Alexander

Two panellists considered that the “subjectivity in assessing impact meant this did not meet the high threshold for VAR intervention”, but the majority view was it that was “a clear and obvious error”.

One panellist considered the “short-lived holding to lack clear impact on the ability of Isak to progress”.

Isak stayed on his feet during the incident.

After the match, Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola told BBC Match of the Day: “There is a clear grab of the shirt.

“Alex was just in front of him. He was going to head in front of the goal, but couldn’t because he grabbed the shirt.

“If he goes to the floor, they call the penalty, 100%. It should be like this, but it is what it is.

“Next time, the managers should tell Alex to go to the floor, otherwise they won’t call it.

“The answer is you have to dive. If you don’t dive they won’t call it.”

The KMI Panel ruled that there was a second VAR error on 31 October.

It said Ipswich should have been awarded a penalty against Hull City when Nobel Mendy held back Dara O’Shea at a corner.

Referee Peter Bankes did not spot the offence and VAR Neil Davies took no action.

The game was 0-0 at the time. Ipswich took the lead shortly afterwards and it finished 2-2.

While Elizabeth Alexander ‘s career trajectory has taken her from scholar and author to educator, cultural advocate and most recently philanthropy, she considers herself first and foremost a poet. “Day job by day, writer by night,” she quips about her two very different and separate identities.

On the creative side, Alexander’s bona fides as a writer of poetry and prose are impressive: six volumes of poetry, including the 2009 poem for Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, “Praise Song for the Day,” three essay collections and, most recently, “The Light of the World,” a moving memoir of love, grief and meaning in the wake of loss. On the business front, she’s the president of the Mellon Foundation, the largest private funder of the arts culture and the humanities in the United States. How does she bring such seemingly disparate parts of her life together in service of her work?

It starts with presence.

Over our Zoom call, Alexander is engaging, calm but focused on the things that matter in her life: poetry, family, community, justice and connection. She quotes freely from poetry in conversation, and says she keeps the poems that inspire her in an “internal Rolodex,” as offerings to colleagues and students. And now, readers in “Signals Across Vast Distances,” a collection of transformational essays and stories, 10 years in the making, about life’s challenges and how poetry, art and the humanities can connect and sustain us through difficult times.

A Rolodex of poetic resistance

The book’s title is taken from a 1967 Muriel Rukeyser poem in which she writes of “news pouring out of various devices/Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen” and of people trying to connect to each other through the confusion “to construct peace, to make love, to reconcile…ourselves with each other,/Ourselves with ourselves.”Rukeyser’s poem had been in Alexander’s Rolodex for some time. Its resonance is more profound in a period that she describes as beginning “with the global pandemic and moving into the protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the increased nihilistic despair over climate change, and the second coming of authoritarianism.”

Her succinct conclusion: “We are navigating through some very challenging times.”

Poetry like Rukeyser’s and others by Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden or the essays by James Baldwin that Alexander parses in the book, provide sustenance for the journey. Prescient in its reference to the news reaching people through various “devices,” Rukeyser’s poem also resonates for Alexander, “because as I consider being from a generation that lived through the civil rights movement, women’s movement and gay liberation movements, I felt we were always moving forward. But Rukeyser’s poem reminded me in 1967 the United States [which brought escalation of the Vietnam War, war protests and race riots] had not come to an agreement about what it believed, or how it would move forward. So, I kept hearing that poem in my head, which became not only instructive to me but an offering I could give to others… as encouragement that, even when we are separated from each other, we are still connected.”

Alexander knows that need for connection and a sense of being able to reconcile ourselves with our most essential human values is more urgent that ever. What encourages her, and she offers to readers, is poetry and other literature, which “gives us the encouragement to stay grounded.”

In addition to writing about Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Second Sermon on the Warpland,” whose line “Conduct your blooming in the noise and the whip of the whirlwind” serves as a Alexander’s mantra to stand and fight for justice, she includes stories from her own life, including anecdotes about her late husband, the artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, and others whose journeys to and lives in America as refugees and citizens spark an essential question: “Will we build homes with open sides that welcome wayfarers into our lives?”

