President Trump at the White House on Friday.Credit
Eric Thayer for The New York Times
These days, the last thing you want is to be known as a Friend of Trump. He’s
doing great — he’s president, for heaven’s sake. His kids are getting
jobs, his hotels are getting promoted 24/7. He goes golfing more than
your average Palm Beach retiree. Meanwhile, the people he hangs around
with are watching their reputations crumble into smithereens.
This
has an impact on congressional politics. If you’re a swing vote in the
House or the Senate, the idea of getting a hug in the Oval Office might
seem more like a threat than an opportunity. Let’s consider some of the
F.O.T.s who’ve already been undone:
Devin Nunes
Nunes
is now famous as the guy who was sneaking around the White House lawn
in the middle of the night. He says it was still daylight, which will
have no bearing whatsoever on the legend. There’s a lot of stuff on his
résumé — eight-term congressman, father of three, chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee. But wherever he goes for the rest of his life,
people are going to say, “Oh yeah, he was the one sneaking around the
White House lawn in the middle of the night.” It’ll be the lead in his
obituary.
Paul Ryan
Until
recently, Ryan was regarded as the Republican idea man, whose riff on
cutting entitlements made conservative intellectuals swoon. When Trump
came along Ryan was leery at first, then thrilled with his party’s total
control of the government. Finally he could take the knife to Medicaid!
“We’ve
been dreaming of this since you and I were drinking out of a keg,” Ryan
told National Review editor Rich Lowry in an onstage interview. Lowry
immediately protested that he had not been fantasizing about health care
for the poor when he was chugging beer in college. It was a preview of
all that was to come. Ryan was not only going to lose the big health
care battle, he was going to look like an idiot doing it.
He’ll
go down in history as the first big congressional power to get rolled
over by the Trump bus. Maybe with a footnote about his passion for
pulling catfish out of the water with his bare hands.
Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every
weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the
Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
Not
too long ago, Priebus was laboring in happy obscurity. Now he’s chief
of staff at a White House where everything is a mess. “Reince doesn’t
have a magic wand,” one Republican National Committee apparatchik told
The Associated Press. Nobody wants to get to the point where the best
argument in your favor is wand shortage.
Chris Christie
Chris
(Still the Governor) Christie was at the White House this week in his
new role as head of a commission on drug addiction. How could anything
bad happen? Well, just as Christie was being photographed grasping the
president’s hand, two of his former associates were sentenced to jail
for their roles in the famous bridge-jamming episode. Not Trump’s fault,
but he did seem to mess with Christie’s karma when he kept treating him
like a well-dressed fast-food clerk during the campaign.
Coal Miners
Trump
recently signed an executive order trashing the Obama initiatives to
combat global warming. He was surrounded by happy-looking men from coal
country, helping continue the grand new White House tradition of
male-only photo sessions.
“You’re
going back to work,” the president told them gleefully. In reality, the
guys in the room already had jobs, some as coal company executives. And
Trump’s order won’t fix their region’s unemployment problems. However,
the administration has indeed changed the world for some residents of
Appalachia, greatly improving their chances of living near a stream
filled with mining debris.
Jeanine Pirro
Unless
you are a very serious fan of Fox News, you probably never heard of
“Judge Jeanine,” a talk-show host with a scary vocal range. Until the
other day, when Trump urged his Twitter followers to watch Pirro’s show,
which featured a manic denunciation of Paul Ryan. Late-night comedians
had a field day and New Yorkers were reminded that this was the woman
who ran for New York State attorney general and got taped talking about
wiretapping the family boat to see if her husband was having an affair
with the wife of his defense lawyer.
Sean Spicer
Oh my God, poor Sean Spicer. You wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
Russia
Russians
worked hard to get Donald Trump elected president. And what did they
get out of it? Multiple high-level investigations. Enormous rancor in
Congress. Plus a drought of free food — no sane politician is going to
want to be seen having dinner with a Russian diplomat.
Really, these days in Washington you’d be much better off being a Mexican.
