After a spike in outdoor drinking, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday that only establishments that serve food will be allowed to serve alcoholic beverages to sit-down guests — effectively killing walk-up bar services in New York City.

The prohibition of walk-up bar services comes after videos of bar patrons congregating outside without masks went viral. Previously, bars could serve alcohol for those who wanted to do outdoor dining as long as the operation offered food on the menu, but ordering food to get a drink wasn’t a requirement. Cuomo alleged that customers were loitering outside bars and ignored social distancing guidelines, so now if patrons want drinks, they will have to order meals and be seated. To-go drink options will still be available if also accompanied by food.

“The State itself has looked at over 5,000 establishments in downstate New York and found many cases of a failure to comply. It’s wrong. It’s dangerous. It’s selfish,” Cuomo said during a Thursday phone call with reporters, adding that bars and restaurants were the primary problem areas. “If you’re not eating a meal and you’re just drinking, then it’s just an outdoor bar and people are mingling and they’re not isolated and individual tables, and that’s what we’re seeing.”

Alex Holden, the general manager for Union Pool, a pool supply store turned bar in Brooklyn, said that they had not been doing takeout or deliveries even though one of the features of the bar is a functioning taco truck. Located inside the bar in a courtyard space, the taco truck reopened once outdoor dining was permitted. Holden shared that the bar would not have opened without the truck.

“We decided to take our time and carefully reopen after lots of consideration for the safety of our staff and our customers,” Holden said. “Today’s new regulations made all of that planning a waste of time, money and energy.”

Holden also said he felt the new regulations were nonsensical.

“If you are at a restaurant and want to order another glass of wine after your meal, do you have to order more food to accompany that second glass of wine?” Holden wrote in an email to The Interlude. “Cuomo suggests that if you are not eating a meal, it’s just an outdoor bar. Sounds like he wants to close all bars and keep restaurants open. It would be more productive for him to just come out and say that.”

Cuomo also announced the “Three Strikes and You’re Closed” initiative that will shut down operations with three or more violations of social distancing, and reiterated the pre-existing regulation that all patrons outdoor dining patrons must be seated. This is the latest addition to regulations for the hospitality industry. When Phase Two started on June 22, outdoor dining was permitted. The new statement also reiterated the pre-existing regulation that all patrons have to be seated and cannot stand outside.

Holden said that the new regulation may be riskier than having people line up for the bar while abiding to social distancing rules. “Now our staff is being told they have to come out from behind the bar and visit each table over and over throughout the evening,” he said. “This is a decision that seems to put our staff at more risk, not less.”

Andrew Rigie, the executive director of NYC Hospitality Alliance, told The Interlude that he finds the new regulation unhelpful and even damaging to small businesses.

“Prohibiting an adult from having a beer on a hot summer day while seated at a table without ordering food is counterproductive to getting people off the streets and seated at tables,” Rigie said. “Businesses need to be responsible for the activity on their property, but we can’t continue to require restaurant and bar workers to effectively police the streets. It puts them in harm’s way and subjects small businesses to huge liability for actions out of their control.”

Max Green, managing partner of Blue Quarter, a cocktail bar hidden inside Mediterranean restaurant Local92, said that neighborhood bars and dive bars were going to struggle the most from these changes because they do not have the resources, ability, or desire to make food.

“Their margins have been decimated over the years, as their leases have come to an end their landlord doubles or triples rent,” Green said. “Between community boards twisting every hopeful bar owner’s arm behind their back, fines from the health department that are essentially pay-for-play grading systems, and the rolling back to pre-prohibition-era [sic] drinking laws, they have no chance.”

Thria Bernabe found themselves in the spotlight after a video of them getting arrested at a Black Lives Matter march was widely circulated on Twitter over the Fourth of July weekend. The 22-year-old community organizer was leading chants for some 50 protesters and signaling the group to follow on a crosswalk when police arrested and charged them with obstructing a highway or public passage. Despite being scared during the arrest, Bernabe continued to lead their group’s chants of “No justice, no peace!” until they were escorted away by two local police officers.

Following George Floyd’s death on May 25, there has been a resurgence of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. As tens of thousands poured onto the streets both in the United States and across the globe to protest police brutality against Black people, police in multiple cities shot tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds. Many were also arrested, prompting the surge of bail fund donations and mutual aid fundraisers to assist the protesters.

Bernabe’s arrest sparked a public outcry, leading to the creation of an online petition condemning the arrest as “shocking and unnecessary” and demanding the Ridgewood Police Department drop all charges against them. Since the petition was published last Thursday, more than 3,500 people have signed. “I’m still in shock and processing the full extent of what really happened,” said Bernabe. “I’m just so grateful for all the support I’ve been getting from all over the place.”

Thria Bernabe describes themselves as a queer Filipinx immigrant, the proud eldest child of a working-class family living in Ridgewood, NJ. Bernabe moved to the U.S. from the Philippines as a toddler and grew up in majority white communities for most of their childhood. They recall being in preschool when they first noticed and received microaggressions from peers.

