Demonstrations, Protests and Riots

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    A Play About Segregation Tries to ‘Ride a Fine Line’ in Florida

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    A production partly aimed at students that highlights Tampa’s history in the civil rights movement lands at a time when the state is changing what schools teach about race and history.Given the chance, Arthenia Joyner would have ordered a bacon and egg sandwich with a glass of orange juice. Instead, workers inside an F.W. Woolworth store in Tampa, Fla., declared their lunch counter closed to her and other high school students 65 years ago.The students refused to leave without being served. The protests did not carry the national prominence of the Greensboro sit-ins, Montgomery boycotts or Selma marches. “What I found out is damn near nobody knows what happened,” Joyner, 82, said recently. But the acts of resistance produced results. Within months, Tampa’s counters were desegregated. Other public areas like beaches and movie theaters followed.Joyner hopes more people will learn of Florida’s contributions to the civil rights movement through “When the Righteous Triumph,” a play that dramatizes the 1960 protests. After a small debut in 2023, the play will be performed at the Jaeb Theater inside Tampa’s David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts over the next two weekends, with its audiences including students from around 40 local schools.The play arrives at a moment when arts and educational offerings are frequently in dispute nationally, and regional arts venues are left navigating shifting terrain.Several arts organizations sued the National Endowment for the Arts this week over a new mandate that says grant applicants must comply with the Trump administration’s executive orders barring the promotion of “gender ideology.” President Trump recently signed an executive order withholding funding from schools that teach that the United States is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory.”Clay Christopher and Von Shay in the production, which depicts an oft-overlooked moment in the civil rights era.Octavio Jones for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A New Age of Iranian Cinema Is on Display at the Oscars

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      “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” an Oscar-nominated movie filmed in secret in Iran, highlights the Iranian film world’s groundbreaking new work, inspired by the women-led protests in 2022.A wife, wearing a nightgown and her hair uncovered, lies down next to her husband in bed. An older man and woman, drunk on red wine, dance wildly and discuss the complexities of sex and nudity at their age. A distressed young woman navigates the sexual advances of a male employer in a job interview.These scenes may seem to be simply ordinary life snippets on the big screen. But their existence — in three Iranian films released over the last few years — is nothing short of extraordinary, representing a new era of filmmaking in Iran’s storied cinema.These movies, and the trend they represent, have gained recognition and accolades internationally. One of them, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, will compete for best international feature film at the Academy Awards on Sunday.Mr. Rasoulof, 52, is among a number of prominent Iranian directors and artists who are flouting government censorship rules enforced for nearly five decades since the 1979 Islamic revolution. These rules ban depictions of women without a hijab, the consumption of alcohol, and men and women touching and dancing; they also prevent films from tackling taboo subjects like sex.In a collective act of civil disobedience and inspired by the 2022 women-led uprising in Iran and many women’s continued defiance of restrictive social laws, Iranian filmmakers say they have decided to finally make art that imitates real life in their country.Director Mohammad Rasoulof’s movie “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is up for an Oscar in the international movie category on Sunday.Kristy Sparow/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jane Fonda’s SAG Awards Speech: ‘Empathy Is Not Weak or Woke’

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      While some stars have been less politically outspoken this awards season, she issued a call to action as she accepted a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild.Jane Fonda, who has been politically outspoken since the Vietnam War era, urged people “to resist successfully what is coming at us” as she accepted a lifetime achievement award Sunday night during the Screen Actors Guild Awards.“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke,” said Fonda, 87. “And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”She never explicitly mentioned President Trump or his administration, but she seemed to allude to them as she warned of bad things to come.“A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way,” Fonda said. “Even if they are of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent. Because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what is coming at us.”Fonda, a two-time Academy Award winner, has long been known for political activism, particularly her support for the civil rights movement and Indigenous rights and for her opposition to the Vietnam War. A 1972 visit to North Vietnam led some critics to call her “Hanoi Jane”; she has since apologized to soldiers and veterans for being photographed there on an antiaircraft gun. In more recent years, she has fought to draw attention to the climate crisis.In her acceptance speech, she expressed her strong support for unions and noted that when she was starting out in the late 1950s, some leading Hollywood figures had been prominently resisting McCarthyism. She also said that she believes Americans are currently facing the same kinds of challenges that have been captured in historical documentaries about social movements, including apartheid, the civil rights movement and the Stonewall Rebellion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At Opening Night at La Scala, Opera Is the Center of the Universe

