The Mariachi Garibaldi de Jaime Cuéllar offered a fresh take on a Disney classic in a new We are mitú video.

The Los Angeles ensemble performed a timely Mariachi-style rendition of “A Tale As Old As Time” from “Beauty and the Beast.” The remake, which comes just days before the live action film is set to premiere, replaces the film’s iconic dance scene with a version choreographed by Los Angeles’ Ballet Folklorico Company.

The video, posted Tuesday, has nearly 6 million views on Facebook. Fans of the original Disney animated film will notice how the video recreates the scene, from the iconic yellow dress Belle wears to the two dancers bowing at the top of a staircase.

Here’s the original scene from the 90’s Disney version for comparison.

Watch the full Mariachi version of the scene above.

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Eddie Huang kept it raw and real while discussing the stigma around male body insecurity in a new interview with GQ.

The Fresh Off the Boat author and restaurateur revealed his own struggle with body-image issues as he spoke to the outlet last week about his new gig as an underwear model for MeUndies.

Huang was particularly open about how difficult it was for him, as an Asian-American male, to discuss the topic.

“For me, there were three things I was negative about: my height, my weight and how my face looked. Down South, kids were very racist; they would always make Ching Chong Eddie Huang jokes, call me ‘chinky eye,’ all that stuff,” he said. “A lot of times, as a man, you don’t feel empowered or enabled, or you’re not given the opportunity to speak about negative body image or how insecure you are about the way you look.”

Huang also explained how Pandamonium, the underwear design he worked on with MeUndies, is really about promoting body positivity. While women’s body image issues are often discussed in the media, he said, the same thing isn’t quite true for men.

The author recalled how the insecurities surrounding his weight first set in when trying out for football in the fifth grade. But his body image issues didn’t stop at his waist size. Huang also revealed he felt particularly self-conscious about his appearance due to the way the people often see Asian men ― undesirable and not masculine enough. 

“I remember I was reading Maxim in high school, and they were like, the average penis size is six inches, I went to my room and measured, and I was dead on six inches. I was like, I’m average!” he said. “I think Asian men, we wonder about this, like, is our shit okay, because everyone says it’s going to be dog food.”

"For me, there were three things I was negative about: my height, my weight, and how my face looked."

Huang also addressed his rebuttal to Steve Harvey’s jabs at Asian men, delivered on Harvey’s talk show in January. The author added that he had been speaking for “a lot of Asian-American men, and also any race, color, or creed that doesn’t fit the checklist” in his New York Times essay.

Though male body image issues aren’t too often discussed, many men often deal with body insecurities. One study published last year found that men are almost as likely as women to experience extreme dissatisfaction with their appearance and weight. Earlier this year, Time magazine reported that mainstream media has only exacerbated the issue. 

“If you think about the changes over the last 30 to 45 years in how men are depicted in Hollywood, cartoons, magazines and action toys, you’ll see that men’s bodies [today] appear much more muscular,” Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at Massachusetts’ McLean Hospital, told the outlet.

However, as Huang pointed out, people are hesitant to address self-image problems in men. The National Eating Disorders Association even notes that studies on males with eating disorders are “elusive.” Many have written off eating disorders as a “women’s problem,” sometimes leaving men to go undiagnosed. And those men who speak out about the issue can be subjected to criticism.

“The stereotypical person with anorexia nervosa is a rich, white, adolescent girl; which is far from reality,” the association wrote, adding, “Men can face a double stigma, for having a disorder characterized as feminine or gay and for seeking psychological help.” 

It doesn’t help that Hollywood makes these insecurities all the more difficult for Asians, a group that rarely sees themselves represented on-screen, having made up just 3.9 percent of speaking roles in 2015’s top movies. 

As comedian Aziz Ansari explained last year, even when Asian actors get parts, they’re rarely cast as desirable love interests.

“A lot of times when people write for Indian actors or Asian actors or anybody somewhat different, it is insulting because they have a certain view of, ‘Oh, this is how that person can help our plot. Oh, this Indian guy, let’s put him in the cab or in the market. Let’s not make him the guy who is this woman’s love interest,’ he said, “’Let’s get the white guy for that, of course.’”

That portrayal perpetuates the stereotype that Asian men just aren’t attractive, leading to the kinds of issues with which Huang and others have struggled.

Check out Huang’s full GQ interview here.

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Three Chicago high school students wrote a heartfelt open letter to Chance the Rapper thanking him for his service to the community and praising him for being an inspiration.

The letter, which was published by Billboard on Wednesday, was written by Alex Rojas, Alondra Cerros and Annelisse Betancourt, all of whom attend Lake View High School. The students expressed their gratitude for the rapper’s $1 million donation to Chicago Public Schools earlier this month, thanking him for financially supporting a school system that has been plagued with issues.

“As we all know, CPS has been struggling financially, and your donation has really given us a push to get to where we need to be and possibly motivate others to give back to the community as well,” the students wrote. “This is only one of the many things that you have done to improve our Chicago.”

The students say that the great work Chance is doing doesn’t go unnoticed. They go on to explain exactly why he means so much to them, highlighting his humility and empathy for young people of color. 

“You’re more than just an artist to us, you are a way of life."
Alex Rojas, Alondra Cerros and Annelisse Betancourt

“We thank you for supporting Chicago’s minority youth when not many others have put time to think about the kids,” they wrote. “As minority students we feel ignored and as though we don’t have enough support from bigger influences like you.”

“You’re more than just an artist to us, you are a way of life,” they added. “You make music that we can relate to on many levels, because you know what living in Chicago is like, and you want to make changes in the city.”

In one particularly sobering part of the letter, the students write about the difficulty of growing up in Chicago and cite statistics about the city’s frighteningly high levels of gun violence. They acknowledged Chance’s past efforts to help cut down crime in the city and thanked him for “not forgetting where you came from and helping the city of Chicago in more ways than just being an inspirational rapper.”  

“Being born and raised in Chicago is not easy at all. There are so many stereotypes and restrictions we have as teenagers due to the frequent violence and crimes,” the students wrote. “You and your music have taught us that you can be true to yourself and still be successful, still be self-made.”