“One of my earliest memories in the public school system was of two girls, who I thought were my friends, bullying me because I had an accent,” Bernabe said. “That has stuck with me throughout my entire life. Moving to predominantly white towns made me feel super alienated without any sense of community and I was surrounded by people who don’t look like me, think like me, or experience things the same way that I do.”

After graduating from Ridgewood High School, Bernabe joined the class of 2020 at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and is currently working as a medical scribe at the NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center and Lower Manhattan Hospital.

Early on in their career, Bernabe discovered the intersection of housing injustices and disparities in healthcare after watching a patient die from hypothermia due to a lack of shelter in the winter and witnessing another denied help from the hospital due to the patient’s lack of resources. While Bernabe’s introduction to community organizing and activism came from the NYC Women’s March in 2017, it was Bernabe’s work as a medical scribe that woke them up and radicalized them to organize and empower others, especially during a time when minority populations are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. “Those two moments are what made me realize that there is so much the system should’ve done…the systems failed them,” Bernabe said. “That’s why I fight and that’s why I marched.”

The Trump administration rescinded ICE’s controversial new policy Tuesday that would have forced international students to return home if they did not take at least one in-person class. The reversal comes after MIT and Harvard, later joined by other universities, as well as 18 states, sued the federal government over the rule, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.” For many, the news brings a spectrum of emotions, ranging from relief and celebration to fear and anger.

The original policy change, announced on July 6, was met with an outcry of criticism from students and faculty, as well as politicians who were concerned about time zone difference, students’ leases, relocation fees, and availability of internet, any and all of which would deny international students equal access to online education.

“I was very surprised at the announcement,” said Lucca Della Liberia, a New York University senior from Brazil. “After hearing that Harvard and MIT had sued, I was hopeful something would change but I did not expect it to be so fast.”

But the responses following the controversial policy reversal were not solely positive.

Ekaterina Kryuchkova, a Russian Ph.D. student at Cornell University, said in an email that while the news is definitely positive, it’s hard to celebrate because there are many other issues for international students that still remain unresolved. Kryuchkova fears that today’s victory may “make us complacent.”

“Those ten days have really shown that the government is willing to penalize international students for actions outside of our control,” she said. “Even though the DHS backed down, I am sure they are still willing to threaten us as a population.”

Stephanie Schwartz, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California echoed Kruychkova’s concerns, telling The Interlude that even though she was deeply relieved that the criticism paid off, “the days of uncertainty, fear, and pain caused by announcement can’t be given back.”

“Combined with that distress, now add the hours and resources advocates, faculty, and administrators spent fighting a policy that stands on such flimsy legal ground that the administration rescinds at the first sign of getting routed in court?” Schwartz said in an email. “Perhaps that time and money could have been spent working to provide safe and quality education to our students in the midst of a public health crisis, and not creating undue fear in an already painful time.”

In an effort to curtail ICE’s decision, those who did not have the financial means to sue scrambled to find ways to help their international students remain unaffected.

Some students took it upon themselves to find ways to help their peers (and themselves). Liberia teamed up with Albert Liu, a computer science major at NYU, and wrote a computer program that would easily filter through classes, showing those that would meet ICE’s requirements. Liberia later used Reddit to share a Google document of those classes, which later became a website called icesucks.com.

Liberia told The Interlude that leaving the country would have interfered with his life greatly. Even if things such as time difference and leases were not issues, leaving the country would have made international seniors ineligible for Optional Practical Training (OPT), a year-long visa extension to work in one’s field. Many international students rely on OPT to secure a job and remain in the country post graduation.

Students weren’t alone in their efforts. A number of professors took to Twitter to offer independent studies to help keep students in the country.

“I’m prepared to teach up to 5,000 in-person independent study courses over the next year,” tweeted Casey Boyle, Associate Professor at the University of Texas. In her message to international students, Yale Law Dean Heather K. Gerken said that almost every faculty member volunteered “to offer an in-person, one-on-one tutorial to our international students,” with one of them saying he would “teach outside in the snow if he needed to.”

Schwartz used Twitter to call on her fellow professors, gathering a list of actions that faculty and university administrators could do to push back against the ban.

“Many of us were deeply disheartened to see that valued and equal members of our community were targeted and in some way being used as hostages to try and pressure universities to reopen,” she said.

It is perhaps due to all of this bureaucratic and emotional disarray that the reversal leaves a bitter aftertaste.

“The affair confirms that the administration is willing to take any and all actions to remove immigrants from this country,” Schwartz said in an email. “They’re willing to throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks, hoping that the pandemic will provide cover this xenophobic agenda.”

In a move that triggered a massive boycott, Robert Unanue, the CEO of Goya Foods, made comments at a White House event Thursday in support of President Donald Trump, saying “We are all truly blessed, at the same time, to have a leader like President Trump who is a builder.”

Goya Foods, which specializes in ingredients like adobo, canned beans and pre-made mole sauces, is often considered a staple in many Latino dishes. But with Unanue’s outward support of Trump, Goya Foods has positioned itself as a politically and racially charged entity — a white company taking Latino money with a blatant disregard for how those Latino lives have been affected by the Trump regime.