Michael Flynn
Of
all the American influence-peddlers who’ve been on the payroll of
Russian oligarchs, only one is currently seeking immunity before he
testifies at a congressional hearing. Remember when Flynn kept yelling
“Lock her up!” during the Republican convention? Hehehehehe.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 1, 2017, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: And Now, the Dreaded Trump Curse. Today's Paper|Subscribe
A caricature of President Trump on sale in Moscow.Credit
Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press
A
parrot flies out the window in Soviet Russia. The owner rushes to the
Moscow offices of the K.G.B., where he tells an agent: “I just want to
make clear that any views my parrot expresses are exclusively its own.”
We are not yet worrying about what our parrots might blurt out in Donald Trump’s America. But there are disturbing signs. This presidency is about the fear-driven closing of borders and minds.
In
his magisterial novel “Humboldt’s Gift,” Saul Bellow quotes Samuel
Daniel: “While timorous knowledge stands considering, audacious
ignorance hath done the deed.”
Audacious
ignorance is hard at work in the White House. The only solace is that,
with Trump, it’s accompanied by paralyzing incompetence.
In 1987, Trump took out a full-page ad
in The New York Times. It said: “The world is laughing at America’s
politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t
need, destined for allies who won’t help.” It concluded: “Let America’s
economy grow unencumbered by the cost of defending those who can easily
afford to pay us for the defense of their freedom. Let’s not let our
great country be laughed at anymore.”
That
was three decades ago. Trump won’t change. At 70 he’s what he was at 40
in crankier and bulkier form. His political formula was already clear:
mythical American humiliation calls for muscular American nationalism
led by a macho American savior. It was not very original, but then
forked human nature does not change.
Trump is still demanding
that allies pay up. Life has never been more than a zero-sum game for
him. He has not grasped that the stability and prosperity of Asian and
European allies of the United States contribute to American well-being
(like some $1.1 trillion of annual trade between the United States and
the European Union supporting about 2.6 million American jobs in 2014).
Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every
weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the
Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.
That same day in 1987, The Times ran a story
headlined “Trump Gives a Vague Hint of Candidacy.” America-first
economic and military nationalism was always going to be his theme. It
will define his presidency.
The
few adults in his circle, already weary of putting out fires caused by
foolishness, may be able to temper excesses here and there, but the
president sets the course. Time to start thinking about what a
post-American Europe and a post-American Asia will look like. One
certainty: They will be less stable. Another: Russia and China will assert broader, more exclusive spheres of influence.
Trump
sees moral equivalency between the United States and a Russian regime
that murders dissenting politicians in broad daylight, brutalizes its
opponents, hacks into the American election, and traffics in the
whopping lie. He is so beholden to, or seduced by, Vladimir Putin’s
Russia that he will not murmur criticism. Enough said. This is a moral
abdication of such proportions that America’s alliances are left without
ideological foundation. They must then wither.
At
night in the ghostly White House, when Ivanka and Jared have gone home,
and Trump’s consiglieri have retired to their Russian salads, the
gold-robed president — crazed as Lear on the cliffs “fantastically
dressed with wildflowers” — wanders from room to room staring at TV
screens, cursing in frustration when he cannot find the remote, hurling
abuse at the “enemies of the people” who fail to genuflect daily before
his genius, adjusting his hair, making random calls to aides to ensure
they have scheduled his next play dates with truckers and coal miners.
It
might almost be funny. Almost. But the day will come when the Dow
plunges and what the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is
said to have feared most in politics — “events, dear boy, events” —
occurs, perhaps in ghastly terrorist form, and an incoherent
administration will be confronted by its first crisis. All that can be
said for now is that, in such a moment, illiberalism and xenophobia in
the hands of a would-be autocrat will make for a dangerous brew.
Already,
in countless small ways, America is narrowing in ways that hurt it.
Foreign applications to U.S. colleges have dropped. USA Today reports that
“an inhospitable political climate could punch an $18 billion hole in
U.S. tourism by international visitors over the next two years.”