Chance wrote a response to the letter Wednesday, expressing his appreciation and sharing some more good news: 

To read the full letter, head to Billboard.

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Chelsea Clinton was raised by one of American history’s most influential women. Now, she is honoring some of the many other female pioneers who paved the way for women in politics and more.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Clinton is slated to release a children’s picture book titled She Persisted, an homage to 13 American women who overcame personal and societal hurdles to achieve their dreams, including Harriet Tubman, Maria Tallchief, Claudette Colvin, Oprah Winfrey and Sonia Sotomayor. The book will be illustrated by Alexandra Boiger.

Clinton’s title recalls the now-iconic words used by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as he attempted to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) while she read Coretta Scott King’s takedown of then–attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, who was later confirmed, in February.

“Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech,” McConnell said later, when describing the evening’s events. “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” 

“Persistence has changed the course of history ― I’m so excited to share stories of girls & women who didn’t take no for answer on May 30!” Clinton wrote on Twitter alongside an image of the book’s cover, featuring three girls occupied by various pursuits. 

The phrase “she persisted” has become a rallying cry for women who felt they had been judged, demeaned, silenced or attacked for pursuing their rights ― but who still managed to keep going. 

“I wrote this book for everyone who’s ever wanted to speak up but has been told to quiet down, for everyone who’s ever been made to feel less than,” Clinton said in a statement issued by the publisher, Penguin Young Readers.

“The 13 women in She Persisted all overcame adversity to help shape our country — sometimes through speaking out, sometimes by staying seated, sometimes by captivating an audience. With this book, I want to send a message to young readers around the country — and the world — that persistence is power.”

The book will also feature a cameo by “another important female figure,” according to EW. The suspense is just paralyzing. 

She Persisted lands in bookstores May 30. 

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This “Beauty and the Beast” medley will have you dancing all the way to the movie theater.

Brigham Young University’s all-male a capella group, BYU Vocal Point, teamed up with singer Lexi Mae Walker for the video, which they posted online Monday.

Check out the clip above, in which they sing their way through some of the movie’s most memorable numbers ahead of the Friday premiere of Disney’s live-action remake.

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Adam Levine is taking fatherhood very seriously.

Appearing on “The Tonight Show” on Tuesday, he told host Jimmy Fallon that he and his wife, Behati Prinsloo, are in a little competition over their daughter’s first word.

The couple welcomed Dusty Rose Levine in September, and ever since then, it’s been a battle for the baby’s affection ... or at least her vocabulary. The Maroon 5 frontman said he’s hoping his daughter will say “dada” before “mama.”

“I’ve been working ‘dada’ hard,” Levine explained. “You work on it really hard and you slip it into every single thing you say. If she’s being cute, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God! Look at how cute you are! Dada!’” 

Meanwhile, Prinsloo is not holding back either. “My wife is working ‘mama,’ so it’s like, it’s a battle to the finish,” the dad said. 

Levine’s endeavor surely has support from Fallon, who famously wrote Your Baby’s First Word Will Be DADA.

During the interview, the singer also opened up about how much he’s loving being a father to Dusty Rose. Parenthood is “so fun,” he said, adding, “I do new stuff all the time. It’s constantly entertaining, the greatest thing in the world.”

We’ll check back with Adam when Dusty Rose hits the terrible twos ...

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Isaiah Acosta is proof you don’t need a voice to be heard. 

The 17-year-old Arizona native, who was born without a jaw or pathways for oxygen to enter his body, is the subject of a recent viral documentary short produced by Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

The six-minute film captures Acosta fulfilling his dream of becoming a rapper despite being mute.

“Everything in his body is a mirror image, flipped backwards. His stomach, his heart, I mean everything,” Acosta’s mom, Tarah, explains in the documentary. “I was told he wasn’t going to walk, talk, pretty much be bed bound. I mean, every day we wake up, we’re lucky that he’s here.”

Acosta can’t speak but communicates with the help of his smartphone and unique gestures. His principal, friends and family describe him as sociable. His mother also says he’s unashamed of his appearance. 

“He’s not scared to be rejected; I mean, Isaiah has been offered a jaw for a few years. He doesn’t want it,” his mother said, explaining that the cosmetic jaw wouldn’t have brought him a better quality of life. 

The documentary also shows how Acosta is able to record his first rap single “Oxygen to Fly” thanks to Phoenix rapper Tikey Patterson, aka Trap House. The lyrics, written by Acosta, are about overcoming his struggles and doubts to survive. Trap House voices the words on the track and in the music video.

“My songwriting started with my emotions, what I’ve been through, what I still go through,” Acosta told The Huffington Post via email. “I wanted people to hear me out for me.”

The teen says he also wanted to help others who are mute and the kids at Children’s Miracle Network. “We all are somebody,” he said.

Acosta was a speaker at this year’s South by Southwest after the documentary and his story went viral. “Oxygen to Fly” is currently available on iTunes, Spotify or at oxygentofly.org, and every download makes a donation to Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

“Please get involved in your Children’s Miracle Network Hospital help keep [making] miracles like me keep going in life,” Acosta wrote under Upworthy’s Facebook post of the video, which went viral. “Do something nice for someone. If you come across a mute person don’t be mute on them, talk to them.”

Watch his full documentary below. 

This article has been updated with quotes from Acosta. 

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Photographer Tom Atwood wanted to his new book to capture George Takei, John Waters, Meredith Baxter and a host of other LGBTQ newsmakers in a more intimate light than ever before. 

So Atwood visited each of his famous subjects in their respective homes for Kings & Queens in Their Castles, which hits retailers April 25. The finished collection, he said, took 12 years to complete and required him to travel to 30 states across the country. 

“The primary responsibility I felt was to portray subjects as they truly are, how they really live… to capture moments that reflect their everyday lives,” Atwood told The Huffington Post. “A lot of LGBTQ photography depicts scantily-clothed young subjects and seems to emphasize nudity and sexuality. I wanted to offer a different perspective.”