Following Unanue’s comments, the hashtags #GoyaBoycott and #Goyaway began trending on major social media outlets, with big names in politics, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggesting she would boycott the brand, tweeting “Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo.’”

Unanue’s Trump support is not the only issue with the New Jersey-based company, though it is the nail in the coffin for many Goya customers. Goya has been widely accepted as a Latino authority in the food industry. In 2013, a Washington Post article on the brand’s successes described Goya as having a “level of trust among urban Hispanic communities” that had “landed [the brand] in nearly every corner bodega and medium-size independent grocery store.” Now, in 2020, it’s time to reevaluate the business that allegedly “brought ethnic food to white America.” The white, Spanish-owned Goya Foods has profited off Latinidad since its inception, claiming its Hispanic roots for marketing when convenient. But despite Goya branding itself as the biggest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States, and “the premier source for authentic Latino cuisine,” the CEO is not actually Latino (Unanue is the grandson of Goya founder Don Prudencio Unanue and his wife Carolina, who were Spanish immigrants). Goya’s pride in “Latin-Inspired” food is nothing more than white-washing and appropriation of cultural cuisines by a white-owned company.

Though most popular among the Puerto Rican community, Goya Foods also sells products specifically catered to Mexican cuisine, like caldo de pollo chicken bouillon, pasilla chiles and tortillas. Unanue’s support of Trump, who has been known for being outwardly anti-Mexican, shows that Goya Foods does not care about their Latino customer-base. The header on the Goya website reads: “the Goya story is as much about the importance of family as it is about achieving the American dream.” Unanue’s support of Trump is a slap in the face for any Latino immigrant who has come to the United States in search of that dream. Trump has not only been historically anti-Mexican, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and claiming that they bring nothing but crime and drugs to the United States, but has also been blatantly anti-immigration. Locking children in cages and separating them from their parents at the border is antithetical to the very idea of the American Dream, and Goya Foods should know better than to support someone who goes against their most widely advertised company values.

The fact that Robert Unanue has been unapologetic since the backlash, citing the boycott as a “suppression of speech” is all the more reason for Latinos to look to other food retailers for their cultural cuisines. Latinidad is tied together by our food cultures and traditions. There is no room for anti-Latino politics or sentiment in our food. Unanue proclaiming Trump as “a builder” is a direct attack on the Mexican and Latino communities. The only “building” Trump has done for Mexican people is to build a 16-mile hunk of wall at the Mexican border and to build metal cages to keep migrant children in.

My family has hated Goya Foods products for years. Their canned beans are mushy and their Mexican food items are only a shadow of Mexico’s rich culinary traditions. Now that Unanue has made his political views known, it is clear that Goya’s history of questionable authenticity is rooted in a corporate culture that takes advantage of Latino cuisine for its own financial gain.

StuyTown, a massive apartment complex on Manhattan’s east side, emailed its residents on Thursday asking them to take down existing Black Lives Matter signage and requesting they refrain from putting any further “messaging” in their windows.

Screenshots of the email, obtained by The Interlude, also informed residents that a Black Lives Matter sign was removed from “the oval,” a green space in the middle of the complex shared by its roughly 30,000 residents. “We understand our City is experiencing a trying time, and we also anticipate an emotional political cycle leading up to November,” the paragraph followed. “But the windows are to be kept clear of any messaging. Please take to other channels, such as social media, to express your thoughts or opinions.”

Screenshot of email obtained by The Interlude.

Screenshot of email obtained by The Interlude.

While management took issue with Black Lives Matter signs, one resident said they were openly supportive of signs thanking frontline healthcare workers. “I was so incredibly disappointed to see that a ‘leadership’ team that was openly supportive of signage for our healthcare workers would feel differently about signage in support of its black residents and employees,” resident Megan Carrier told The Interlude in a Twitter message. “Their decision of when to enforce their rules (and when not to) makes it seem like their limited actions regarding the Black Lives Matter movement have been merely performative.”

There is some evidence that there have been disputes about Black Lives Matter protests between the community’s residents. According to a recent StuyTown blog post, a public safety officer had to break up a fight between residents — one supported Black Lives Matter, and the other was pro-police.

Other landlords in the city have demanded residents remove Black Lives Matter signs and other messaging challenging the police from windows. One attorney told Gothamist that while signs in windows may not be “substantial” enough to constitute a legitimate breach of lease claim, banners and materials hung on the outside of the building may meet the threshold. While the first amendment generally protects freedom of expression, free speech may not apply when contractual agreements restrict it. In a 2016 report by The New York Times, Christopher Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said that renters lack protections for speech if window displays are restricted in the lease. David Frazer told the Times that tenants in rent-controlled units have more protections.

New York City Council Member Keith Powers, who lives in StuyTown and represents the neighborhood, wrote a letter Friday to the complex’s management asking for the policy to be reconsidered.

“Black Lives Matter is not a political statement,” the letter read in part. “It’s an expression of basic human dignity for all.”

StuyTown is owned by The Blackstone Group and Ivanhoé Cambridge. According to a 2019 article by 6sqft, Blackstone was “one of several firms who spent at least $750,000 to lobby against the tenant-friendly law changes in Albany” and kept its rent-stabilized apartments in StuyTown empty after state laws blocked the company from raising rent for renovating.