A
German associate professor of history at Indiana University who has
been in the country a couple of years on an H-1B work visa told me the
other day how alarmed her 10-year-old son had become because one of the
three Muslim children in his class had talked about the possibility of
having to leave. Her normally easygoing son had become anxious. Would
his family be next? When the class was given an assignment to complete a
sentence beginning “Keep calm” he wrote, “Keep calm and don’t kill
Donald Trump.”
A
“Foreigners Unwelcome” sign now hangs over Trump’s United States. It
causes fears even in children. It will not boost American jobs; on the
contrary.
A
parrot flew in my window and said, “America First! America First!” Its
views were exclusively its own, of course. Still, the parrot was so
agitated I decided to report the owner.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 1, 2017, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: The Parrot in Trump’s America. Today's Paper|Subscribe
After spending Friday searching for him, we met with Mayor Roger Claar
of Bolingbrook, Ill., at City Hall. He had been a bit difficult for us
to locate since a fund-raiser he helped organize for Donald J. Trump became an issue in the village’s mayoral race.
Mayor Roger Claar’s campaign office.Credit
Taylor Glascock for The New York Times
BOLINGBROOK,
Ill. —It was supposed to be an easy glide to yet another term for the
longtime mayor of this suburb of Chicago. But then Mayor Claar helped
throw the fund-raiser and things got complicated. Jackie Traynere, 54, a
labor organizer, is mounting an ambitious challenge against him. Here’s
the story of one village election on Tuesday that has become as much
about Mr. Trump as the candidates on the ballot.
•
Ms. Traynere was so mad about the fund-raising event last fall that she
decided to run against Mr. Claar. The Democratic apparatus in Illinois —
senators, members of Congress, you name it — is lining up behind her.
• Mayor Claar hadn’t answered our interview requests, so we had been hoping to catch up with him Friday.
•
Finally, we talked with him at City Hall — he does not regret the
fund-raiser, though he has been disappointed by the reaction.
Here’s how the search unfolded.
First up: visiting the “Rog Mahal.”
A little about Bolingbrook, 30 miles southwest of Chicago: About 74,000
people live here and it’s fairly diverse. The mayor’s race is
officially nonpartisan, and usually only several thousand people show up
to vote. But with a challenger to Mr. Claar and all the attention on
the race, this year could be different.
The
“Rog Mahal” — also known as the Bolingbrook Golf Club — was the scene
of the fund-raiser for Mr. Trump. It was built by the city for $36
million in 2002, according to The Chicago Tribune, and many people in
Bolingbrook see it as a sign of lavish excess.
Photo
Residents of Bolingbrook voted early in the mayoral race at the Fountaindale Public Library on March 24.Credit
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
ADVERTISEMENT
Next stop: Campaign headquarters.
Mayor
Claar’s election HQ is along a stretch of strip shopping centers,
tucked between an optometrist’s office and a cellphone store. Campaign
signs are plastered on the glass doors, and little wooden Uncle Sams
decorate the entry. Three workers are milling around. One of them: the
mayor’s wife.
Ms.
Claar was polite but said she had nothing to add about how the campaign
was going or why Mayor Claar might not want to meet. Onward.
It’s lunchtime in Bolingbrook.
Photo
Mayor Claar’s opponent, Jackie Traynere, a Democrat (in blue jacket), with supporters at Sophia’s House of Pancakes.Credit
Taylor Glascock/for The New York Times
Around
here, Mayor Claar has plenty of fans. Everyone seems to know him. He’s
been around through this village’s expansion. Subdivisions have replaced
cornfields. The population has almost doubled since 1990, and Mayor
Claar has been there through it all.
The mayor’s challenger says Trump’s rhetoric ‘doesn’t jibe with our town.’
At
Sophia’s House of Pancakes, Ms. Traynere is meeting with supporters
over club sandwiches and bowls of soup. She seems energetic and talks
fast, but she also says she’s starting to come down with a cold as her
campaign reaches the homestretch. Her complaints about her competitor,
the mayor? She says the village’s debt
is too high. She says he runs the whole village – top to bottom – and
that he can be a “bully.” But most of all, she says the Trump event
turned her stomach.