As evidence of Alexander’s deep connection to the humanities, the book includes a dozen beautiful color reproductions of fine art by Rashid Johnson, Elizabeth Catlett, Lorna Simpson and Amy Sherald, among others, including a self-portrait by Ghebreyesus. The art was selected as counterpoint to the essays, another means to draw the reader into reflection and contemplation.

Reshaping who — and what — we choose to remember

Alexander’s expansive consideration of the importance of the art to expand our understanding of ourselves and inspire connection includes “Notes on the Nation,” an essay that reflects on Simon Rodia’s Watts Tower— which Alexander admires for their “inspirational power and seeming impossibility” — and the monuments she’d like to see “that do not teach us to memorialize war or to commemorate fighting against others because their beliefs are different….I’d like to see those monuments.”

Alexander’s sentiment was shared by the Mellon Foundation’s leaders, who commissioned a study on the nation’s commemorative works that found, among other things, that 50% of monuments were in honor of people who owned other people. That inspired the funding of the Monuments Project, a $500-million, multiyear commitment (the largest in the foundation’s history), which seeks to answer a fundamental question posed on the foundation’s website: “How can we transform our commemorative landscape so that it accurately conveys complexity of our history and the inspiration that is possible in public spaces?”

While perhaps its best known project has been the MONUMENTS exhibit, co-sponsored by the Brick and the Museum of Contemporary Art, which explores the removal and reinterpretation of decommissioned Confederate statues, Alexander also expressed enthusiasm for Kootéeyaa Deiyí, a totem trail on Juneau, Alaska’s waterfront that commemorates the region’s Indigenous communities and Lauren Halsey’s sister dreamer, an ode to the history and vibrancy of South Los Angeles. “I’ve visited that monument several times,” Alexander admits of the monument that sits at the corner of 76th Street and Western Avenue, “and I am awed by the way people have taken to it and claim it as their own.”

The purpose of the project, as is Alexander’s work as a poet and scholar, is to create a more complete picture of our country. “We limit our greatness as a nation,” she argues, “if we think a sanitized history is of any use to anyone!”

Weaving poetry into the margins of everyday life

As important as discussions of language and art can be in connecting us to each other and providing inspiration to seek justice, Alexander is acutely aware that readers live in the real world, where exhortations to speak truth to power are noted side-by-side with reminders to pick up the dry cleaning. So she closes “Signals” with her personal “To Do List,” an idea which came from another notable poet and friend, Rita Dove, who Alexander reveals includes lines of poetry amid her personal to-do list as a way to remind herself of what’s most important.

Alexander’s list reflects her own particularly hard-won wisdom, like “There should always be salad with dinner.” “Speak up, even when you are afraid.” Or “Give something away every day. Pass along a book when you have finished it. Think about the ecosystem of your actions—what you take in, send out,” the latter of which she includes in a more expansive concept of tithing, of contributing to a common pot for greater good.

There are other thoughts in this essential collection that readers may use to construct their own “to do” lists, which Alexander jokingly says could be “the next great literary genre.” It may be lines of poetry or prose she quotes in the book, or passages from others’ or her own essays that will resonate with readers seeking reconnection with what’s most important in their lives. “As a poet, I know that language is what connects us as human beings,” she asserts. “And I still believe that books are powerful tools to bring us together in a common experience. I want the signals this book sends out across the vast distances of this country to be a conversation starter… and a journey.”

See the author live Nov. 9, 7 p.m. at ALOUD Presents: Elizabeth Alexander in conversation with Jacqueline Stewart at the Mark Taper Auditorium in Central Library. 630 W. Fifth St., L.A.

Woods is a regular contributor to The Times, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the editor of several anthologies and four novels in the “Charlotte Justice” mystery series.

With its gridlocked terminals, infuriating delays and long lines for everything from security checks to coffee, LAX might be where patience goes to die. It’s a place most dream of escaping; instead L.A.-born novelist Alexander Maksik takes readers inside the airport to witness both the unease and shared humanity of people passing through.

Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award in fiction, Maksik’s new novel, “Passengers,” unfolds within the airport’s sprawling concourses. The story centers on Ivan and Nina, a distant father and daughter meeting up for a flight to Paris. For 75-year-old Ivan, it’s a chance to show his daughter where he once lived. For 29-year-old Nina, it’s a free trip and an opportunity to finally understand a parent she barely knows. When their flight is delayed, and then delayed again, frustration shifts from the departure boards to the fault lines between them.

Maksik, speaking via video conference from his Parisian apartment, always planned that the book would be about a father-daughter pair. “When my daughter was born, like many new parents, I found I could only think in clichés, and I didn’t try to resist them,” he says. “But as time went by, I started to toy with the idea of writing a novel about a father and daughter in which the battle against cliché would become central, would take on huge, even life-saving, importance.”

The author also plays with the idea of nostalgia. “Nostalgia brings you close to the edge of real feeling without forcing you to confront the weight, power and terror of real feeling. It’s too easy to keep yourself wrapped up in the false ease of the past.” One of the things that airports remind us of, he says, is change. Restaurants and boutiques close and open regularly. In one era, people sought out bookstores; in another, they’re looking for headphones and portable chargers.

“For a long time, airports felt to me like places of civility,” says Maksik. “I remember having real conversations with strangers at a bar or in various waiting areas. There was promise and possibility and warmth in such interactions. Now an airport is just one more place to look at your phone.”

As Ivan and Nina walk, talk, do tequila shots and observe their fellow travelers, those travelers are also observing them. One of the most powerful conceits in the book occurs when the two leave an airport venue and readers get the perspective of a person who served or overheard them. For example, one character, “an elegant woman, long gray hair in a braid” thinks about her dead husband when she notices Ivan and Nina: “It was impossible for the woman to see two people together, really any two people, and not feel his absence.” There’s another man who thinks he can tell that father and daughter “were the kind always looking for a way around the rules, who think waiting is for suckers like him.” Each underscores the fact that strangers affect and can even change one another (like our own offspring do).

Something else Ivan and Nina share is physical labor. Ivan spent decades as a building contractor, while Nina is a masseuse who goes to clients’ homes, not liking “the idea of going to the same place again and again. She wanted to travel, to peer inside different lives.” Maksik himself held service positions for many years, experience that gave him a different outlook than some of his colleagues at the renowned Iowa Writers Workshop, which he entered at the relatively senior age of 38.

“At Iowa, I was drawn to those who were writing about worlds that were far away from literature and academia,” he says. “Maybe that’s because I’ve worked so many different jobs. I washed dishes. I was a bartender. I cooked. I delivered pizza. Those experiences were vivid and interesting and at least as formative to me as a writer as anything I learned in the classroom. To write well about work is something I admire a great deal.”

Of course, Maksik is writing fiction, and can write about any sort of life, including that of a teacher, as he did in his critically acclaimed 2011 novel “You Deserve Nothing,” about an affair between an American teacher and his French high school student. As he knows, there’s a shadow over that book because one of his students alleged that the story was about Maksik’s affair with her when she was 17 years old.

“I will aways have to acknowledge my own history, and how I came to write that novel,” he says. “And there will always exist people to whom this acknowledgment means nothing. Perhaps this is as it should be. I’m certainly not proud of that period of my life, and, frankly, I’m no longer particularly proud of the novel either. Nevertheless, it will always be part and parcel of my history, and I have no intention of pretending otherwise.”

As Ivan and Nina wrestle with their own emotional truths, which range from her mother Nora’s departure from their lives to Ivan’s clumsy recitations of Nina’s childhood antics, something alarming is afoot. Nina can’t make or receive calls on her phone. The pair notices that others can’t make calls, either; a restaurant loses its checkout interface; and everyone is snaking cords around to keep devices charged for the moment when service returns.

Something is definitely wrong, and no one seems to know what it is. Soon Nina sees that her father is tired and weak, despite a meal and plenty of water; she becomes convinced that he needs fresh air. When they try to exit the airport, they find barriers set up and armed soldiers who say no one is allowed to leave.