Blackstone did not immediately respond to The Interlude’s email seeking comment.

Update: July 10, 2020. Hours after this story was published, StuyTown temporarily reversed its policy on window signage, according to emails obtained by The Interlude. “We have heard from you that this is a unique moment in our community, city and country,” it read in part. “We remain a community that supports diversity and inclusion of all people and ideas, and we respectfully request that any signage you display reflects those values.”

A spokesperson for Ivanhoé Cambridge told The Interlude that the company supports StuyTown’s policy reversal.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in favor of exempting employers with religious or moral objections from providing contraceptives in their employee insurance.

The 7-2 decision will allow employers to deny access to birth control for their workers on the basis of religious and moral disagreement. Normally under the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, insurance companies are mandated to cover one type of birth control from each category for free. The Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter’s, a Catholic religious non-profit who has been fighting the ACA policy argued, however, “that deliberately avoiding reproduction through medical means is immoral.”

Justice Clarence Thomas was the author of the majority opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, in his concurring opinion, wrote, “A woman who does not have the benefit of contraceptive coverage under her employer’s plan is not the victim of a burden imposed by the rule or her employer. She is simply not the beneficiary of something that federal law does not provide.”

The ruling — dissented by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor — could lead to up to 126,000 women losing contraceptive coverage, according to government estimates shared in the ruling summary. The National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit gender justice advocacy organization, released a statement after the decision that read in part that 61.4 million women currently do not pay for birth control because of ACA.

Ginsburg stated on the ruling summary that “As the foregoing indicates, the religious exemption ‘reintroduce[s] the very health inequities and barriers to care that Congress intended to eliminate when it enacted the women’s preventive services provision of the ACA.’”

This is a reminder of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling from 2014 when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of employers refusing employees access to birth control. This was the first time a business was allowed to deny access to basic health care because of religious beliefs according to a statement published by Planned Parenthood.

This is the third time the Affordable Care’s contraceptive policy was brought up to the Supreme Court; Hobby Lobby in 2014 and again in 2016, for a 4-4 ruling of whether to exempt faith-based groups from paying birth control under their insurance plans. The efforts to limit access to contraceptives by the Supreme Court comes after the submission of a 82-page briefing by the Trump Administration to the Supreme Court in order to get rid of the Affordable Care Act on June 26.

Fawn Bolak, the Communications Director of Progressnow Colorado and Founder of the Keep Abortion Safe Project, told The Interlude in an email that the decision can hurt those who already face challenges getting the care they need due to their sexuality, color, and/or socio-economic status.

“The SCOTUS decision today is egregious and will no doubt have the hardest impacts on Black women and other women of color, who comprise the largest demographic essential workers currently keeping our economy afloat during a pandemic that the president refuses to address,” Bolak said.

The repercussions of this decision is going to hurt families financially. Renee Bracey Sherman, Executive Director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to sharing the stories of those who got abortions, said that seeing federal and state governments roll back the ability to take care of families due to patriarchal systems that benefit the wealthy has been frustrating.

“The reality is that anti-choice politicians are using the pandemic as a guise to push their hateful plans to ensure that women and trans folks aren’t able to decide if, when, and how to grow their family, all while refusing to provide healthcare, adequate protections from the pandemic, or solutions for families who can’t work or send their children to childcare,” Bracey Sherman said.

She finds the ruling antithetical to reproductive freedom, workers rights and family care.

“Your ability to receive treatment shouldn’t matter based on where you get your paycheck,” Bracey Sherman said. “It’s also disappointing because the same people who chide us for having abortions are the same people blocking us from obtaining birth control. It’s exhausting to say the least.”

Correction: July 9, 2020. A previous version of this article stated a source’s last name as Sherman. It has been updated to reflect the proper spelling: Bracey Sherman.

New York City will end the use of solitary confinement for some of its inmates, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Monday. The ban — which will go into effect immediately — is just the first step of the mayor’s plan to completely eradicate the practice. De Blasio’s decision comes after the murder of George Floyd by the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department sparked weeks of nation-wide protests on policing and criminal justice.

Incarcerated people suffering from seizures, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, kidney disease, and are treated with any blood thinners will no longer be placed in solitary confinement — sometimes called punitive segregation. People who are blind, deaf, have limited mobility, and those under the age of 21 will also be protected under the new rule.

“We are doing that literally starting today,” de Blasio said during Monday’s press conference. “But we have to go further. So, let’s take the next step. Let’s end solitary confinement altogether.”

The mayor announced the creation of a panel that would oversee the elimination of solitary confinement. The panel includes Board of Correction Vice-Chair Stanley Richards as its head, the Department of Correction Commissioner Cynthia Brann, Just Leadership USA President DeAnna Hoskins, and the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio. According to the New York Daily News, however, that it is unclear whether Boscio — a newly appointed union head — will actually join the panel.

State Senator Luis Sepúlveda — representative of the 32nd District in the Bronx and chairman of the Crime Victims, Crime, and Correction Committee — said in an interview with The Interlude that the decision was undoubtedly a “step in the right direction.” However, he expressed his disappointment with the panelists.

