; his son's, malfunctioning brakes.
"We don't know much about repairing bikes," said Leong. "We just ride every so often."
A basic bike tune-up in San Francisco can cost well over $100. Leong said he's a fan of fixit days because the service is free. But it's about more than the unbeatable price.
"It also gives us an opportunity to learn more about bicycles and a chance to see how they're fixed," he said.
The library's clinics, which are held in collaboration with the San Francisco Department of the Environment, currently provide repair services for bikes and clothing, with sessions on small appliance repairs planned for the future. People can bring items in for repair by teams of volunteer experts, as well as pick up repair skills for themselves.
"We of course wanna reach as many people as we can and bring them into this environmental climate conversation," said Shawn Rosenmoss, a senior environmental specialist with the San Francisco Department of the Environment.
Rosenmoss is heartened not only by the public's interest in mending and fixing things, but also by some manufacturers' efforts to promote the repair of their own products, like Patagonia and Levi's.
But Rosenmoss said some things, like bikes and clothing, are easier to fix than others — particularly things that contain computer chips. Where devices such as phones, microwave ovens and cars are concerned, Rosenmoss said it will take more than getting people to watch DIY videos and attend fixit clinics to save the planet.
"There's this cultural shift, and then there is the policy work that has to be done," Rosenmoss said. "They have to go hand in hand."
An upswing in "Right to Repair" legislation
What Rosenmoss means by policy work is legislation that empowers people to fix things themselves or do so through a repair provider of their choice.
So-called "Right to Repair" legislation is focused on getting manufacturers to provide consumers and independent repair companies access to their parts, tools and service information.
The Repair Association, a consumer advocacy group, has spent more than a decade pushing manufacturers to make it easier for people to fix their products. Its executive director, Gay Gordon-Byrne, said the repair offerings corporations typically provide are either inconvenient or expensive, and sometimes both.
"They are not in the business of fixing stuff," Gordon-Byrne said. "They would rather your stuff falls apart and dies and you have to go back to the store."
Gordon-Byrne said mounting pressure from groups like hers, as well as the growing interest in fixit culture, have started to force reluctant manufacturers to make repairs more accessible.
Dozens of Right to Repair bills are working their way through the legislative process, and have passed in a few states. In New York, starting later this year, for instance, electronic devices will have to be repairable by law.
"So Apple, as an example, will have to be selling parts and tools and providing diagnostic functions that they didn't wanna provide," Gordon-Byrne said.
Resistance against Right to Repair
But these bills face stiff opposition.
The New York bill, for example, was originally meant to encompass everything from home appliances to farm equipment. By the time the state's governor signed it into law late last year, its scope had been reduced to just small consumer electronics.
"Our concerns are that the bills are going to mandate that manufacturers provide unvetted third parties with sensitive diagnostic information tools and parts without requiring any of the critical consumer protections that are afforded by authorized repair networks like training and competency certification," said David Edmonson, vice president of state policy and government relations for TechNet, a tech sector trade association that represents companies like Apple, Google and Toyota.
Edmonson said nevertheless, manufacturers are listening to their customers. For instance, companies like Apple and Samsung recently expanded their self-repair programs and network of independent service providers.
"This is something that is responsive to consumer demand and consumer needs," Edmonson said.
At Fix My Phone SF, a neighborhood electronics repair store in San Francisco, owner Michael Ghadieh said he's been fixing smartphones since they came on the market around 15 years ago.
"At the beginning, parts were difficult to obtain," Ghadieh said. "Now that's much easier of course."
But Ghadieh said he's seen a dip in his phone repair business over the past year, owing to manufacturers offering ever-more tempting deals to customers to trade-in their old products for shiny new ones.
"It's kind of still complicated," Ghadieh said. "If you buy your phone, it's your phone. You paid for it. And they should have no right to tell you what to do with it."
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