The sense of unease Maksik creates mirrors the sense of disconnection between all of the people stranded, from a brusque young woman in bunny slippers and giant headphones to an older couple huddled beneath racks of merchandise: “We’re trying to sleep … Can’t you see that?” one of them says. This LAX, unlike the island of civility and good manners Maksik remembers from childhood, fosters alienation and dread.

The author laughs ruefully when accused of his own version of nostalgia, admitting that the version of the airport he’s created feels closer to our present-day reality. As it happens, Maksik himself will be taking a flight soon, from France to Florida, taking part in his fellow author Lauren Groff’s First Editions Book Club. How does he feel about that?

“Our daughter was born in late 2019, and then there was the pandemic. Each day since then seems more dangerous than the previous one. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find myself trapped in an airport, whether as a result of climate change, AI, or one of the many petulant maniacs who run the world.”

Patrick is a freelance critic and author of the memoir “Life B.”

A screenwriter is suing director Alexander Payne, alleging that the Oscar winner rewrote his script “Frisco” to become “The Holdovers.”

Simon Stephenson, a screenwriter behind “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” and “Luca,” is accusing Payne of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California federal court. In court documents obtained by The Times, Stephenson alleges that he wrote “Frisco” based on his experiences as a pediatrician and uploaded it to the industry platform “The Black List,” where it was ranked the third-best unproduced screenplay in 2013.

The same year, the suit alleges agents for Stephenson sent the script to Payne, who declined the project. They sent it a second time in 2019, and Payne passed again, according to the civil complaint.

“But in 2022, he finally made Stephenson’s screenplay,” the lawsuit reads. “Under Payne’s direction, Stephenson’s children’s hospital became a boarding school, the cynical pediatrician became a cynical teacher, and the precocious patient became a precocious pupil. The film earned its credited screenwriter career-defining Academy Award and BAFTA nominations, and the Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay. Unfortunately, that credited screenwriter was not Stephenson, and the film was not called Frisco. It was called The Holdovers.”

David Hemingson, the creator of ABC’s “Whiskey Cavalier” and a veteran television writer for shows including “Kitchen Confidential” and “How I Met Your Mother,” was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

“The Holdovers” is Hemingson’s first produced feature film.

Representatives for Payne, Hemingson and Focus Features did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2023, Payne told The Times that a pilot written by Hemingson, as well as the 1935 French film “Merlusse,” written and directed by Marcel Pagnol, served as inspiration for “The Holdovers.” Both were set at a boarding school. During a 2023 post-screening Q&A interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, Payne was asked how he came up with the idea for the script, and he said it had come to him a decade before.

“I had the idea for the movie for about 10 years, but didn’t have either the discipline to research it, or I hadn’t gotten around to it,” he said. “And out of the blue, about four or five years ago, I was sent a pilot, set in a prep school and a boarding school, and I called the writer and I said, ‘You’ve written a very fine pilot, which I don’t wish to direct, but would you consider taking on an idea I have that takes place in that same world?’ And he did, and this is what worked out.”

Hemingson has the sole screenwriting credit on the film. Before “The Holdovers,” Payne is credited with penning most of the scripts that became his acclaimed films. He won Academy Awards for the adapted screenplays of “Sideways” (written with Jim Taylor) and “The Descendants” (written with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash), but he told The Times that he took a more supervisory role on “The Holdovers.”

Alexander Payne

(Frankie Alduino / For The Times)

“He would run two, three, four different scenarios by me, and I would put the kibosh on him until we finally said, ‘Yes, this one,’ ” Payne said in a 2023 interview.

In March 2024, Variety reported that Stephenson exchanged emails and calls with the Writers Guild of America’s senior director of credits Lesley Mackey, alleging he needed to discuss a “credits-related issue” on a high-profile film. In one email, Stephenson wrote, “the evidence the holdovers screenplay has been plagiarised line-by-line from frisco is genuinely overwhelming – anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word ‘brazen.’”

About a month after the accusations made headlines, Hemingson won the 2024 Writers Guild Award for original screenplay for “The Holdovers.” In his acceptance speech, Hemingson said he’d been a “proud member of the Writers Guild for 28 years” and thanked his wife and sons “who supported me for the six grueling years it took to conceive of and write ‘The Holdovers’ and for it to go from from page to screen.” He also thanked the cast for bringing his characters to life and accepted the award in memory of his mother, and his father “who gave me my love of the written word and taught me the value of integrity.”