“I would like to have seen mental health professionals on that list,” he said. “I would like to have seen social service specialists on that list. I would like to have seen people who are more on the rehabilitation side.”

The detrimental effects of solitary confinement on the mental health of those incarcerated have been well documented. In a 2018 article for the Annual Review of Criminology, social psychologist Craig Haney writes that “extreme social isolation and the deprivation of positive environmental stimulation” places prisoners at “serious psychological risk.” While the effect on different inmates varies, the “risk itself is substantial, and it is typically impossible to determine at the outset of a prisoner’s exposure whether and how he or she will survive and at what psychological cost.”

In 2015, the severe effect of solitary confinement on the mental health of inmates was thrust into the national spotlight after a young Black man — Kalief Browder — took his own life at his family home in the Bronx. In 2010, he was sent to Rikers Island for three years after allegedly stealing a backpack even though he never stood trial and was never found guilty of the crime. Nearly two of those years were spent in solitary confinement. Jeniffer Gonnerman, who profiled Browder for The New Yorker in 2014, later told the New York Times that his mental health had been deteriorating and that had been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward at Harlem Hospital Center. Browder was 22 when he died.

The United States criminal justice system is notoriously and savagely punitive where strict sentencing guidelines, hierarchical social structures, and lean budgets leave little room for rehabilitation.

“The United Nations has visited our prisons and has determined that solitary confinement, the way we have it is torture,” Sepúlveda said. “If you look at all the data on solitary confinement you see that it doesn’t improve behavior. Most of the individuals that go into solitary confinement come from Black and Brown and poor communities. Many of them are suffering from mental illness. And, if you put them in solitary confinement you’re going to make them worse.”

Sepúlveda has been working on the issue of solitary confinement ever since he was elected in late 2018. He is also the main sponsor of Senate Bill S1623, which would restrict the use of solitary confinement and create alternative therapeutic options for inmates across New York state. Despite his track record and the wealth of information his team has amassed in the last two years, Sepúlveda said that Mayor de Blasio never reached out for help or advice.

“I think the mayor should’ve expanded that committee,” he said. “Individuals like myself, who’ve been working on this issue for a long time. Or my counterparts in the City Council and in the State Assembly. We all should’ve been included in that panel and it’s unfortunate that we weren’t.”

The mayor’s decision comes after the Department of Correction finally disciplined 17 staffers and suspended the pay of four others involved in the death of Layleen Xtravaganza Cubilette-Polanco, a 27-year-old transgender woman suffering from epilepsy. Cubilette-Polanco died from a seizure while in solitary confinement on Rikers Island last year. A medical professional refused to approve her transfer to solitary confinement over concerns about her pre-existing medical condition. Yet, Cubilette-Polanco was placed in solitary confinement anyway.

De Blasio’s appointed panel will have until the fall to come up with a long term plan to end solitary confinement. In a statement, the Legal Aid Society, a leading social justice law firm in New York City, said that Mayor de Blasio’s decision “dead-ended” years of reform work.

“We cannot wait until the fall,” the statement read. “The City should end solitary confinement under any name today, and the Board of Correction should promulgate rules at once that address all forms of isolated confinement.”

Sepúlveda echoed this sentiment, but also expressed some concern about the newly appointed panel’s ability to get it done.

“We’ve been on this for a long time,” he said. “But, I can’t really tell you if the fall is really sufficient enough time for them.”

New York City’s upcoming third phase of reopening had many excited at the prospect of dining in and sipping cocktails at their favorite spots. But don’t make any reservations just yet: While the rest of the state has already resumed indoor dining, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday that the city will indefinitely postpone it, citing a soaring number of cases in other states.

The decision came after New Jersey governor Phil Murphy delayed the return to indoor dining for the foreseeable future on Monday. The city will still move forward with the rest of Phase 3 on July 6, which includes reopening hotels, and personal care services like nail salons, waxing, tanning, and massage parlors.

“We particularly see problems revolving around people going back to bars and restaurants indoors,” de Blasio said at a press briefing. “Indoors is the problem more and more. The science is showing it more and more.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo had also expressed similar concerns earlier in the week. While New York City was on track to reinstate indoor dining on July 6, the governor hinted at two possible complications that could hinder the plans: citizens’ lack of compliance for social distancing and safety guidelines, which the governor partly blamed on the local government, as well as potential contamination from other states.

“People from the other states travel to New York,” he said, “If other states have a high infection rate, probability is they’re gonna wind up increasing the spread and the infection in New York.”

New York, along with Connecticut and New Jersey, has also imposed restrictions on travelers from states with high infection rates. People entering from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Texas must self-quarantine for two weeks upon arrival.

If you were getting fed up with cooking at home or really missing a watered-down margarita from your favorite dive bar, fear not, New York City entered the second step of the city’s reopening plan on Monday. After more than three months of Coronavirus-induced lockdown, Phase 2 allows for a number of nonessential businesses to open, including hair salons, barber shops, office spaces, retail stores and, perhaps the most anticipated — outdoor service at restaurants and bars.

