Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have decided not to participate in the New Yorker fest, acting in solidarity with the New Yorker Union, which is planning a one-night picket on Monday. The Union is asking to negotiate with management over a just cause provision in their contract. Warren and Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times, “The NewsGuild and The New Yorker Union are fighting for basic dignity on the job, and we stand with them. We will not cross the picket line and attend the festival unless the New Yorker leadership agrees to the union’s demands—they should do so immediately.”
Poet Kevin Young—author of Bunk, The Grey Album, and Brown—has been named director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Young is currently the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the director Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
At the Paris Review Daily, Daniel Mendelsohn revisits W. G. Sebald.
At the NYR Daily, Gary Younge writes about “The Bleak Resonance of Native Son.” Looking back at Richard Wright’s novel, Younge finds its contemporary parallels: “One of the reasons . . . Native Son remains an enduring classic is because while the racial power structure outlined in the book has evolved over the years, its basic underpinnings remain recognizable even eighty years later.”
Today at 1:30pm EST, Legacy Russel will be in conversation with McKenzie Wark about the digital/IRL divide.