“I believe that in life, things often arrive right on time. It took 28 years of reflection and experience and ups and downs for me to be able to tell this deeply personal love story,” he said. “Took a brilliant cast and a brilliant director to bring it to life at this time when we’re all so in need of connection.”

At the 2024 Sarajevo Film Festival, Payne shot down allegations that he’d lifted major elements of the script from Stephenson’s “Frisco,” calling the accusation “the stupidest thing in the world.”

However, Cameron Norrie fell short of his best victory of the season when world number five Daniil Medvedev saved match point to win their last-16 match.

A frustrating year has seen Norrie drop to 41st in the world rankings and exit each of the past three Grand Slam tournaments in the first round.

But the 31-year-old showed his key attributes – tenacity, athleticism and controlled aggression – to threaten a huge upset against Medvedev.

Third seed Medvedev, fresh from winning the Almaty title last week, was left angrily punching the surface when he fell a break down in the deciding set.

Norrie served for the match at 5-3 40-30, but Medvedev picked off his opponent’s serve-volley attempt and fought back to win 4-6 6-3 7-6 (7-1).

Second seed Alcaraz also progressed with a 6-1 7-6 (13-11) win over Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili.

Meanwhile, Novak Djokovic’s hopes of qualifying for the ATP Finals were harmed by a second-round defeat at the Swiss Indoors event in Basel.

The 24-time major champion, 39, lost 7-6 (7-4) 5-7 6-7 (5-7) to Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff, who produced some inspired tennis to beat the Serb for the first time in nine attempts.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Shai-Gilgeous Alexander scored 34 points, Ajay Mitchell had 18 off the bench, and the Oklahoma City Thunder stayed undefeated with a 108-101 victory over the Clippers on Sunday night.

Isaiah Hartenstein added 12 points and 12 rebounds for Oklahoma City, which won its third straight to start the season but lost three players to injury, including All-Star guard Jalen Williams, who went down hard on a drive to the basket with 1:14 left. Williams left the court on a stretcher with towels covering his left leg.

Guard Cason Wallace (left shoulder soreness) and forward Jaylin Williams (right wrist soreness) left the game in the first quarter and did not return. Mitchell was eight-for-14 shooting with six rebounds, four assists and three steals in 28 minutes.

Darius Garland scored 16 points for the Clippers (1-2). Kris Dunn and Brook Lopez had 15 points each for the Clippers, who pulled to 97-96 on a three-point shot by Derrick Jones Jr. with three minutes left but never tied the game or took the lead.

Up next for the Clippers: vs. the Lakers at Intuit Dome on Wednesday night.

TV PRESENTER Eamonn Holmes’s lover received death threats and felt ­suicidal after enduring two-and-a-half years of hell for “simply falling in love”, she has revealed.

Katie Alexander sobbed to a friend about her misery — ­saying she feels that the stress in her life, including Eamonn’s illness, has led to her suffering a breakdown.

Police are investigating malicious emails and letters delivered to her, including a threat sent to her home saying she would be decapitated.

Katie, 45, who has been in a ­relationship with the breakfast TV presenter, 66, since his split from Ruth Langsford in 2024, spoke to pals about her ongoing ordeal.

She told a friend: “I fell in love with a man who made me feel safe, who encouraged me to be myself, and who loved and accepted me for me.

“I was thrust into the limelight and suddenly blamed for everything that went wrong with Eamonn.

“I became the accused — and a talking point for the nation.

“I was advised to say nothing, even though I wanted to defend myself, to tell my truth. I decided to protect others before putting myself first. I was being judged simply for falling in love.

“I had death threats sent to my work email, and letters to my home address threatening to decapitate me. Not only was I trying to protect myself, I had to protect my children from online abuse, and from being picked on at school.

“It has been two-and-a-half years of pure hell. It became too much to endure. I reached the point where I thought the quickest way out of it all was to kill myself.

