Inside the April 2024 Issue
A forum on American policing, Mya Frazier on the housing crisis, Frederick Kaufman on the QAnon Shaman, and more.
April 2024
[ F O R U M ]
Crime and Punishment
Can American policing be fixed?
Ras Baraka, Rosa Brooks, Barry Friedman, Christy E. Lopez, Tracey L. Meares, Brian O’Hara, Patrick Sharkey
“There is no way that we can fix policing without fixing America. The institution of policing is really America itself, this country that is still struggling to deal with race and class and inequity. You can’t divorce the police from that. And so the flaws the country has, the police will display in a more virulent way because they have guns and they’re in people’s faces. So it becomes that much more dangerous and more urgent for us to fix, because they take people’s lives.”
— Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey
[ R E P O R T ]
The Eviction Experts
Can a city stop a housing crisis?
By Mya Frazier
“Once automated, the landlord-tenant relationship could be redefined as remote, with any lingering moral ambiguities absolved by algorithm. That was one possible future . . . Eviction was still a messy business. And for that, there were lawyers.”
[L E T T E R • F R O M • P H O E N I X]
Jacob's Dream
MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius
By Frederick Kaufman
“Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzo’s, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. But The Shaman’s thoughts had roamed far from the realm of gluten-free food. ‘The most evil things happen when a person believes that they are anonymous, when they’ve covered their face,” he mused after some time. ‘Whether it be with war paint, or whether it be with a mask.’”
[ R E V I E W S ]
Children for Sale
When Guatemalan adoption became big business
By John Washington
“Private adoptions rose during Guatemala’s most violent years. But the war and the country remain poorly understood in the United States. About two hundred thousand Guatemalans died in the conflict. An estimated forty-five thousand people were also disappeared, about five thousand of whom were children. At least five hundred of the disappeared children were put up for adoption. The U.S. government has tried to reunite some of the families they pulled apart and they have returned more than seven hundred children to their parents. But reunion is not the same as repair.”
[ A N N O T A T I O N ]
Heir Mail
Decrypting the correspondence of Mary, Queen of Scots
By Irina Dumitrescu
“She complains about her poor health, and that she is not allowed to exercise outdoors. She expresses disappointment that her wishes to rule Scotland with James, her son and successor—whom she writes of here as “MON FILS”—are being frustrated.”
D E P A R T M E N T S
[ E A S Y • C H A I R ]
by Lauren Oyler
[ T H E • H A R P E R ‘ S • I N D E X ]
[ R E A D I N G S ]
and more...
[ F R O M • T H E • A R C H I V E ]
by Jack Black
[ F I C T I O N ]
by Aryn Kyle
by Dan Piepenbring
[ P U Z Z L E ]
by Richard E. Maltby Jr.
See the full table of contents