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      Television reporters stood shoulder to shoulder delivering breathless, minute-by-minute commentary, part of a pack of more than 120 journalists from 10 countries.Celebrities, politicians and titans of industry walked the red carpet past paparazzi and officers standing sentry with capes, sashes, swords and plumed hats.Outside, protesters used firecrackers, smoke bombs and even manure as they sought to seize on the occasion to draw attention to a variety of causes.It was not a global summit, a Hollywood premiere or a royal procession. It was the start of the new opera season at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.Opera may be starved for attention in much of the world. But at La Scala, the storied theater that gave world premieres of works by Donizetti, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi, opera can still feel like the center of the cultural universe. It remains a matter of national pride and patrimony, a political football and an obsession for devoted fans.“This is sacred for us,” said the critic Alberto Mattioli, who writes for La Stampa, an Italian newspaper. “Opera is our religion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chris Brown’s Concerts Draw Protest in South Africa

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      Women’s rights activists have petitioned for the singer to be denied a visa for two shows in South Africa, where gender-based violence is high.After Chris Brown announced that he would be performing in Johannesburg, tickets for the city’s 94,000-capacity FNB Stadium sold out in under two hours. A second show was swiftly added.Nearly as quickly came a protest against Brown, who has faced allegations of violence and harassment of women including his guilty plea on charges that he assaulted Rihanna, his then-girlfriend, in 2009. Women for Change, a South African nonprofit, started a petition to block Brown’s performances on Dec. 14 and 15. The organization presented the petition, which received over 50,000 signatures, to the country’s Departments of Home Affairs and of Sports, Arts and Culture, asking that Brown be denied a visa.The singer’s planned return has particular resonance in South Africa, where women are killed at a rate five times higher than the global average, with 60.1 percent of those murders committed by an intimate partner, according to a study by the South African Medical Research Council. “We aim to send a clear message that South Africa will not celebrate individuals with a history of violence against women,” Sabrina Walter, the founder of Women for Change, said in an interview.Brown and his representatives have not addressed the protest, but in October, as the group spread the #MuteChrisBrown hashtag on social media, the singer seemed to troll the organization by writing, “Can’t wait to come,” under one of its Instagram posts. Walter said the reply triggered a wave of online harassment from Brown’s followers, including death threats against her and her team. It was not the first time Brown used his fame to rally against detractors. He has challenged other celebrities who refer to allegations made against him, and in February used Instagram to accuse the NBA of bowing to sponsor pressure to disinvite him from participating in an event related to its All-Star game. In 2019, Brown was released without charges after being accused of aggravated rape in France. He then sold T-shirts that read “This Bitch Lyin’” online.In the years since his 2009 arrest, Brown has been accused a number of times of violence against women, including throwing a rock through his mother’s car window in 2013 and punching a woman at a Las Vegas nightclub in 2016. In 2017, his ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran obtained a temporary restraining order, citing harassment, physical violence, intimidation and death threats during and after their on-again-off-again relationship, which lasted from 2011 to 2015. In 2022, a judge dismissed a lawsuit that accused Brown of drugging and raping a woman on a yacht owned by Sean Combs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Bob’s Burgers’ Actor Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Role in Jan. 6 Riot

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      The actor, Jay Johnston, pleaded guilty in July to obstructing police during the riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to prosecutors.Jay Johnston, a comedian and actor who voiced Jimmy Pesto Sr. on the Fox sitcom “Bob’s Burgers,” was sentenced to a year and a day in prison over his involvement in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Johnston, 55, pleaded guilty in July to a felony charge of obstruction of law enforcement after reaching a plea agreement that dropped three other charges originally brought against him. The actor was arrested in June 2023 in California with the help of internet sleuths who identified Mr. Johnston after the F.B.I. posted photos of him at the Capitol during the riot. Three other people who know Mr. Johnston also identified him.While Mr. Johnston is best known for his role in “Bob’s Burgers,” he was a regular on the 1990s sketch comedy show, “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” as well as on “The Sarah Silverman Program.” He has mostly starred in comedies on television and in movies.He will be on supervised release for two years after his yearlong prison sentence, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols also ordered Mr. Johnston to pay a $2,000 fine.Authorities said that when rioters broke through police barricades, Mr. Johnston continued to get closer to the police line. Security footage showed that he had helped push others up against police officers who were pinned against a door near the tunnel entrance of the Capitol building, prosecutors said.Mr. Johnston also filmed the crowds throughout the day on his phone, according to the news release. A person who knows Mr. Johnston showed investigators a text message that he had sent in which he admitted to having been at the Capitol.“The news has presented it as an attack,” the message stated, according to court documents. “It actually wasn’t. Thought it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed and I found it quite untastic.”Investigators also found that he had booked flights to arrive in Washington on Jan. 4, 2021, and to return to Los Angeles three days later.Mr. Johnston is one of more than 1,500 people who have been charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, according to the Justice Department. More

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      Barbara Dane, Who Fought Injustice Through Song, Dies at 97