“I had a breakdown. It’s my ­children who have kept me alive.”

Katie, a trained counsellor from West Yorkshire, added to her pal: “I hold people’s emotions for a living.

“Knowing what was the truth in my own life — so different to what was being ­portrayed publicly — was torture. The attacks were very personal.

“People can’t fathom I like older men. I have a history of relationships with men older than me.

“People thought, ‘she must be with Eamonn for his money’. That’s such an untrue, one-dimensional reaction.

“I had a happy life before Eamonn, but suddenly being with him made me happy and content. I never asked for a penny, but he wanted to make sure that I was comfortable financially. He made sure I didn’t have to worry about money. It was his choice, his doing.

“I refused his generosity so many times. It even got to the point where I’d stop him paying £15.99 for a film on TV, making him wait until it became free to watch.

“Despite being so far apart geographically, we lived together half of the week. We made it work. He was — and still is — my partner. And when we were together we did everything together.

“I gave him a sense of worth. He became softer after years of antagonism. He spoke of his feelings in more depth. I told him that if he can’t communicate with me we can’t be together. It seemed alien to him to be able to have a conversation and not an argument, or shouting match, even if we disagreed.”

The Sun on Sunday previously told how Katie had to move her belongings out of Eamonn’s flat in Surrey. He has been in hospital since suffering a stroke in April.

Financial help has dried up, including repayments on a Mercedes car bought by Eamonn so Katie could travel to visit him.

A close friend of Katie added: “She’s had a breakdown with all the stress that has come with trying to keep a family together and juggling work, while trying to care for Eamonn in hospital 230 miles away. There is so much that has gone on which will come out one day, and everyone will learn the truth.

“It suits a lot of people that Katie be painted as the ‘Wicked Witch’. But the reality is so different.”

The pair started dating in May 2024 and within a few months Katie moved into Eamonn’s home.

Eamonn wed fellow former ITV This Morning host Ruth in 2010 but the pair have been going through a divorce since they split in 2024.

West Yorkshire Police confirmed a probe into “offensive” letters, but said “no suspect has been identified”. Katie was asked for comment.

HAVANA — The Caribbean island of Nevis has received a financial boost in honor of one of its most famous sons, Alexander Hamilton, who went on to become a founding father of the United States and America’s first treasury secretary.

The U.S. government this month awarded $245,000 to restore the home where some believe Hamilton once lived as the U.S. celebrates its 250th anniversary.

Hamilton was born on Nevis in the mid-18th century and spent his childhood living at his adopted father’s home in Charlestown.

The 17th-century Georgian stone building is now Hamilton House, a museum that houses documents from the famous forefather’s early years and features exhibits honoring other Caribbean personalities. But it has demanded constant repairs: time and salty air have damaged the woodwork.

Nevis Premier Mark Brantley told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he’s grateful for the funds.

“We have tried valiantly as locals to preserve these very important historical monuments,” he said.

Despite Hamilton having lived only the early part of his childhood in Nevis, the premier believes his legacy is inspiring.

“Hamilton is significant because I think it’s a demonstration of what a small island like Nevis, a little dot in the ocean, can contribute to the founding of the greatest nation in the world, the United States,” Brantley said.

The two-story, Georgian stone building that was originally built around 1680 was destroyed by an earthquake in 1840 and was last restored in 1983.

Brantley said the restoration work is important to both the U.S. and Nevis: “Hamilton remains, I think, an iconic figure for us and a figure that we can look at his legacy and inspire our own people to achieve and to know that greatness is available for all of us.”

Alexander Lovera is a founding member and spokesperson of the El Sur Existe Commune in Valencia, Carabobo State. A former student leader and participant of the MBR-200 revolutionary movement, he now focuses on urban planning and social property enterprises. In this interview, Lovera discusses the El Sur Existe communal project, its productive initiatives, and the relationship with state institutions.

How did the El Sur Existe Commune come about?

We began in 2011 as a political organizing collective called the Complejo Deportivo Recreativo del Sur, made up of 11 people.

