Green chairs circle the basin at the Jardin des Tuileries, filled with people scrolling, reading, watching pigeons, or just sitting still.
This setup has barely changed in decades. The chairs are meant to be moved, claimed, and abandoned at will. No reservations, no obligation to buy anything, no rush to leave. It is one of the few places in central Paris where doing nothing is completely normal.
What you see here is daily life. Office workers on break, retirees passing time, tourists catching their breath. The garden works because it lets everyone slow down without asking why.
From Senegalese New Yorkers in Harlem to Ghanaians immigrants in the Bronx, New York City’s African communities bring life to all five boroughs, each and every day.
Today, I joined the Africa Center for their annual Africa Day celebration. It was a privilege to be surrounded by so much laughter, music, and history — and to honor these New Yorkers.
Le film Michael, biopic du célébrissime chanteur Michael Jackson, est une réussite artistique complète.
Il est aussi un modèle à imiter, un film comme on en faisait du temps des "vedettes", entre les années 30 et les années 50, dans la mesure où l'unique but du film est de faire rêver, en mythifiant du début à la fin son héros. Il ne se donne aucun autre objectif mais réussit là où il doit réussir. Il est exactement ce qu'on attendait de lui.
Il n'y a aucun second degré, tout est sincère, pas d'aigreur contre la société, pas d'arrière-pensée culpabilisante, etc. Tout le contraire du wokisme.
Pas de messages politiques de droite ou de gauche, pas d'égarements dans les polémiques sans fin, le réalisateur a eu le bon goût de focaliser sur l'Oeuvre (de Jackson) et sa construction. Tous les éléments fournis sur sa vie personnelle ont un sens narratif, et font comprendre comment un enfant doué peut devenir une star au destin unique.
L'interprétation de Jaafar Jackson est exceptionnelle, la mise en scène, au service de l'hommage, à la fois flamboyante et impersonnelle, pour ne pas faire d'ombre à la légende.
La droite artistique devrait regarder attentivement ce film. Voilà le genre de créations que nous devons produire (chacun fait avec son budget, certes...) Des productions qui arrivent à convaincre et émouvoir par leur seule qualité esthétique, qui ne délivrent pas grossièrement un message, et dont la forme EST le message.
De nombreux cinéastes auraient surfé sur la mode idéologique de l'époque pour en faire un pamphlet anti-Blancs et mettre les problèmes psychologiques de Jackson sur le dos du racisme systémique contre les Noirs, or, c'est à peine si le film y fait allusion. Une seule scène évoque la discrimination sans insister sur ce point (et il ne s'agissait pas d'une invention scénaristique, mais factuellement d'une discrimination - MTV ne diffusait pas de chanteurs noirs avant MJ.)
L'antagoniste, si on veut en trouver un, est le père, le dictateur des Jackson Five en quelque sorte, mais il est aussi présenté comme celui qui a forcé le "King of pop" à épouser son sort et à s'abandonner entièrement dans la musique.
Michael est plus qu'un cadeau fait au fan de Michael Jackson, c'est une ode à la création, au dépassement de soi et à la résilience. J'ai adoré ce film et je vous le conseille.
Today we announced the most ambitious housing plan in our City's modern history: Block by Block.
We're building 200,000 new affordable homes. We're overhauling code enforcement. We're cracking down on bad landlords. We're creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. We're building new paths to homeownership. We're investing $5.6 billion in NYCHA — the largest City capital investment in recent history.
New York is facing a historic housing crisis. We're pursuing a historic solution.
All hands on deck. All-of-the-above. All for New York City.
Read more: https://t.co/mXQygXU3mE
BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani enrages MAGA by rolling out historic changes to New York housing and declaring that "every person deserves a dignified home."
This mayor is quickly cementing a generational legacy...
"We will prove that government can deliver on the solutions to the toughest problems, not just debate them. I will close with this. So often when confronted with intractable challenges, the world has looked to New York City to show the way," Mamdani said at an event touting his new initiatives.
Those initiatives include dramatic changes to zoning and land use that will tackle the "inequitable" status quo that allows wealthier neighborhoods to stop development of housing in their areas — keeping out so-called "undesirables" while exacerbating the housing shortage. Mamdani's administration is also exploring ways to build new housing near public transit, adopting a broad, wholesale approach to the problem. His goal is to construct 200,000 affordable homes over the next ten years.
"We have built great things before. Skyscrapers that rise into the clouds, grand bridges, libraries and museums, the most ambitious public housing developments in the nation, a team that can come back from 22 points with a little more than six minutes left in the first game," Mamdani continued. "Block by block, we will build once again.
"And we will prove that the belief we hold, that every person deserves a dignified home, is more than an ideal. It is a responsibility that government can and that government will fulfill. Beginning today, we will no longer speak in the language of promise," he said. "We will speak in the language of present. We will build more homes. We will protect tenants."
It was the part about "deserving" a home that has struck a nerve with a certain segment of the online right. Conservatives lose their minds over the mere suggestion that government might actually govern to improve the lives of the American working class. More to the point, they're terrified that a Democratic Socialist like Mamdani is succeeding because it means his politics might spread beyond New York City.
"We will deliver record funding to NYCHA," the mayor added. "Let the largest city in the nation deliver the largest municipal housing transformation this country has ever seen. With a history like the one that we have in this city, it is tempting to believe that New York City's best days are behind us. "But we know that that is not the case. They are waiting to be built. So let us build them together, block by block.
"Now, in the words of Milwaukee Mayor Emil Seidel, a sewer socialist himself, let's go after it and get it!" he concluded.
Republicans like Trump are happy to sit back as the housing crisis worsens. Democratic Socialists like Zohran Mamdani are taking the problem on directly!
Please ❤️ and share if you're a big fan of Zohran Mamdani!