The reintroduction of outdoor dining brings a partial sigh of relief to New York restaurants, which took one of the hardest hits of any industry during the pandemic, losing at least $2 billion in sales across the state. From March to April alone, more than 80% of NYC’s restaurant industry had either been furloughed or laid off. But muddled government guidelines on new outdoor regulations means that for many businesses, reopening is not as easy as just unlocking the doors.

NYC’s Open Restaurants application and the regulations behind it have been somewhat murky for business owners. Under the Open Restaurants plan, businesses who qualify to open under Phase 2 can submit an application to request “permission to place outdoor seating in front of their establishment on the sidewalk and/or roadway.” The application is not needed to place extra outdoor seating on privately owned property.

Some restaurant owners were unsure if they needed to send an application to place new outdoor seating on sidewalks. Others had already been offering outdoor space for their customers, and the application will just affirm actions that had already been taken over the last few weeks.

“The state has been kind of shy in terms of sharing exactly what the guidelines are,” said Moshe Schulman, Managing Partner at beloved East Village spots Ruffian and Kindred. “I think most restaurants have kind of taken into their own hands to put tables or seats out in a responsible way.”

NYC’s Open Streets plan allows businesses on streets already closed to traffic to establish dining spaces in roadways and on sidewalks, so long as they adhere to social distancing rules and do not block fire hydrants. However, businesses located on streets that are open to traffic do not qualify.

The hospitality team behind Ruffian and Kindred has petitioned their local community board to close down Sixth and Seventh Street to give businesses on those streets a chance at expanded open-air dining space.

“If we can get that closed to traffic, we would then be able to put tables out on the street,” Schulman said. “And that would help us leverage our exposure and hopefully get more people who are walking by to feel comfortable to come in and grab a glass of wine.”

It’s clear that family-owned restaurants and small businesses are eager to get back to a more conventional business model. During the height of the pandemic, some establishments operated with re-imagined purposes while others closed their kitchens to the public and made meals for essential healthcare workers. Even more restaurants pivoted strictly to takeout and delivery.

Cafe on Ralph owner, Donna Drakes, said that transitioning her restaurant to an online grocery store “was like opening a new business all over again.” Drakes’ pivot to an online, delivery-based grocery store helped the cafe continue to support their regular inventory vendors while still generating income. She plans to continue the online grocery shop to help more people in the community, namely those that are relying on food stamps and government assistance, even though outdoor dining is opening up.

“I know a lot of people that aren’t working and may be on food stamps,” she said. “I have applied to be a vendor to be able to provide to those people.”

Drakes is now putting her energy into creating an uplifting outdoor space for diners in Bed-Stuy. “Now that we’re about to reopen in Phase 2,” she said, “I ordered a whole bunch of umbrellas and chairs to allow people to still have that ambiance that they would have had if we were to be able to sit inside.”.

Drakes is not alone in her quest to draw customers to a newly furnished al fresco dining space. Ty Brown, owner of Crown Heights’ The Bergen, is reimagining the fast casual restaurant as an outdoor cultural hub for Phase 2. He plans on introducing an outdoor stage with live music and themed nights, all while maintaining social distancing.

The Bergen has been something of an oddity during the pandemic, reaching record revenue since it opened in January. Brown attributes the boom in business to good karma from his efforts to feed local children who were out of school for free. “The results of taking care of the community meant that the community became brand ambassadors for The Bergen,” he said, citing the word-of-mouth marketing that occurred after the free meal program was launched.

The Bergen transitioned to takeout and delivery in March while teaming up with Brooklyn United to provide over 5,000 free meals to date, according to Brown. The program, which relied on community donations, will end on June 30, while The Bergen prepares to expand their curbside dining into a community space with live entertainment on Fridays and Saturdays.

Brown said that restaurants have a responsibility to take care of the community in the same way customers take care of local businesses by supporting them. Brown is hopeful that Phase 2 will contribute to communities getting back to their normal state of affairs.

“We’re all just trying to return to a sense of normalcy,” he said. “And I believe restaurants provide a sense of normalcy.”

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA) will not be terminated. DACA recipients (also known as DREAMers) and activists across the country celebrated what is deemed for now as a huge win.

The DACA program allows for children who migrate to the United States under the age of 16 to receive permanent residency and work permits, so long as they are pursuing an education or enlist in the armed forces. The Trump Administration has attempted to get rid of the program since 2017, despite pushback on the decision from both Democrats and Republicans.

“This ruling has set the tone and made people realize we aren’t going anywhere,” said Josephine Andrea Buenrostro Jaureguí, a 22-year-old DREAMer and nursing student from Guadalajara, Mexico. “I get to continue working and not only go to school, but also live with some peace of mind.”

Jaureguí is grateful that the program is continuing, but also recognizes DACA as a temporary solution. One of the main flaws with DACA, she says, is the financial burden the program ensues. “A lot of colleges still don’t offer in-state tuition for DACA students,” she said. “Because of that, many of us aren’t able to afford attending.” Jaureguí believes one of the best solutions to this problem is to provide a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers.

For some, the ruling is a sign of hope for the future.