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      She was highly regarded as a folk, blues and jazz singer. She was also ardently left-wing and prioritized social change over commercial success.Barbara Dane, an acclaimed folk, jazz and blues singer whose communist leanings and fierce civil rights and antiwar activism earned her both critical plaudits and a thick Federal Bureau of Investigation file, died on Sunday at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 97.Her daughter, Nina Menendez, said that after suffering shortness of breath for several years because of heart failure, Ms. Dane chose to terminate her life under California’s End of Life Option Act.Over the course of her long career, Ms. Dane, with her rich, woody contralto, built a reputation in a variety of musical genres.She established her bona fides as a folky of the first order while still in her teens, performing with Pete Seeger. “I knew I was a singer for life,” she recalled in a 2021 interview with The New York Times, “but where I would aim it didn’t come forward until then. I saw, ‘Oh, you can use your voice to move people.’”Ms. Dane wore her convictions proudly, belting out worker anthems like “I Hate the Capitalist System” and “Solidarity Forever.” She performed at the first Newport Folk Festival in 1959 with Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan would often sit in with her when she was performing at Gerdes Folk City, the Greenwich Village club.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sweden Drops Case Against Joost Klein, Disqualified Eurovision Entrant

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      Investigators could not prove that Joost Klein, the Dutch entrant, had behaved threateningly during an incident shortly before the event final.Swedish prosecutors said Monday that they were closing an investigation into Joost Klein, the Netherlands entry to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, whom organizers threw out of the singing competition hours before the final in May after an altercation with a camerawoman.Fredrik Jonsson, a Swedish prosecutor, said in a news release that he could not prove that a gesture Klein had made at the camerawoman during the incident “was capable of causing serious fear,” or that Klein had intended it to scare her.The brief statement added that although Klein had “made a movement” toward the crew member, and touched her camera, “the course of events was fast and was perceived differently by the witnesses of the incident.”The run-up to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest was unusually tense, with months of protests around Israel’s participation. In the days leading up to this year’s contest final, pro-Palestinian groups held several marches through the host city, Malmo, Sweden, and some Eurovision acts used social media to discuss their pro-Palestinian views.On the day of the final, Klein’s disqualification came as a last-minute curveball.The day before the final began, Klein, a well-known figure in Dutch pop music whose songs feature silly lyrics and very fast beats, did not appear at a rehearsal to perform his track, “Europapa.” Shortly afterward, the European Broadcasting Union, which organizes the contest, said in a statement that it was investigating Klein because of “an incident” involving a member of the show’s production crew. The next day, just hours before the final, the union organizers said in a new statement that Swedish police were also investigating, and it would not have been appropriate for Klein to take part while a legal process was underway.Klein’s disqualification caused immediate uproar among Eurovision fans on social media. And in the days following the competition, many in the Netherlands rallied around the singer, with radio stations repeatedly airing Klein’s song. Some churches even rang their bells to its tune in protest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jay Johnston of ‘Bob’s Burgers’ to Plead Guilty in Jan. 6 Case

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      Jay Johnston, also known for his work on “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” was charged last year with participating in the riot at the Capitol. He is expected to plead guilty at a hearing on July 8.The actor Jay Johnston, who voiced Jimmy Pesto Sr. on the animated Fox sitcom “Bob’s Burgers,” has agreed to plead guilty in the federal case against him over his participation in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.The authorities arrested Mr. Johnston, 55, in California last summer and charged him with four counts, including civil disorder and entering restricted grounds. Mr. Johnston agreed to plead guilty to a single count of civil disorder in exchange for the other charges being dropped, according to a person familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity. A plea agreement hearing is scheduled for July 8 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.A civil disorder charge carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, or a fine or both.Mr. Johnston was a regular on the groundbreaking 1990s television comedy “Mr. Show with Bob and David” and later had recurring roles on “The Sarah Silverman Program” and “Arrested Development.” His movie credits included “Anchorman” and “Men in Black II.”He was quickly named by internet sleuths when the F.B.I. published photos of him at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in asocial media post asking for the public’s help identifying him.The authorities also identified Mr. Johnston in police body camera and security footage of him pushing against officers and helping rioters push through a tunnel entrance into the Capitol, according to an affidavit prepared by the F.B.I.He is seen taking photos of the crowd, signaling others to join the push and giving water to rioters, who used it to wash their eyes out, according to the affidavit.Additionally, three people who know Mr. Johnston identified him to investigators in the images at the Capitol. One of those people showed investigators a text message sent by Mr. Johnston in which he admitted to having been at the Capitol.“The news has presented it as an attack,” the message stated, according to court documents. “It actually wasn’t. Thought it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed and I found it quite untastic.”Mr. Johnston had also booked a round trip from Los Angeles to Washington D.C., with his departing flight on Jan, 4, 2021 and his return set for three days later, according to court documents.The Daily Beast, an online news site, reported in December 2021 that Mr. Johnston lost his job voicing Jimmy Pesto Sr. on “Bob’s Burgers” after allegations spread that he had been at the Capitol.Mr. Johnston is one of more than 1,500 people to be charged for actions related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, according to the Justice Department. He is set to join the more than 800 people who have pleaded guilty to charges.Alan Feuer More