Many of Atwood’s subjects, such as former U.S. congressman Barney Frank and Fun Home author and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, reside far from the urban confines of New York and Los Angeles. As time-consuming as the travel was, Atwood said he didn’t want geography to limit the scope of the subjects he included, and ultimately, he found each home as fascinating as its occupant. 

The photographer, who resides in New York, may have picked up some decor and style tips along the way, too. “Many gay men and women have a flair for design and have crafted some of the most intriguing living spaces in this country, which appealed to me aesthetically,” he told HuffPost. “For a community sometimes obsessed with image and beauty, our living spaces can also be the ultimate in self-expression... many of these subjects have crafted playful, often outlandish homes that tell stories about their inhabitants.” The book’s allusion to royalty, he said, was meant as a tongue-in-cheek metaphor. Still, he added, “Many of the subjects are ‘kings or queens’ of their professions — leading actors, writers, designers, politicians or journalists.” 

Atwood, who cited Simen Johan, Arnold Newman and David LaChapelle as artistic influences, said President Donald Trump’s rise to power makes the Kings & Queens in Their Castles “all the more necessary.” For those who support Trump, he hopes the book “reminds them that there are LGBTQ folks living in their communities who are just like them in many ways.”

Check out some photos from Kings & Queens in Their Castles below. You can read more about Atwood’s work on his official website, as well as Facebook and Twitter. 

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On May 1, 1969, Fred Rogers stepped before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communication and explained what exactly his job entailed.

Rogers, the man behind the PBS show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” had gone to Washington, D.C., to defend public television from budget cuts. President Richard Nixon had proposed slashing funding for programming such as Rogers’ in half as the war in Vietnam raged on.

Sitting in front of Sen. John O. Pastore, the chairman of the subcommittee, Rogers didn’t get bogged down in budgetary minutia. Instead, he talked about what he hoped to accomplish with his show. He used it, he said, to help children learn to deal with their problems in a healthy manner ― to instill a sense of confidence in the kids he worked with and who watched him. He used simple sentences and simple words to get his point across:

This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger ― much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire.

After telling Pastore what he did, Rogers decided to show him as well. 

“Could I tell you the words of one of the songs, which I feel is very important?” he asked. “This has to do with that good feeling of control which I feel that children need to know is there. And it starts out, ‘What do you do with the mad that you feel?’”

He then recited its words:

What do you do with the mad that you feel? When you feel so mad you could bite. When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong, and nothing you do seems very right. What do you do? Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag or see how fast you go? It’s great to be able to stop when you’ve planned the thing that’s wrong. And be able to do something else instead ― and think this song ―

“I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime ... And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there’s something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.”

Pastore, who had never seen Rogers’ show, was visibly touched by the speech.

“I’m supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I’ve had goose bumps for the last two days,” he said. “Looks like you just earned the $20 million.”

Rogers’ speech became one of the most iconic moments in the history of public media. But hidden within it was Rogers’ quiet acknowledgement that shows such as his would face trouble in the free market. 

“We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to ... make drama on the screen,” he said. “We deal with such things as getting a haircut.”

For anyone who grew up with Mr. Rogers on the screen, it’s not hard to decipher what the ever-optimistic man was actually saying. Rogers knew his haircut discussion could excite children once he was in front of them, but he also knew it would be hard to compete for their attention as on-screen violence and special effects became ever more present outside of public media. 

I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.
Fred Rogers in 1969

Rogers died in 2003, but public media has continued to provide educational programming that remains trustworthy and popular. NPR ratings reached an all-time high last fall. A bipartisan polling team found earlier this year that 73 percent of all Americans ― including more than 60 percent of Republicans ― opposed eliminating federal funding for public television. 

Nevertheless, on Thursday, President Donald Trump went even further than Nixon did in 1969. The president’s budget plan proposed pulling all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS. The CPB receives about $485 million annually from the U.S. government, much less than $54 billion Trump hopes to add to the defense budget. 

There would be significant consequences if such a decision went through, according to Patricia Harrison, the president and CEO of CPB.

“The elimination of federal funding to CPB would initially devastate and ultimately destroy public media’s role in early childhood education, public safety, connecting citizens to our history, and promoting civil discussions ― all for Americans in both rural and urban communities,” she said Thursday. 

Free-market proponents have long argued that eliminating such educational shows would be fine. If “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” can’t survive in the free market, they say, maybe it shouldn’t be able to survive at all. But to many other people, the educational programs provided by public media ― programs that might not be able to otherwise compete with the empty calories available on other channels ― remains inarguably valuable. 

Mr. Rogers is gone now. When the time comes later this year to eloquently argue for public media, he won’t be there to save the day. Of course, the question then becomes: Who will?

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President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2018 arrived in the night, and it’s a doozy.

Arts advocates have particular reason to be outraged. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities are among 19 bodies slated to be defunded entirely under Trump’s proposal, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

When reports initially surfaced in January that the NEA and NEH might be targeted for elimination, arts advocates pushed back, noting that the two agencies combined only account for a fraction of 1 percent of the budget while providing irreplaceable support for local arts, culture and education programs around the country.

In fiscal year 2015, NEA grants reached every county in the country, many through partnerships. State and local arts organizations partially depend on federal funding to sustain accessible arts programs throughout the country ― not just in major metropolitan areas. The NEA targets roughly half of its grants to programs that will reach underserved communities through arts and literacy education, local theater and performance, and radio and TV broadcasts of arts programming. 

Meanwhile, the NEH worked directly and with local agencies to support the preservation of American history and culture, funding projects such as the digitization of the Hellen Keller Archives and the preservation of aging wax cylinder recordings of Native American languages and song.

Weeks prior to the release of Trump’s budget proposal, arts advocacy groups scrambled to defend the institutions’ value, not only culturally but economically, as the funding also stimulates the arts marketplace.

