Day: October 23, 2017

The New York attorney general has opened an investigation into sexual harassment and possible violations of civil rights laws at the Weinstein Company, the movie studio co-founded by Harvey Weinstein, and sent the company a subpoena Monday, a source familiar with the investigation said.

The subpoena, which has not been made public, requests information regarding how each complaint related to sexual harassment or other discrimination was handled by the Weinstein Company, the person familiar with the probe said.

It also asks for management’s criteria for hiring, promoting, casting, rejecting or terminating applicants or employees, the person said. The source added that the New York subpoena is part of an investigation into whether executives at the company violated state civil rights or New York City human rights laws.

Harvey Weinstein was fired from the company earlier this month in the wake of media reports that he sexually harassed or assaulted women in incidents dating back to the 1980s.

Weinstein has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone. Reuters has been unable to independently confirm any of the allegations.

Representatives for the Weinstein Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In response to a request for comment on the investigation, the attorney general’s office emailed a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that said, “No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear.

“If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know.”  

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Weinstein, 65, had reached eight previously undisclosed settlements with women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact. The New Yorker magazine reported that 13 women had claimed that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them.    

The New York City Police Department has said it is investigating an allegation of sexual assault by Weinstein in 2004.  The Los Angeles Police Department also said earlier this month that it is investigating a 2013 sexual assault allegation against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
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Looking down from a small, five-seater airplane, Mikah Meyer felt lucky to be getting such a spectacular — and unique — perspective of some of America’s most beautiful and historic land and waterscapes.

Desert beauty

The national parks traveler was flying over and around Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service that stretches for hundreds of kilometers from the southwestern state of Arizona to southern Utah.

Mikah described the flight, courtesy of the tour company American Aviation, as “an amazing flyover where we got this bird’s-eye view of everything I was about to experience over the next few days.”

The park borders Navajo Indian territory. After the Cherokee, Navajos are the second-largest federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States, with more than 300,000 enrolled tribal members. And, Mikah noted, “as far as land square mileage goes, the Navajo Nation reservation is the largest.”

The “intimate Grand Canyon”

The area Mikah explored includes many sites that are sacred to the Navajos.

One of them – Horseshoe Bend, on the Colorado River –  is about eight kilometers from Grand Canyon National Park. It is named for the horseshoe-shaped area of the river, which winds around ancient sandstone canyons.

“It’s an incredible image,” Mikah said, where visitors can “stand right on the edge and see the entire horseshoe shape.”

Man-made wonders

Flying over Glen Canyon Dam, Mikah had a great view of both the Colorado River and behind it, Lake Powell, the largest man-made lake in North America.

Then it was on to an almost three-hour boat ride around the lake, where the gleaming water appeared against a backdrop of eroded red rock canyons and mesas as he and his tour group wound their way through the narrow waterways leading to the lake.

“You go into these super thin canyons where our large boat barely fit through,” he explained.

“What makes it so incredible is that there really aren’t any trees or anything around it. It was desert rock that was filled with water,” Mikah said. “And so you have this amazing stark contrast between this pure blue, and then these white, orange and red rocks right up against the water, for thousands of miles of shoreline…so the juxtaposition of colors is really incredible.”

Stone rainbow

The boat also gave him access to another important Native American site… Rainbow Bridge National Monument, which is administered by the National Park Service.

Known as one of the world’s largest known natural bridges — its thinnest point at the top is still 13 meters thick — the park service describes it as “a rainbow turned into stone.”

The span has undoubtedly inspired people throughout time — from the neighboring American Indian tribes who consider Rainbow Bridge sacred, to the 85,000 people from around the world who visit it each year.

“Native Americans believe it’s a portal to another world,” Mikah explained. So much so that no one is supposed to walk under or near the ancient structure.

Mikah related a story he read in the park’s brochure that described how former President Theodore Roosevelt, during an expedition with Navajo guides in 1913, “went under the bridge and the guides went around, and he realized he shouldn’t have gone underneath it.”

Maintaining a safe distance during his own visit to the site, Mikah said he felt honored to have had the chance to see it in person.

“We often forget that America is a country of rich, diverse religious traditions and so getting to hear the stories of these numerous Native American tribes that I encounter across the country is really fascinating,” he said.

