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L.A.POSTCARD
HYPETHEVOTE
N
ot long before Super Tuesday, a
couple of hundred media, tech
nology, and civicengagement types
gathered at a West Hollywood hotel to
discuss how to get more youths and
ens and bathrooms does not include a
Utrap—the bend in a pipe that fills with
standing water, which in turn blocks pol
luted air from rising from the sewers.
“How long is it in feces?” he asked. “How
long is it in the mouth and the nose?
How long is it on surfaces? On buckles,
seat belts, doorknobs, touch screens, or
the TV remote in a hotel room, which,
by the way, never gets cleaned and is one
of the filthiest things on the planet.”
Though not a germaphobe by nature,
he’d been converted by the job. At 9 a.m.,
he set out for work wearing a pair of
lightbrown gloves. “I call them subway
condoms,” he said. “I use gloves every
where. I don’t touch my face. If I see
someone coughing or sneezing, I keep
my distance. On airplanes, I wipe every
thing down. I stay away from bowls of
mixed nuts or candy.” He told a story of
visiting a temple in Bhubaneswar, India,
and having a monkey jump on his back
and stick a finger in his mouth: “Twen
tyfour hours later, riproaring diarrhea.”
On Central Park West, he pointed out
a painted railing and said, “That, I wouldn’t
worry about. You’ve got ultraviolet light,
wind.” But on the C train he wrapped an
elbow around a pole and said, “I look at
the world differently than you do. I see
surfaces in a pointillistic fashion.” When
he arrived at the Mailman building, on
168th Street, he used a knuckle to press
a button in the elevator and then put his
gloves back on to open his office door. In
eleven minutes, he had a meeting with
two people who had identified themselves
only as “members of U.S. intelligence.” “I
don’t know why they want to talk to me,
but they do,” he said. In farewell, he gave
his guest an N95 mask and a pair of rub
ber gloves, and offered up a forearm for
a firm Roman handshake.
—Nick Paumgarten
people of color to vote. “It’s nonparti
san,” Scott Mills, the president of Black
Entertainment Television, which had
organized the day of panels, said. He
stood on a blue carpet in front of a blue
lit conference room strewn with blue
pillows. Agitated, he called an aide over
and asked, “How did we get all the blue?”
“The two parties,” the aide said,
sheepish. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
The event, called META 2020, was
timed to coincide with the N.A.A.C.P.
Image Awards, but the primaries were on
everyone’s mind. “There’s so much activ
ity designed to inhibit—I won’t use the
word ‘suppress’—AfricanAmerican par
ticipation in this election,” Mills said. “We
think it’s important, now that we have no
candidates of color, to say, ‘It’s critical that
we all participate in this process.’”
It’s a sentiment that goes down like
a shot of vinegar. “I am borderline ap
athetic,” Angela Rye, the C.E.O. of Im
pact Strategies, a politicaladvocacy firm,
told Janai S. Nelson, of the N.A.A.C.P.’s
legaldefense fund.
“Mmm,” Nelson said. “We have to
work on that.”
“I’ve heard people say, ‘I can’t vote for
the lesser of evils,’” an actor named Don
dré Whitfield said. “I say, ‘Yes, you can.
Yes, you better.’” He added, “We’re in
the midst of this cancel culture: ‘This
person is gay, this person didn’t fight in
the military, this person called a black
person an epithet in 1986. Anything I
find that gives me a reason to cancel—
done.’ That’s how we got here.”
Onstage, Kamala Harris offered ad
vice on combatting misinformation from
Russian bots and “the LiarinChief.”
“Use your voices to remind people about
trusted sources of information, like BET,”
she said. “Point out, ‘That’s a lie.’”
There were texts to action. “Pull out
your phone,” Tiffany Dena Loftin, the
director of the N.A.A.C.P.’s youth
andcollege division, said. “Think of a
person in your contact list” who is un
likely to vote “and send them a text.”
First text: “Hey.” Second: “Do you know
who you’re voting for in November?”
Third: “I actually just checked to make
sure I was registered, at vote.org. You
should, too.”
“It’s an opening, it’s a question, and
then it’s an action,” Loftin went on.
“Sometimes we get stuck in thinking
our posts on social media will do
1
SKETCHPAD
BUH- BYE,BAGS!
On Sunday, New York’s ban on
single-use plastic bags went into effect.
Before saying farewell, we revisited a
few iconic archetypes of the form.
ILLUSTRATION BY NA KIM