The NEH supports “humanities work in small towns all around the country,” Stephen Kidd, the executive director of the National Humanities Alliance, told HuffPost in January. Whether the organization is providing crucial funding to local historical societies preserving pockets of American history, ensuring students have access to decades of newspaper articles for research, or helping veterans cope with war trauma through literature, Kidd said, “there really aren’t other funders out there that are supporting that kind of work on that kind of scale.”

PEN America director Suzanne Nossel agreed, telling HuffPost that the agencies “fund things that can’t attract for-profit dollars,” ensuring that culturally significant arts organizations aren’t utterly dependent on attracting philanthropic contributions from wealthy donors.

Both the NEA and NEH had remained publicly optimistic and refrained from what the agencies termed “speculation” on federal appropriations for 2018. 

However, upon the release of the president’s budget proposal, NEA chairman Jane Chu noted in a statement that “[a]s a federal government agency, the NEA cannot engage in advocacy, either directly or indirectly.” Nonetheless, she commented that the institution is “disappointed ... we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every Congressional District in the nation.”

In a separate statement, NEH chairman William D. Adams commented, “We are greatly saddened to learn of this proposal for elimination ... But as an agency of the executive branch, we answer to the President and the Office of Management and Budget.”

Though the endowments themselves cannot advocate, advocacy groups are amping up their mobilization.

“The elimination of the NEA and the NEH under the proposed federal budget would be a betrayal of the U.S. government’s long history of bipartisan support for innovation in the arts and for groundbreaking research, and could threaten the future of some of the most treasured national institutions,”  PEN America’s Nossel stated Thursday in a press release urging continued action.

Approval of a federal budget ultimately falls to Congress, not the president. Though both houses are currently held by the president’s own party, many Republicans in the House and Senate have already voiced discomfort with elements of his proposed budget. And while the NEH and NEA have previously been targeted for elimination by right-wing politicians, they have always enjoyed enough bipartisan support to escape the axe.

Advocates now hope that the same will hold true in congressional battles over the final fiscal year 2018 budget. It takes effect Oct. 1.

Every Friday, HuffPost’s Culture Shift newsletter helps you figure out which books you should read, art you should check out, movies you should watch and music should listen to. Sign up here.

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The day Donald Trump announced his first travel ban, affecting entry into the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries, Bassel Almadani made a sign that read, “My Syrian father delivered 3,000 U.S. babies,” and headed to the airport.

The frontman of the soul group Bassel & The Supernaturals comes from a family of immigrants and wants to honor his heritage through both protest and performance. He’s one of eight artists participating in a South by Southwest show organized to represent each of the countries affected by Trump’s ban.

“I can’t forget the fact that I’m a product of Syrian immigrants. My family would not be in the same circumstance if this ban was in place when they were making the moves that they needed to in order to be here,” Almadani told The Huffington Post.

This isn’t Almadani’s first act of musical protest. In February, he worked with Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network to organize a show called Refugee Remix. There, he met Libyan-American hip-hop artist Khaled M., who will also perform at SXSW’s Contrabanned show.

The lineup was released on March 8, two days after Trump’s revised travel ban was announced.

“Music has always been a medium for celebrating love and unity, but it is also a powerful vehicle for addressing social and political injustice in a way that builds up communities instead of turning them against one another,” the festival’s site reads.

The show was announced shortly after SXSW issued an invitation letter and performance agreement that was criticized as threatening towards immigrants. The festival has since amended its language and issued an apology.

Now, along with a pop duo from Somalia and Canada, three Iranian performers, and artists from  Libya and Iraq, Almadani and his band will play funky soul music from its new album, “Elements,” for attendees in Austin.

“Soul music is effective, when you create that emotional connection to your audience. It creates a personality, especially for an issue that feels so distant for people,” Almadani said. “As someone who was born and raised in the States, and plays a more traditionally American style of music, I feel like I have an ability to have a conversation with a demographic who otherwise maybe isn’t hearing enough of it, or doesn’t have a lot of great resources around this issue.”

While many of Almadani’s songs aim to comment on loss, isolation and recovery more broadly, he’s also written songs directly about his relatives in Syria. His song “Lost” is an ode to his cousin, who was killed by crossfire in Syria.

“That was a really difficult circumstance for me to wrap my head around,” Almadani said. “Especially because I wasn’t there, or able to contribute to anything. It was hard to find a sense of closure or peace through any of it.”

But through his music, he was able to, and he hopes his lyrics resonate with all listeners who have lived through personal loss. 

“Lost” is also the name of a 2016 EP released by Faarrow ― Somalian-Canadian sisters Siham and Iman Hashi, who write soulful pop songs featuring African percussion.

“Because of our story, being former refugees, the entire theme of our EP is an underdog story,” Iman told HuffPost. But the sisters want the whole of their identities ― as immigrants, as women, as emphatic fans of pop greats like Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston ― to be communicated in their songs.

“Our mom was playing pop music since we were born. Michael Jackson was our everything. If we weren’t listening to Somali music, we were listening to pop music,” Siham said.

Although their interest and talent was evident from an early age, the duo was discouraged from pursuing a career in music.

“It really wasn’t a possibility in our minds, because the culture that we come from. We just thought it was something that was never going to happen, it was so out of reach,” Siham said. “We’re the black sheep of the family. We’re the only ones who decided to take the musical, artistic route.”

While Siham and Iman avoid overtly political song lyrics ― the band’s upbeat sound is meant to inspire and unite listeners ― their success has provided them with a platform to discuss their politics, and call attention to issues that matter to them, including the drought that is currently ravaging Somalia.

“Everything that’s going on this country, and everything that’s going on in Somalia, it just ― it’s kind of crazy,” Iman said. “What is really the most important thing, to us as humans? We’re preventing people from coming here, that are in such dire situations. And we’re focused on banning them for reasons that aren’t even real. I feel like it’s our duty and responsibility to always talk about it.”

In addition to performances by the participating bands, SXSW’s Contabanned showcase will feature a panel discussion centered on the travel ban. The event is organized by Tamizdat, globalFest, and PRI’s The World.

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Third grade teacher Malinda Williams has a special way of inspiring her students.