“This is just the beginning,” said Melanie Cruz-Morales in an email, a 19-year-old DREAMer and pre-law student at Georgetown University. “We must continue to fuel this fire and demand action from Congress,” she wrote, emphasizing how this ruling will impact every aspect of DREAMer’s lives.

Cruz-Morales is originally from Oaxaca, Mexico, and aspires to become an immigration attorney to help represent her community. According to Cruz-Morales, this ruling would not have been possible without the endless efforts from DREAMers and activists all over the country. “After a long-fought battle,” she said, “we finally get to celebrate this one major win.”

Many news sources were skeptical that the Supreme Court ruling would be in favor of DACA recipients when oral arguments were given back in November 2019. Multiple mainstream outlets, such as the New York Times, Associated Press and Vox, reported that the majority conservative court would most likely be ruling in Trump’s favor. Countless DREAMers like Cruz-Morales were preparing the worst-case scenario: being forced to live in a country that they have never known.

DREAMers also recognize that the legal battle for DREAMers and the undocumented community, as a whole, is far from over. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only judge out of the five dissenting votes to write that the Trump administration’s decision to attempt to end the program was blatantly racist, writing, “I would not so readily dismiss the allegation that an executive decision disproportionately harms the same racial group that the President branded as less desirable mere months earlier.”

While the ruling is considered a great step forward, there are still more than 10 million undocumented people living in the United States, most of whom do not qualify for DACA. Anna Muñoz, a 23-year-old DREAMer from Mexico with a degree in Neuroscience from Depauw University, acknowledged that there is still much more work to be done, and said she hopes this ruling will energize people to keep fighting. In an email to The Interlude, she said that the best way to combat this discrimination is by fighting together, demanding more from elected officials, and recognizing all forms of oppression as a collective fight.

“We need to amplify and show up for our Black community, and educate and empower our own communities,” she wrote in an email. “There’s power in dissenting, organizing, holding our elected officials accountable and demanding better.”

CrossFit is in turmoil after CEO Greg Glassman, now “retired,” attacked a gym owner via email and made racist remarks on Twitter. Despite the brand’s decision to replace Glassman, many gyms say they will not re-affiliate with CrossFit, which is still owned by the former CEO.

The widespread condemnation that followed Glassman’s behavior — which led to the loss of major brand partnerships with Reebok and Rogue, pledges of disaffiliation from at least 1,300 of its affiliate gyms, and ultimately Glassman’s departure — was prompted largely by women in the CrossFit community.

Rocket Community Fitness, a former CrossFit affiliate in the Seattle area, posted a blog on June 5 about why the gym changed its name and decided to separate itself from the brand. The blog included an email from Glassman from the day prior, berating co-owner Alyssa Royse for telling the company she intended to disaffiliate from the brand because of the company’s history of insensitive public comments and posts.

“You’re doing your best to brand us as racist and you know it’s bullshit,” Glassman wrote. “That makes you a really shitty person. Do you understand that? You’ve let your politics warp you into something that strikes me as wrong to the point of being evil.”

A day after Royse posted the blog, Glassman tweeted “Floyd-19” in response to a tweet from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation that designated racism as a public health issue.

The blog and Glassman’s tweet soon went viral and prompted athletes, gym affiliates, and sponsors in the sport to question their relationship with the brand, whose affiliate gyms blend weightlifting and cardio in constantly-varied, functional workouts. Royse, who co-owns the gym with her husband, Brady Collins, said in an email to The Interlude, “The behavior of [Glassman] and HQ impacts affiliates, whether they want it to or not.”

“Although those look like the catalysts, they were simply the pressure points for a storm that appears to have been brewing for some time,” Royse told The Interlude via email.

Elisabeth Akinwale, who has competed in five CrossFit games according to her website, took to Instagram on June 8 to discuss the lack of visibility of Black athletes in CrossFit and how it fit into a larger picture of racism in the United States. She followed up by reposting a video she filmed in 2017. “Why would I spend $200 a month to feel like an outsider?” Akinwale asked in the video.

“If someone comes in with a shirt that supports a regime that is oppressive to people that look like me, then I’m not gonna feel comfortable being in that environment in my time that I’m choosing where I spend it,” she said in the video. “When I’m on my recreational time, I’m probably not going to choose somewhere that I’m feeling uncomfortable.”

Katrín Davíðsdóttir, who has won the CrossFit Games twice, also took to Instagram to express her anger over Glassman’s behavior: “This is something I DO NOT STAND FOR. This is not leadership. This is not good human nature.”

Others followed suit. “I’ve committed my life to CrossFit,” five-time CrossFit Games athlete Brooke Wells said in an Instagram post. “I’m outraged. I’m embarrassed. I’m incredibly disappointed.”

Affiliate gym owners that The Interlude spoke with echoed that sentiment.

For Priscilla Estrada, co-owner of San Fernando Fitness, the recent break with CrossFit was a long time coming. Ever since CrossFit fired the majority of its media team with little explanation in 2018, Estrada said support for affiliates has gone downhill. “The media team was pretty badass,” she said in an interview with the Interlude. “It helped us with marketing. It was a great tool for us to use with our coaches.”