Through that collective, we sought to secure spaces within the facilities of the Valencia National Racetrack in Carabobo State, creating recreational and cultural spaces for the communities, and it was there that we began to organize activities and envision the El Sur Existe Commune. The racetrack is next to the Santa Inés neighborhood, where all the communal councils in the area come together. Another community, Ciudad Plaza, also joined the commune.

Then, in 2013, we launched the El Sur Existe communal property enterprise (EPSDC), which serves as the umbrella organization for all the initiatives we have established in the area.

In 2015, we formally created the commune, which brought together 22 community councils covering the Ciudad Plaza and Santa Inés communities and several surrounding rural settlements. Subsequently, the territory was divided into other communes; today we have 14 communal councils.

The El Sur Existe Commune has been known for its focus on productive initiatives, such as the textile workshop and the animal feed plant. What is the history of these projects?

The textile workshop was born out of surplus from our first company, El Sur Existe. We purchased various types of sewing machines and began making school uniforms, both within the commune and in collaboration with nearby communities.

We started with 5,000 uniforms per school term. This initiative gave us the momentum to develop other ventures. Within the commune, with support from the Ministry of Communes, we managed to reclaim a space that had been abandoned. There, we created a communal market to sell products from local producers, as well as goods from agreements with companies nationalized by the government, such as Fama de América [coffee], Aceites Diana [cooking oil], and Lácteos Los Andes [dairy].

Long before the CLAPs [subsidized food program] began, we had a similar system that we called “the clock.” It worked like this: every week, a different communal council was in charge of distributing all the products available at the communal store. Later on, the management of all those state-owned companies changed, and we were no longer able to purchase their products.

In that same space, we opened a store, which we called La Tienda de Papel, where we distributed school supplies: notebooks, books, exam papers, and pencils. We also sold our school uniforms.

Starting in 2017, other projects began to take shape, such as the slaughterhouse, which arose from an agreement between the commune and a private entrepreneur. This project benefits local producers who cannot access the municipal slaughterhouse, as it is complicated to transport the cattle there.

We went on to establish the “Cárnicos El Sur Existe” Family Production Unit to process the cattle. We were able to set up a space within the slaughterhouse equipped with machines for cutting, grinding, and packaging. We also began producing sausages, ground beef for hamburgers, and other vacuum-sealed cuts. These products were distributed through the communal food market and during special events organized by the communal councils.

We then noticed that some byproducts, such as blood, bones, and fat, were left over in the slaughterhouse, and we realized they could serve as raw materials for producing animal feed. Thus, together with local producers, in 2021 we established the Aba El Auyamal social property firm, dedicated to the production of balanced animal feed.

What is the current status of these ventures? How have they dealt with problems such as shortages of raw materials and supplies, as well as the electricity crisis?

The projects have had their ups and downs, but they are still going strong. To summarize, the EPSDC El Sur Existe, which serves as the umbrella organization for all the projects, is currently still operating in our commune.

The textile factory is still active, with its fair share of obstacles, because the raw materials for making uniforms are expensive, and when sold on the market, the clothes end up being more expensive than imported ones. This is an issue that needs to be addressed at the government level, because small textile businesses cannot compete.

The slaughterhouse continues to operate, although the family production unit has scaled back its operations due to electrical problems. Three main freezers, the cold storage room containing all the vacuum-packed meat, and the engine were damaged by electrical surges. We are finding ways to replace the equipment so we can resume operations. We hope the electricity problem improves somewhat this year, because it has been severe in Carabobo State.

For now, the animal feed plant is processing only raw materials, because the prices of other components like corn, soybeans, and protein concentrates have risen sharply; the final product ends up being too expensive and harder to sell.

On the other hand, the Venezuelan food market is increasingly controlled by large agribusiness corporations. Even so, we’ve managed to source some items from local producers, who are also our main customers for animal feed. In addition, we have other projects, such as raising chickens and pigs, and we distribute eggs and meat through our communal store.

These projects have faced setbacks, but we’ve tried to keep them going using our own resources. The economic situation has been difficult, and exchange rate instability also affects us.