Williams, who has been an educator for 21 years, currently teaches at Baldwin Hills Elementary in Los Angeles, California, where she’s made a name for herself with the annual Motown revue show she organizes.

Each year, students in different grade levels pay tribute to hits of the 60s and 70s with creative costumes and choreography. Through these performances, Williams and her students have gained internet fame, raised thousands of dollars for arts education, and even attracted the attention of a few celebrities.

“Motown music and old school R&B music were consistently played in my house growing up. I fell in love with it,” Williams told The Huffington Post. “Once I became an educator, I felt compelled to share what I learned growing up with my students.”

The teacher said she hoped they would fall in love with that period of music as well. “I wanted them to know about a time when music could be enjoyed amongst grandparents, parents, and children alike,” she explained. “The lyrics are clean for the most part, and the music is that of quality. Actual people played the instruments, and the singers were naturally talented. Technology was not heavily relied upon.”

With some help from parents and faculty, Williams choreographs dances and designs costumes for an annual “Sounds of Motown” show, which has gained widespread attention thanks to a few viral videos of the performances.

Williams said the seeds for the Motown revue show were planted back in 1996 when she was first looking for teaching jobs. “One of the interview questions was, ‘Besides teaching, what else could you offer our students?’” she recalled.

Her response was simple: Dance. Though Williams’ dance background was limited to classes she took in middle and high school, she channeled that experience and her “intrinsic love and passion for dance” into choreographing routines for Baldwin Hills Elementary’s holiday performances, Black History Month programs and multicultural events.  

For one Black History Month program, the teacher taught a group of boys a dance to “My Girl” by The Temptations. The number was a hit, leading many parents and faculty to suggest that she organize a full Motown show.

Shortly after that performance, budget cuts put the school at risk of losing its music teacher. As an advocate of the arts, Williams was determined to raise the money needed to keep the teacher’s position. She decided to plan a Motown revue fundraiser.  

Williams started working on the fundraiser in October 2013. While she had many female students who were enthusiastic about dance, she had trouble finding boys to participate at first.

“None of them had ever taken a dance class, and I had to coach them to not only perform well, but to take on the personae of whomever they were portraying,” she recalled, adding that she taught the boys to replicate performances from acts like The Temptations, The Jackson 5, The Four Tops, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.

The whole process was an educational experience. “The students either didn’t know, or knew very little about the Motown artists, so with each group, we went online and watched footage of each act, paying attention to the smallest of details,” Williams said. 

“They were increasingly motivated and excited to perform,” she continued. “They studied independently, and would come to the following rehearsal with an added detail to improve their performance, such as my student who did Stevie Wonder with his signature head sway, or the smooth moves and precision of The Temptations.”

The show finally took place in May 2014 and was a huge success. The seven months of hard work were “so worth it,” Williams said. The 200-person auditorium hit full capacity, and they had to add more shows due to the high demand for encore performances. Videos from the show went viral, and they ultimately raised the money to retain the school’s music teacher.

The following year, Williams organized a slightly scaled back Motown revue. The teacher recreated the choreography of a dance to pay tribute to New Edition. That video went viral as well, and New Edition’s manager reached out to invite the boys to perform with the group at a live concert. 

The family of Motown Records founder, Berry Gordy, also reached out to ask the mini Temptations to perform at a family fundraiser. Gordy attended the event as well, creating another special memory for Williams’ students. 

“I am really proud of the fact that these are just regular children,” she said. “A few of the girls take dance classes, but other girls and all of the boys found their raw performance talent through the shows we performed.”

Though there are many small mistakes throughout the dance numbers, Williams believes the most important thing is the pure joy the kids exhibit every time. “Their families are rooting them on as these children with no prior experience give their performance 100 percent,” she said. “Every part of their being is left on that stage.”

The teacher also noted that the Motown shows help her students learn about music history, dance, performance, backstage etiquette, stage presence, self-confidence and more. With their viral videos, the kids have also witnessed the positive impact their work can have on others. 

“They have brought smiles on faces of people that they will never see, and other educators have shared with me that my work has inspired them to share their gifts with their students,” said Williams.

On a more personal level, Williams said she’s learned the power of embracing and sharing your passions. “I am a woman of size, and I don’t look like your typical choreographer,” she explained, adding that she had to overcome her own insecurities to help her students follow their dreams and pursue creative projects.

“So when people see my students dancing, and comment with such positive feedback, I feel honored and proud,” she said. “I want them to have a brief escape from whatever troubles they may be facing.” 

Williams has received messages from people saying videos of her students brought them joy in challenging times. One man told her his wife watched the performances from her hospital bed while battling cancer.  

“He later thanked me after she unfortunately passed away, saying that he was happy to see her smile in her last days,” she said.

Ultimately, Williams wants to know she’s having a positive effect on her students. 

“When I look back on my life, I remember those teachers who planted seeds in me,” she said. “They made a difference in my life, and because of them and the lessons and private talks, and encouraging words that they shared, I felt like I could face certain challenges and adversity. It is because of them, that I do what I do with my own students.”

She added, “When my students are older and look back on their lives at the teachers who made the biggest impact on them, I hope that one of the faces they picture will be mine.”

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There’s not much that makes grammar and punctuation enthusiasts more hot and bothered than debates about Oxford commas. And a court ruling out of Maine is adding fuel to the nerdy fire.

On Monday, U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a group of dairy truck drivers who were suing Oakhurst Dairy for unpaid overtime wages, the Bangor Daily News reports.

The judge’s reasoning that the drivers were in the right? The lack of an Oxford comma in a list of activities deemed exempt from overtime pay.

“For want of a comma, we have this case,” Judge David Barron wrote in the opening line of his decision.

In case you need a refresher on what an Oxford comma is, it’s also known as a “serial comma.” It’s the comma right after the next-to-last item in a list of three or more things, before the words “and” or “or.”

Oxford comma fans like to point to hilarious examples of how the lack of the comma can cause confusion.

Even so, there are some powerful anti-Oxford comma forces out there — notably, the AP Style Guide, which The Huffington Post follows. (Though AP does specify that writers should insert the the comma when leaving it out would cause misreading.)