“Trump’s
own words,” she says are what threw some residents here for a loop.
Bolingbrook is 20 percent black, 25 percent Hispanic and 11 percent
Asian — a big change, she says, from when she was growing up here. “The
way he talks about minorities,” she says, “that’s not what we experience
in our community. That just doesn’t jibe with our town.”
She
goes on: “When people realize that that was the mayor who brought him
here, that definitely turned their head to think, ‘hmm, maybe I ought to
look at a few other things.’”
But
why is such an array of prominent Democrats lining up behind her for a
little municipal race? Critics say it seems a bit much.
Her
supporters don’t seem the least bit troubled by all the backing,
though. They’re thinking more about the mayor and the fund-raiser.
Off to City Hall — we need to find Mayor Claar.
ADVERTISEMENT
Finally, the mayor speaks.
After a wait in the lobby of Bolingbrook’s municipal building, Mr. Claar suddenly appears in the doorway.
Mayor Claar agreed to speak to us. “You walk in here and I’m supposed to come running. Well, let’s do it,” he said.Credit
Taylor Glascock for The New York Times
Mayor
Claar has gotten word of our search for him, and is actually clutching a
printout of the story we have been writing today. For the record, he
acknowledges that he has gotten our earlier phone messages and email
requests for interviews, but says that he simply had not wished to talk
to us. That said, he shows us to a conference room and patiently takes
more than half an hour of questions.
Photo
Mayor Claar in the meeting.Credit
Taylor Glascock for The New York Times
The
mayor says that the fund-raiser he helped throw for Mr. Trump is the
essential reason that he finds himself with such a hard-fought race. He
doesn’t regret the fund-raiser. Not at all, he says. But he adds: “I’m
disappointed that some people will take that one thing over 31 years and
that’s it.”
Monica Davey contributed reporting from Bolingbrook, Ill.
A version of this article appears in print on April 1, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Pro-Trump Mayor Runs for New Term (And From Us). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, leaving the Oval Office in February.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Ivanka Trump
and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, will
remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment
business still worth as much as $741 million, despite their new
government responsibilities, according to ethics filings released by the
White House Friday night.
Ms.
Trump will also maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in
Washington, D.C. The hotel, just down the street from the White House,
has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that foreign
governments or special interests could stay there in order to curry
favor with the administration.
It
is unclear how Ms. Trump would earn income from that stake. Mr.
Kushner’s financial disclosures say that Ms. Trump earned between $1
million and $5 million from January 2016 to March 2017, and puts the
value of her stake at between $5 million and $25 million.
The
disclosures were part of a broad, Friday-night document release by the
White House that exposed the assets of as many as 180 senior officials
to public scrutiny. The reports show assets and wealth that senior staff
members owned at the time they entered government service.
Those
disclosures were to include the assets of Gary Cohn, the former
president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. who now leads the National
Economic Council, and Stephen K. Bannon, the counselor to the president.
Mr.
Trump’s administration is considered the most wealthy in American
history, with members of his senior staff and cabinet worth an estimated
$12 billion, according to a tally by Bloomberg News. The Friday filings
will add voluminous detail to that top-line figure.
“I
think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see
today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that
the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and
this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very
successful,” the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said. White
House officials “have given up a lot to come into government by setting
aside a lot of assets.”
Until
January, Mr. Kushner was the chief executive of Kushner Companies, a
family-run real estate investment firm with holdings across the country,
a growing business that has taken part in at least $7 billion of
acquisitions over the past decade.
Late
Friday, the White House released details of the plan devised by his
advisers to avoid conflicts of interest between his government role and
the wide-ranging business empire Mr. Kushner ran with his father. That
business depends on foreign investment from undisclosed sources, as well
as billions of dollars in loans from the world’s biggest financial
services firms.
The White House also detailed the business interests of Ivanka Trump.