San Fernando Fitness began to consider rebranding six months ago. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Estrada said she reached out to CrossFit multiple times about paying her affiliate fees, which run about $3,000 a year, in monthly increments instead of a lump sum. Eventually she got a response, but no relief from the June 6 payment. Estrada said that she saw the leaked emails on Rocket Community Fitness’ blog that same day, solidifying her decision to discontinue her affiliation.

“We were very hurt,” she said of her gym, which she described as predominantly Latino, but diverse. “It just felt like it was the cherry on top. That was the final tie breaker for us.”

Jose Morales, owner of Brutal Boxx in the Bronx, saved up for years to turn his small personal training business into a 3,000-square-foot CrossFit affiliate in 2015. “The community is amazing,” Morales said in an interview with The Interlude. “That’s what makes CrossFit.”

When Morales saw Glassman’s tweet, he was deeply offended. “How can I be the face of my gym,” Morales said, “come back and be like ‘oh, yeah, it’s okay,’ like nothing happened?”

“Without your clients, you are nobody,” he added. “And this is exactly why it was so easy for me to disaffiliate.”

Glassman and the brand have a history of discriminatory policies and making offensive statements online. In March, CrossFit took down a post on its Instagram that read: “Some guy eats a bat halfway across the world and now I can’t go to CrossFit.”

The brand still has a controversial pun on its page from an affiliate gym claiming CrossFit can help people flatten their “curves.” The post compares efforts to minimize the spread of coronavirus to losing weight.

And in 2014, a transgender athlete sued CrossFit for not allowing her to compete in the women’s division. CrossFit did not change its policies on allowing transgender athletes to compete in the division with which they identify until 2018. The rule took effect in time for the 2019 games.

The former CEO also stirred controversy after CrossFit tweeted a quote of him saying “Make sure you pour some out for your dead homies,” with an image of a Coke can. The comments garnered public condemnation from singer Nick Jonas, who has Type I Diabetes.

Glassman’s replacement, Dave Castro, has too faced questions and criticism about his attitudes on race. BuzzFeed News found video from a 2019 CrossFit Games presser that shows Castro dodging questions about diversity in the sport. Both Glassman and CrossFit did not immediately respond to The Interlude’s request for comment.

Quoting a post she saw online, Estrada said CrossFit’s decision to put Castro at the helm of the company is “like replacing Miley Cyrus with Hannah Montana.”

Some of the sports’ biggest athletes, including Davíðsdóttir, Wells, Amanda Barnhardt, Kristi Eramo O’Connell, Brook Haas, Chandler Smith, Noah Ohlsen, Travis Mayer, and Jean-Simon Roy-Lemaire, have said that the unseating of Glassman is not enough, and have vowed not to compete in the 2020 CrossFit games unless major changes are made to the organization’s leadership structure.

“The only way I see forward is for a blank slate,” Davíðsdóttir said in an Instagram post on June 12. “Greg + those who stood by while this happened, can not be a part of [CrossFit].”

It appears that many local CrossFitters feel the same way. “We’ve had so much good support from our community,” Estrada said. More people have reached out about joining since her gym made the announcement that it was cancelling its affiliation with CrossFit. “It helped a lot,” she said.

Estrada said that she does hope changes will be made in the organization. “A board of diverse executives would be amazing for the company,” she said. “I think if they had that, they wouldn’t be where they’re at right now.”

“If change happens later on down the line and if we feel that it’s worth it for us to pay and reinvest those $3,000 [in CrossFit], then we will do it,” she said. “But at the moment, we’re okay. We’ll be fine.”

“By rooting out racism, sexism and abusive behavior, we can rebuild something better on a foundation of compassion and empowerment,” Royse wrote in an email to The Interlude. “That’s possible now.”

But for some gyms, the bridge has been burned.

Morales said that the reaction from his clients has been positive and that his decision appears to have strengthened the gym’s sense of community. “I don’t see [CrossFit] getting any better,” Morales said. “I made my choice and I’m gonna stick by it.”

Editor’s note: The author of this story belongs to a CrossFit gym in Manhattan.

Resisting, organizing, and quarantining has become quite a juggling act for many women of color, especially Black women, who are trying to change the systems that disproportionately disadvantage them. Even protesting has become a potentially life-threatening act since communities of color face a higher risk of death by Coronavirus, according to an April report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The stigma surrounding mental health in communities of color has exacerbated the stress, fear, and anxiety BIPOC are feeling lately. Not to mention, it is extremely difficult for a woman of color to connect with an appropriate practitioner for various reasons, including insurance worries, mistrust of the healthcare system, and inherent biases that lead to frequent misdiagnoses.

Here is a list of various free and low-cost mental health resources for women of color:

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please remember that you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1–800–273–8255 and the Spanish Language Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio at 1–888–628–9454, which remain active 24/7. Further resources are accessible at suicidepreventionlifeline.org. Trans and questioning callers can contact the Trans Lifeline, an organization run by trans volunteers, at 1–877–565–8860 (within the United States) and at 1-877-330-6366 (within Canada).