So how does all of this play into the truck driver lawsuit? The Maine overtime law in question states that workers must get overtime pay if they work more than 40 hours a week, unless their work falls under an exemption. One of these exemptions in state law reads as follows:

The canning, processing, preserving,
freezing, drying, marketing, storing,
packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.

Oakhurst claimed that the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution” covered workers who were packing goods for shipment, as well as workers involved in “distribution” — like the truck drivers. But the truck drivers argued that the phrase essentially meant “packing for shipment or packing for distribution.” In other words, the distribution itself was a separate activity not covered by the exemption.

If there had been a comma after “shipment,” the distinction would have been more clear, and “distribution” would have been a more obviously distinct activity.

Plus, there were other grammatical clues that “distribution” was not meant to be read as a separate activity, the drivers noted. And Barron agreed.

“The drivers read ‘shipment’ and ‘distribution’ each to be objects of the preposition ‘for’ that describes the exempt activity of ‘packing,’” he wrote. “And the drivers read the gerunds each to be referring to stand-alone, exempt activities.”

Barron’s ruling reverses an earlier ruling by a U.S. District Court, which sided with Oakhurst in saying that “distribution” was intended to be read as a separate job responsibility. But according to the Bangor Daily News, there will likely be more punctuation-heavy court proceedings before the case is settled for good.

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In 1977, the Sex Pistols said anarchy was about destroying the passerby. In 2017, anarchy is apparently about fixing potholes.

A group of anonymous anarchists in Portland, Oregon, ― where else? ― have taken their version of anarchy to the streets to help their local communities by fixing unsafe potholes themselves. The project, which began in late February, is the coolest thing to happen to punk after Green Day officially ruined it for everyone.

“The roads in Portland were getting worse and worse, and like everyone else, we were just waiting for someone else to fix it,” a member with the Portland Anarchist Road Care, or PARC, told The Huffington Post in an email. “We sort of reflected on the situation, and asked ourselves the questions made famous by John Lewis: ‘If not us, then who? If not now, then when?’ Two days later we were patching holes.”

On Facebook, PARC is keeping their more than 4,000 followers updated with their progress. So far, they said they’ve repaired five potholes. They said they believe in community solutions over “hierarchical institutions like government.”

It might seem confusing. Anarchism usually tends to conjure up images of angry men in Guy Fawkes masks setting things on fire. But that’s not what PARC is about.

”Many of the critiques we have received from the left have said we should be tearing the streets up, rather than paving them,” PARC told HuffPost. “We find this view ableist, classist and antisocial. To us, anarchy is about building community and creating networks of solidarity and mutual aid.”

The anarchists have also faced criticism from ― you guessed it! ― the government. Dylan Rivera with the Portland Bureau of Transportation told HuffPost that fixing potholes should be left to professionals.

“Patching can pose a risk to the individuals doing the patching because there’s traffic moving on these streets, and they may not have the proper equipment or training to make a safe work zone for themselves.”

What the anarchists are doing is illegal, Rivera said. But he sympathizes with them, saying he understands the public frustration with potholes, especially after a heavy rain and snow-battered winter.

“Portlanders are very community minded,” Rivera said. “They express themselves in many ways, whether its parades or helping neighbors out in snowstorms, and so we see what these folks are doing as really an extension of the community mindedness of Portlanders.”

Rivera also mentioned that earlier this month, the city spent a full day to fill more than 900 of the dangerous road hazards. Rivera said weather conditions also need to be dry for city workers to fix the potholes. PARC disagrees.

“[The PBC] use the excuse of not being able to pour hot asphalt in the rain, but there are alternatives,” PARC said. “The method we use, called cold patching, is less permanent than the hot asphalt that is traditionally used, but it is able to be used in the rain. There are steel road plates that could be laid over the worst of the potholes, which measure easily over ten feet long.”

Rivera said the city has used cold patching in the past before, but not often because it’s a temporary solution. Instead of fixing paved roads, which are maintained by the city, Rivera suggested the anarchists could offer help to neighbors who live on gravel roads as they’re not maintained by the city. He said as long as the property owners are agreeable to it, citizens can help patch those holes up.

PARC said they have received an influx of volunteers to help, and plan to “mobilize hundreds of people all across the city.” 

“[Anarchy] is about claiming communal ownership over our spaces, be they public, work, educational, or otherwise,” PARC said. “Our work directly puts that ideology into practice. They are our roads, we use them every day, and we will fix them together.”

Keep raging against the machine, citizens.

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An 11-year-old prodigy from the United Kingdom is about to make history by becoming the youngest conductor to lead a 75-piece orchestra, beating the previous record of a 14-year-old boy who directed the Venezuelan youth orchestra. 

Matthew Smith will make his debut at the Nottingham Royal Concert Hall on April 2. He will conduct the city’s Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Johann Strauss’ operetta Die Fledermaus, a piece Matthew first listened to when he was 7.

For the past few weeks, he has been rehearsing with the full orchestra once a week. Matthew said that he was inspired after he saw a video of a 7-year-old conducting the nine-minute piece. He told The London Economic that he can now conduct the full piece from memory. 

Matthew, who’s already a Grade 5 standard violinist, admitted to Sky News that he had some jitters when he first began orchestrating.

“At first I was nervous but you just get used to doing it, but the thing is you just have to keep counting the beats,” he said. Matthew also plays the drums, guitar, piano and viola.

Neil Bennison, music program manager at the Royal Concert Hall, told The London Economic that Matthew’s skill level is rare.

“Successful conductors have to be team managers, leaders, motivators and diplomats, and these people skills take time to develop and require a level of maturity that only comes with years of experience,” he said. “Orchestras can be pretty merciless to conductors for whom they have no respect, so you’d have to be a supremely confident young maestro to win over a lot of hardened professional musicians.”

The prodigy’s music teacher and mentor Derek Williams told Sky News that he’s one of the most talented kids he’s worked with, but Matthew isn’t done learning yet.