Although
Mr. Kushner has stepped down from his management positions at the more
than 200 entities that operated aspects of the family real estate
business, he will remain a beneficiary of the vast majority of the
business he ran for the past decade, through a series of trusts that
already owned the various real estate companies.
The
plan laid out on Friday “is not sufficient,” said Larry Noble, a former
general counsel and chief ethics office for the Federal Election
Commission. “While removing himself from the management of the
businesses is an important step, he is still financially benefiting from
how the businesses do. This presents potential for a conflict of
interest. Given his level in the White House and broad portfolio it’s
hard to see how he will recuse himself from everything that may impact
his financial interest.”
While
the filing discloses Mr. Kushner’s personal lenders, it does not
provide information on his business partners or lenders to his projects.
His
real estate firm has borrowed money from the likes of Goldman Sachs,
Blackstone, Deutsche Bank and the French bank Natixis. It also received
loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of
a United States Justice Department investigation into allegations that
it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes using undeclared accounts.
Most
recently, his firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan
was the subject of controversy: at about the time his father-in-law
received the Republican nomination last spring, Kushner’s firm began
conversations with a Chinese company with ties to some of the Communist
Party’s leading families about a plan to invest billions of dollars in
the troubled office tower.
Kushner
and the firm, Anbang Insurance Group, agreed to end the talks on
Wednesday after weeks of negative publicity about the deal, criticized
as a bailout of the Kushners. The building had already been rescued by a
number of prominent firms, including the private equity
giant Carlyle Group, and Zara, the Spanish fashion retailer founded and
owned by Amancio Ortega, one of the world’s wealthiest men.
Mr. Kushner has divested his stakes in any businesses connected to that property.
The
disclosures do not reveal the names of investors and lenders to
ventures that Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in. For example, the form
shows Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in a limited liability
corporation that owns a Trump-branded luxury rental high rise building
in Jersey City, worth as much as $5 million. That project was financed
with tens of millions of dollars from wealthy Chinese investors through a
controversial visa-for-sale program called EB-5.
However, the filing does not disclose the names of any of those investors — or partners in any of his other projects.
“We
don’t know who the business partners are in many of these investments,”
Mr. Noble said, “and those business partners may also have interests
that will be affected by how he advises the government. And that’s a
concern.”
“He
could have foreign business partners who have a real interest in
policy, and he may be advising the president on those policies,” Mr.
Noble added. “This is a dark area where we just don’t know what’s going
on.”
In all, the Kushner company owns more than 20,000 apartments and approximately 14 million square feet of office space.
Morning Briefing
Get what you need to know to start your day in the United States, Canada and the Americas, delivered to your inbox.
Previous
disclosures by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics showed that Mr.
Kushner divested his interest in several entities, mostly partnerships
connected to a venture capital firm run by his brother Joshua called
Thrive Capital, which invests in technology firms, including Instagram.
He
also shed his interests in a funds run by the private equity giant
Blackstone Group — whose chief executive officer Stephen A. Schwarzman
is a Trump economic adviser — as well as BlackRock, the world’s largest
asset manager.
Overall, he has shed his stakes in 58 businesses.
He
is still the sole primary beneficiary of the majority of the trusts
that will retain assets, with his children as the secondary beneficiary.
The
release Friday night is just the first step in the review for many of
these filings by the federal government. For the most senior White House
officials — Assistant to the President and Deputy Assistant to the
President, which is about 50 positions in total — these forms will be
sent to the Office of Government Ethics.
O.G.E.,
as it is known, will then review the forms to attempt to make sure the
disclosures are complete and identify potential conflicts of interest
that it sees, asking the White House staff members, through the White
House Counsel’s office, to take steps to address any of these
outstanding conflicts.
Only
then will these disclosures be “certified” by O.G.E. and then O.G.E.
will post the forms again, on its website, with changes that have been
made to address its concerns.
“OGE
has not certified these reports yet,” said Walter M. Shaub Jr.,
director of the United States Office of Government Ethics. “We will be
working closely with the White House to refine them and address any
questions we have about how they will handle potential conflicts of
interest.”