Airborne attraction

After his Rainbow Bridge experience, Mikah took to the air again, this time in a helicopter. Thanks to Grand Canyon Helicopters, he was able to enjoy a close-up view of Tower Butte – an ancient structure which rises more than 300 meters above Lake Powell — another grand structure sacred to the Navajos.

“Tower Butte is named because it’s a very tall piece of rock that sticks out of kind of nothing,” Mikah explained. “It was something I’d seen from the water earlier in the day, you can see it from the airport, you can see it from the town; it’s a very striking feature from the city.”

But the “coolest” experience, he said, was landing on Tower Butte. “I felt much like a bird or Superman must feel because we were flying just a few hundred feet above things.”

“Apparently there had been two expeditions to try to climb it,” Mikah recounted, “and I think one was unsuccessful and one of them was successful but it was very tedious — so basically helicopter is the way.”

Spiritual cathedral

Not to be missed during his time in Arizona was another natural gem on the Navajo Reservation — Upper Antelope Canyon… which Mikah got to by foot.

Named for the herds of prong-horn antelope that once roamed the area, the ancient sandstone cavern isn’t a National Park Service site, but hundreds of thousands come to marvel at its sheer beauty each year.

Waterfalls of sand

“Upper Antelope Canyon was one of the most stunning canyons I’ve seen on this entire journey,” Mikah said. “The waves of water that must have worked their way through here to make these intricate shapes really is like nothing I’ve seen anywhere else in the country… so the fact that I got to experience it and see this raw, incredible beauty up close with my own eyes was a stunning experience.”

Indeed, Mikah, who’s on a mission to visit all 417 national parks in the U.S., shared that walking in the footsteps of Native Americans in so many areas of the desert landscape, was powerful.

“It was a privilege to be able to experience these sacred Native American sites and I’m thankful that the National Park Service preserves them in a way that allows myself and so many people to experience them.”

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website MikahMeyer.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

 
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The U.S. National Park Service helps preserve and protect some of America’s most beautiful and historic land and waterscapes for all to enjoy and learn from, including many sacred Native American spaces. National parks traveler Mikah Meyer got a chance to explore some of those sites — from a variety of perspectives – during a trip to Utah and Arizona. He shared highlights with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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A play parodying the lengths some Cubans will go to in order to earn a few tourist dollars set against the backdrop of socially critical graffiti is adding punch to Havana’s annual theater festival.

The first-time collaboration between veteran theater director Nelda Castillo, 64, and street artist Yulier Rodriguez, 27, underscores unease among some Cubans with the recent influx of tourists on the cash-strapped, Communist-run island.

The interdisciplinary spectacle, “¡Guan melÃn!, ¡tu melÃn!,” is also an example of the innovative ways Cubans are pushing the boundaries of critical expression.

Rodriguez’s eerie murals of creatures that look malnourished and malformed had become ubiquitous throughout Havana over the last three years, reflecting his view of the dark path upon which society was.

But the artist said authorities detained him for two days in August and ordered him to stop painting in public spaces.

Graffiti is seen as vandalism in many countries, although Rodriguez suspects authorities stopped him more because they did not like the content of his work.

“Now I am limited in what I can do in the streets, any space where I can exhibit my work becomes a space of resistance for me,” said Rodriguez.

Castillo, who often collaborates with visual artists, said she invited Rodriguez to paint the walls of the renowned El Ciervo Encantado theater because she knew his graffiti would enrich her play.

“The piece is about the Cubans’ struggle in the street in the context of the new relations with the United States and the influx of American visitors,” she said. “His work is also about that struggle in the street.”

In the play that was first staged last year, a skinny and squat comic duo attempt frantically to entertain tourists arriving on cruise ships with Cuban tunes and to sell them outsized cigars and paper cones of peanuts.

A student with a manic fake smile, rudimentary English and a hypersexualized walk sells chocolate and offers salsa lessons, city tours and cabaret acts “as way to make ends meet.”

In a beleaguered economy which shrank last year and where the average state salary is $30 a month, the tourist sector is a relative gold mine.

Castillo said Rodriguez’s graffiti – eerie, scared and hungry-looking creatures with four eyes, two gaping mouths or a crown of skulls – was like another protagonist in the play.

“Dialogue is always enriching as long as it is coherent,” said Castillo.

The two kept quiet about their collaboration until the day it opened to the public, at the start of the theater festival that runs from Oct. 20-29.

“Fingers crossed no one from up top orders the graffiti to be erased,” said Rodriguez.
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