“He’s doing lots of good things and he has a long way to go but the orchestra is very supportive of what he is doing and hopefully come the time of his first concert he will be ready.”

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President Donald Trump is officially at war with the arts.

Late Wednesday night, the president released his budget proposals for the federal government’s spending in 2018. Apart from directing more funds to military and defense programs, Trump proposed major cuts to departments across sectors like education, justice and agriculture. 

In addition to these changes, Trump’s proposal is calling for the elimination of arts agencies across the country that support networks like PBS and NPR and other non-profit arts groups. Under Trump’s vision, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with their $971 million collective budgets, would no longer receive government funding. 

To give you some perspective, Trump’s proposed spending for the Defense Department in 2018 rounds out to $639 billion. 

Politically engaged celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis, Mark Ruffalo and Billy Eichner immediately took to social media to publicly resist these proposals and lend their support to those most impacted by these changes. 

Check out how Hollywood reacted to Trump’s budget cuts below. 

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“Saturday Night Live” announced its final four hosts for Season 42 on Thursday, and there’s one in particular who stands out.

Melissa McCarthy, the world’s greatest Sean Spicer impersonator, is scheduled to host the show on May 13.

The other three hosts will be Jimmy Fallon on April 15, Chris Pine on May 6 and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who will close out the season on May 20. With the final four episodes, “SNL” will be doing something it’s never done before: Airing the show live across the country.

The episodes will air at 11:30 p.m. on the East Coast, 10:30 p.m. Central Time, 9:30 p.m. Mountain Time and at 8:30 p.m. on the West Coast, according to Uproxx. For those of you living according to Mountain or Pacific Time, the episodes will air once more at their regularly scheduled 11:30 p.m. slot. 

“SNL” is in the midst of its highest-rated season in more than two decades, thanks in large part to the political climate. Before the election, Kate McKinnon and Alec Baldwin drew people in with their impersonations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively.

Since Trump’s victory, the show has continued to make waves with impersonations of the various personalities in the president’s administration ― perhaps most notably when McCarthy first imitated White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Something tell us she’ll be pulling that one out again a few more times this year.

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New Yorkers have spoken, and they want to read Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2013 novel about a young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, who comes to the U.S. to study and begin her career, and her first love, Obinze, who stays and builds a life in their homeland.

The One Book, One New York program launched by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and Buzzfeed Books in February offered city-dwellers the chance to vote for five books nominated by five celebrities. The program encourages New Yorkers to read the winning book at the same time, and will include a number of local events over the coming months.

Adichie’s novel beat out Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Sellout by Paul Beatty, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Like the other books nominated, Americanah explores newly timely concepts of immigration, race, and the imperfect realities of American ideals such as diversity and inclusivity.

Adichie caught up with The Huffington Post in a phone conversation Thursday about the One Book, One New York program, the timely themes of Americanah, and the value of sharing stories as a community.

How does it feel to know that New Yorkers picked Americanah? It was up against some other pretty fantastic books.

Yeah! I know. Obviously, to get any kind of recognition is just lovely, but this is really, really lovely, and I think it’s because I have so much respect for the other books, and I think they are just really fantastic books. When you’re in good company, it’s a good thing.

I think there’s also a sense in which, when I was writing Americanah ... obviously I hoped it would do well, but I really didn’t think it would. And so to have all this recognition happen brings an extra-special feeling of, really, quite simply, of joy. It just makes me happy.

Why do you think the book ended up resonating so much with this audience?

I like to think that it’s for the same reasons that I thought it wouldn’t do well. Which is that I didn’t necessarily follow all of the literary rules.

It deals with race in a way that’s very overt. It’s a love story that is ridiculously romanticized in a way, while also being kind of practical. I also wanted it to be a book that just felt true and raw. You know when films want to have the element of cinéma vérité? I wanted this book to have that element, but the literary version.

But I also realized that these are not necessarily the things that lead to success in fiction. Which is why, in some ways, this book has taught me to trust readers, because ... I think readers respond to things that feel true. That’s kind of what I’ve decided to use as an explanation, but of course if the book hadn’t done well, I wouldn’t be saying that. [Laughs] I guess I would be using the same reasons to explain why it hadn’t done well.

That’s kind of the problem with making decisions about art, you never really know!

Yep. Which is why I think the most important thing is just to be true. Just, and I say this to my students all the time, tell the story you want to tell. Tell it truthfully and then just see what happens. 

What lessons or ideas from Americanah do you hope New Yorkers take away from reading?

I really hope that it starts conversations, and I’m also really hoping that ... some of these conversations might not be the most comfortable, but that they are ultimately affirming, and ultimately it leads to, and I know it sounds a bit cheesy, but that idea of unity and diversity.

It’s a book that deals a lot with issues of womanhood, race, immigration, being a person with two countries ― and it seems like those are issues that people are talking about even more today than when you wrote the book. Do you think Americanah has something especially significant to say right now, or do you think these are just issues that we always need to talk about?

In some ways I think both ... These are conversations which ― because of the nature of the country, and in some ways because New York in particular is this wonderfully diverse space ― will always be had, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know?

But I do feel that in a strange kind of way, Americanah has become especially topical because of the present political realities in this country.

How would you express the value of a whole city or community trying to read the same book together?

It’s kind of like the idea of a village gathering under a tree in the moonlight and telling their stories, and everybody has an opinion about the story.

I like to think that one of the many things that literature can do is that it gives us entry into subjects that might be difficult to talk about. Or not even just necessarily difficult, just that might be uncomfortable, or that we might overlook. So I think the city coming together around literature is ... just something about reminding people, reminding ourselves, about our collective humanity. An example from Americanah would be that it no longer becomes abstract concepts of immigration, race, home ― it becomes about characters’ lives. I think in talking about these things through story, there’s a sense in which we humanize these ideas and ultimately we humanize our own lives and our own concerns.

 To participate, New Yorkers can check out a free audiobook download, borrow the book from a local library, or find a copy at bookstores near them.

For more from Adichie on the announcement, check out the video below:

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When talking about love and all of the beautiful-yet-confusing feelings surrounding it, the English language sometimes falls short. 