Government
Ethics had offered after Mr. Trump was elected to work more closely
with the White House, including perhaps sending some of its lawyers, who
are experts in the federal law governing conflicts, to the White House
to train staff there that would be involved in reviewing the financial
disclosure reports being filed by new White House employees. But the
Trump administration did not take up this offer, an O.G.E. spokesman
said Friday.
Mr. Shaub said the office is committed to seeing this process through.
“The
primary purpose of financial disclosure is to identify and resolve
conflicts of interest,” he said. “We take that responsibility seriously.
We are looking forward to working with the White House to help them
accomplish that goal.”
Mr.
Kushner was also required to submit some limited financial information
for his wife, Ivanka Trump, who will continue to receive payments from
the Trump Organization as well as her fashion brand.
Ms.
Trump, who now serves as an assistant to the president, resigned from
her leadership roles at both companies. Instead of performance-based
payments, Ms. Trump will now receive fixed payments from T International
Realty, the family’s luxury brokerage agency, as well as fixed fees
from two entities related to real estate projects, according to the
documents.
Ms. Trump had previously rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust,
which is overseen by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and
sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the
trust at more than $50 million.
The
brand is largely a licensing operation, meaning that it sells the use
of Ms. Trump’s name to partners who manufacture her clothes, shoes and
other accessories. Since it is privately held, little is known about the
company’s financials, but the Times has previously reported that revenues were roughly between $4 million and $6 million in 2013, before the debut of a major clothing partnership.
The
less senior White House staff whose disclosures are being released
today — which include Special Assistant to the President — are not
reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics, so in that case, it is only
the White House Counsel’s office that examines them to determine if
there are potential conflicts, and what steps employees must make to
sell assets, resign positions they might have or recuse themselves from
decisions.
Already,
a complaint has been filed against at least one White House staff
member, for taking actions that might benefit his own financial
interest. Christopher P. Liddell, who serves as an assistant to the
president and the director for strategic initiatives had served as the
chief financial officer of companies including Microsoft, International
Paper and General Motors before taking his White House job, and until
recently, he also owned stock in General Motors, according to forms that
have been filed, among more than 750 other companies.
But in late January and early February, according to a complaint that has been filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington,
Mr. Liddell participated in a series of meetings that involved several
of the companies that he still owned a total of about $2 million in
stock in, including International Paper, General Motors. Mr. Liddell,
according to disclosures, sold these stock holdings by mid-February.
“It
is Ethics 101 — the most basic thing you are not supposed to do: using
your official capacity to benefit your financial interest,” said Norman
Eisen, who served as a White House ethics lawyer during the Obama
administration and now is a co-chairman of the Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “And we are asking the question
of whether he has done that here.”
The White House did not respond Friday when asked about this complaint.
Rachel Abrams and Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.
Giselle Rios, a theater major
at California State University, Los Angeles, during the intermission of
“Zoot Suit,” by Luis Valdez.
LOS ANGELES — When “Zoot Suit” made its debut in New York in 1979, it was the first time a Chicano show had made it to Broadway. But the musical, by Luis Valdez,
was a distinctly Los Angeles production: It was commissioned by the
Mark Taper Forum and portrayed a 1940s murder trial involving
zoot-suit-wearing Mexican-American youths known as pachucos. The trial
is set against the backdrop of the infamous Zoot Suit riots, a series of
racially motivated attacks against Mexican-Americans in summer 1943.
To
help mark the Los Angeles Center Theater Group’s 50th anniversary, the
show returned recently to the stage here for the first time since 1978.
Tickets went on sale late last year and sold out quickly. The production
has since been extended three times, a rare occurrence at the theater.
The acclaim and the enthusiasm demonstrate that the play touches a deep
nerve in this city, particularly at another moment of political
upheaval.
Some
of the shows most devoted fans are showing up to the performances
dressed in their own zoot suits and vintage attire. We spoke to some of
them to find out what the play means to them. These interviews have been
condensed and edited.