Through our enterprises, we’ve also tried to support many local entrepreneurs. These ventures have also served as spaces for political interactions, where delegations come to learn from our experiences so they can replicate them in other territories.

We have recently established ties with the University of the Communes (UNACOM) and its communal production communities to offer classes in these spaces. Here in the territory, we are offering classes in business administration and veterinary medicine, and we will soon begin offering training in food production. All students will participate in these production units. We have served as a model within the territory and will continue to drive this process forward so that the government recognizes these productive initiatives and gives them greater support.

The El Sur Existe Commune developed self-government mechanisms for the direct management of public services in coordination with the mayor’s office. What can you tell us about these initiatives?

From the El Sur Existe Commune, the political coordination team sought to form community brigades in the area. Many comrades joined this effort.

In 2019, there was a nationwide surge in the formation of Communal Brigades (BRICOM) to carry out or support work in areas such as electricity and plumbing. We attempted to establish the BRICOM through the Ministry of Communes, making it a legal entity, but that is where the process began to stall.

Through the BRICOMs, we carried out various projects in the area. We supported the communal councils on projects related to wastewater, drinking water, and electricity. We also carried out various electricity-related projects in the agricultural communal councils. However, there came a point when the mayor’s office and the regional government realized that we were occupying a space they had previously managed.

We were unable to make further progress through the ministry. We wanted to establish socially owned enterprises so that the municipal and regional governments, using the resources allocated to them, could contract these enterprises to work within the territory. But this touched on vested interests: certain political groups that controlled those contracts did not allow the project to move forward.

Later on, the BRICOMs ceased to function. Then there was another initiative called BRICOMILES, with brigades that included the military, but they never actually came into existence. In Carabobo State, this was a ploy to give the impression that the communal councils participated in the projects carried out by the mayor’s office or the governor’s office, when in fact almost all of them were executed by companies linked to those very same government institutions.

Building a commune in an urban setting like Valencia, Carabobo State, means fighting against the individualistic logic of capitalism, compounded by migration and the impact of the country’s economic crisis. How is the commune responding to the challenge of incorporating new generations?

Engaging in politics here, in Carabobo State, primarily within the municipality of Valencia, is very challenging. This is in part because the communal project has not yet been embraced by government institutions. The mayor’s office and the governor’s office are not closely aligned with popular power.

Although on all television and radio shows, government officials claim to work with popular power, reality tells a different story. These institutions lack the political will to fully support the commune.

Despite everything, we have pressed forward with the communal process. We, the communards, are driven by conviction and the idealism of our Comandante Chávez. We strive to ensure that our territories, be they urban or rural, since our commune includes both, develop with the goal of making the commune economically self-sustaining over time.

Regarding the process of engaging young people, we prioritize culture in the territory. We try to involve the youth in cultural activities, music, modeling, and educational programs. In the commune, we’re offering courses in more practical fields such as hairdressing, baking, cosmetics, and safe operation of motorcycle taxis.

Of course, we start by recruiting the youth and then provide them with political orientation. Engaging in politics in the midst of the crisis has been difficult, and even worse since January 3. Since that US attack and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the political landscape has changed drastically across the board.

Valencia is a stronghold where individualism and unbridled capitalism prevail. Even so, we’re working to spread the commune’s philosophy, including through sports. It’s been another way to reach young people, and we’ve had good results.

From a big-picture perspective, how do you interpret the current relationship between Venezuela and the United States? How have issues such as the oil agreement with the Trump administration been addressed within the commune?

From my perspective, the way to describe Venezuela’s relationship with the United States right now is that the country has entered an era of tutelage. The national government argues that it is a win-win relationship, where the United States needs our resources and we also need its support to exploit them.

We must remember that for many years, our country suffered from US sanctions which caused a great deal of damage. People want to regain the quality of life they once had. Perhaps the Venezuelan economy can rebound if these agreements with the US and multinational corporations create a large number of jobs, which in turn generate other benefits.

Politically, our challenge is to deepen the revolution economically and socially within our territory. But unfortunately we haven’t really discussed national-scale issues, such as the oil agreement, here in the commune. In areas like Carabobo State, other needs take priority on the agenda, such as electricity and public services.