Fortunately, we can borrow phrases from other cultures around the world that better put these elusive feelings into words. Below, 10 ways to express love in other languages that have no direct equivalent in English. 

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Since late January, arts organizations have been bracing for President Donald Trump’s administration to target cultural agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, for brutal cuts ― even elimination. On Wednesday, the president’s proposed budget for federal discretionary spending in fiscal year 2018 fulfilled the darkest of these fears, requesting that all federal funding be stripped from the NEA and NEH. The shuttering of these agencies were proposed along with numerous deep cuts to branches such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department.

Now, arts and humanities institutions and advocacy groups are redoubling efforts to protect federal arts funding from far-reaching, perhaps even permanent, damage. “The impact here is very severe because these institutions stand to be shuttered entirely,” pointed out PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel in a phone conversation with The Huffington Post. “When a budget is cut, it can be restored at a later time. When an institution is abolished, it’s not going to come back.”

Arlene Goldbard, chief policy wonk at the U.S Department of Arts and Culture (a non-government-affiliated nonprofit), called the cuts “at once shocking and unsurprising” in an email to HuffPost. “For reasons far more symbolic than cost-cutting, [Trump] wants to eliminate the small programs that help us know and understand each other, those that make the constitutional commitment to freedom of expression real, for what does it mean to declare a right without the means to exercise it?”

The NEA and NEH being federal agencies, they cannot lobby for their own continued existence, as their respective chairpersons Jane Chu and William D. Adams both emphasized in statements on Thursday. “We must abide by this budget request as this initial stage of the federal budget process gets under way,” Adams stated. “It will be up to Congress over the next several months to determine funding levels for fiscal year 2018.”

Both continued to make the case for their value, however. “We see our funding actively making a difference with individuals of all ages in thousands of communities, large, small, urban and rural, and in every Congressional District in the nation,” wrote Chu. In his statement on the NEH, Adams specified a number of projects that the institution provided with crucial support:

Residents in Whitesburg, Kentucky, are preserving the photographs and films of their local Appalachian region through Appalshop cultural center. Veterans returning from war in Iraq and Afghanistan are using their experiences to perform in the Aquila Theatre’s Warrior Chorus. Students, teachers and historians have access to the papers of Founding Father George Washington, which have been carefully preserved and catalogued. Through these projects and thousands of others, the National Endowment for the Humanities has inspired and supported what is best in America.

Stephen Kidd, executive director of the National Humanities Alliance (NHA), agreed, arguing that losing funding for the NEH would have wide-ranging consequences ― particularly for underserved communities. “It would deeply affect access to and participation in the humanities programs that help to bridge differences in communities and help to ensure that the cultural heritage of both rural and urban communities around the country is preserved,” he told HuffPost in a phone conversation. “It would undermine the creation of innovative education programs that reach communities around the country, and students at all levels.”

While major population centers such as New York City tend to benefit from wealthy patrons and well-established, popular museums, theaters and programs, more rural and impoverished areas may rely more heavily on federal funding to sustain artistic life. “A lot of these resources go to communities that are underprivileged and don’t have entities that can step in” to make up for lost federal arts funding, Nossel told HuffPost. The Washington Post noted on Thursday that, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), “poor and rural communities would be hardest hit” as “[a]bout 25 percent of NEA block-grant funds go to rural communities and 54 percent to low-income areas.”

Publishers, artistic institutions and even crowdfunding companies sprang to defend federal arts funding, as well:

The Metropolitan Museum of Arts put out a statement on Thursday arguing that the proposal “is shortsighted and does a terrible disservice to the American people. For more than 50 years, these programs have provided, at modest cost, essential support to arts organizations throughout the country — many times sustaining the arts in areas where people do not have access to major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum.”

The 11 arts groups that make up New York’s Lincoln Center (including the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic) overcame a history of internecine squabbles to sign a joint statement condemning the cuts, according to the New York Times, which notes that the groups only rely on federal funding for a small fraction of their budgets. “The total cost of the NEA is less than one dollar a year for every American,” the statement says. “But because it is so successful and its imprimatur so prestigious, every dollar the NEA contributes leads to nine additional dollars being donated from other sources.” 

The Sundance Institute, which was created with the aid of NEA funding in 1981, also released a comment, stating, “Defunding the Endowment undermines our national artistic heritage, and handicaps our future potential.”  

On Twitter, other arts professionals and organizations had more colorful words of objection: 

The institutions have been attacked by Republicans before, notably in the mid-90s, when a GOP Congressional majority, led by Newt Gingrich, passed a bill in the House of Representatives to defund the NEA. The bill did not pass the Senate. Past fights, however, typically relied on displays of moral outrage against specific projects funded by the NEA. “Those battles were highly politicized, and there was a lot of focus on the nature of the funding and what kind of projects were being underwritten and if they were worthy,” recalled PEN America’s Nossel. “This much more slash and burn, and no one seems to be concerned with what exactly is being funded … and the worrying thing is that it comes in the context of these Draconian budget proposals.”

As Congress will approve the final budget, advocates remain hopeful that widespread support, both within the legislature and within the citizenry at large, will save the NEA and NEH. “We are heartened by the level of bipartisan support that members of Congress have shown for the NEH in recent years and in recent weeks, as well,” Kidd told HuffPost. He and Nossel each cited a February letter sent by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) urging President Trump to continue support for the NEH and NEA. The letter, which was signed by 23 other senators, including Republicans Susan Collins and Shelly Moore Capito, argued that “[f]ederal support for the arts and humanities is essential to our education system, economy, and who we are as a nation.”

The battle for the NEA and NEH continues ― and Nossel warned that, with such severe cuts proposed in so many areas of the Trump budget, advocates need to keep their eye on the ball and continue calling their representatives to make the case for arts funding. “The challenge is going to be … ensuring that with all the priorities and areas of funding that have to be saved, that these institutions aren’t lost in the shuffle,” she told HuffPost. “There will probably be some compromises made, and we need to make sure this isn’t one of them.”

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