Photographs by Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times
Luis Guerrero, 25, of Wilmington
Photo
Luis Guerrero, right, and Danny Flores dressed like pachucos.
When I first saw the movie
in high school I felt really inspired. The pachucos loved the United
States, but they did not want to give up their own culture. They created
this subculture that was mixing all these backgrounds and creating this
culture of resistance and their own identity. They were some of the
first people who stood up for the Chicano community. When I wear a zoot
suit I feel empowered, kind of like it’s a suit of armor. It’s not only
honoring those in the past, but it makes you look sharp even though it
doesn’t follow the norm of what a suit is supposed to look like.
Valerie Munoz, 51, of Riverside
Photo
Valerie Munoz cheered when an announcer asked if there were any native Angelenos in the theater.
You
can feel all of the racism, the oppression that we felt back then. Even
as a child growing up all over L.A., I remember going to school, I
remember not being able to speak my language. We were hit on the hand
with a ruler if we spoke Spanish. My mom was a pachuca, and before I saw
the play I would be very embarrassed, I would be ashamed of my own
skin. Then she took us to the play, and what stood out to me most was
that most of the audience was Anglo and they were shouting and embracing
what was going on. I remember feeling kind of proud, finally. I
thought, Wow, this is my culture and where we come from.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, left, and Maya Chinchilla.
The
show really fought against how Latinos were portrayed at the time, in
this one-dimensional stereotype of overly exaggerated criminal. These
were violent stereotypes that really didn’t treat them as humans and in
many ways that reflected society. Both in the 1970s and 1940s, Latinos
were portrayed as a scapegoat. Even now, it’s only once in a while that I
see Latinos as the primary characters who are more than
one-dimensional. The pachucos are somewhat involved in gang activity,
but that’s not even the primary story. Seeing this now is like hearing
from other generations. No matter what kind of negative experiences we
have, there’s a connection to a different style and flair, and it then
gets copied by the mainstream.
Photo
Cast members, from left: Raul Cardona, Melinna Bobadilla and Oscar Camacho.
Tanya Lara, 38, of Los Angeles
Photo
Tanya Lara, left, and Bertha Llamas.
My
father dressed in a zoot suit and later became an advocate for
immigration rights and participated in a lot of the picket lines for
unions. Our parents really helped us understand that nothing is free and
we’re not entitled to things, that it’s a privilege to be a citizen. It
was a little strange to see how similar it was back then as it is now.
The pachucos weren’t given a chance to prove themselves. Back then your
word wasn’t as valid, and you had to be careful what you signed. That’s
still what we see now, when we’re talking about deportations and
explaining why we are not a risk for others’ security.
Cathy Navarrette, 53, of Baldwin Park
Photo
Cathy Navarrette outside the Mark Taper Forum.
My
older brother made us go when it was here back in the ’70s. We were
just teenagers at the time, but once we got there we realized how hard
it was for the Latin community, for the people in our town. I saw my
parents differently at that time. They were born in an agricultural camp
in El Monte. Back then I don’t think I realized how discriminated
against they were. They couldn’t walk to the store without being looked
at differently. I never had to experience that. But right now, with the
Trump administration, I worry that we’re seeing some of that coming
back.
Photo
Fernando Luis of El Pachuco Zoot Suits, the company that made the suits for the show.
Leka Im, 33, of Los Angeles
Photo
Lekit Im, left, and her twin sister, Leka Im.
The
first time I saw the movie I was in high school and was immediately
obsessed. It just connected me to this history of Los Angeles I had
never heard before, even though I grew up here. The costuming is really
powerful. I always dress up in vintage, that’s my fashion sense. We
still have some of the same problems, with people assuming something
about you by the way you dress. Maybe it’s not as in your face, but
there’s racism, police brutality and the court system is not always
fair. We’ve definitely come far, but there are still a lot of problems.
This is something we all need to see to understand L.A.
Photo
Jimmy Gutierrez, center, of
East Los Angeles, who first saw “Zoot Suit” when he was 16, said the
musical “let me see how things were before my time.”NYT
Posts
