October 6, 2020 - ChaddsFordLive.com

Andrew: COVID and Trump are bookends

Anton Andrew talks like a man on a mission. He’s running for state representative against Republican Craig Williams for the 160th Legislative District, a spot being vacated by incumbent Republican Stephen Barrar, who is retiring at the end of this legislative term. It’s Andrew’s second time going for the 160th seat. He lost to Barrar in 2018.

The Democratic Party nominee, who spent his first 10 years in Jamaica and Trinidad, said he wants to be a state representative because “I always wanted to give people a shot at the American dream. I know that sounds corny, but that is what brought my entire family here, the belief that if you work hard and if you’re decent to people, you have a shot to support yourself and your family.”

Andrew — who earned his law degree from Hofstra University — said his entire career, from public defender to educator, has been with that dream in mind and that he is paying back for the opportunity given to him by his parents, teachers, and “the people who looked past my skin color, my country of national origin, and gave me a chance. I feel pretty damn lucky and I want to make sure that this and future generations have the same opportunity. I believe that is America’s most powerful export.”

He said his experience as someone who can come up with solutions to problems while working with various people is his strength. He pointed to establishing the Disadvantaged Business Enterprises Supportive Services Center to help women and minority-owned small businesses compete for large construction and transportation contracts as one example. Another is helping to set up a revolving water fund with the Nature Conservancy in Delaware.

“We pay upstream polluters not to pollute by getting money from the downstream users who would be spending a ton of money to mitigate the pollution,” he said.

Those downstream users invest in the fund, and then the potential polluters — mostly farmers, he said — are approached with an offer: “If you engage in these best practices, we can support you with whatever you need to do to engage in those best practices. And that saves money downstream.”

The environment is one of his concerns. Andrew was a founding trustee of The Land Conservancy for Southern Chester County.

His interest in the environment is coupled with COVID-19. He said COVID came about because “We removed a buffer between wild places and inhabited places.”

He said the loss of that buffer is what made it possible for the bat Coronavirus to transfer to humans. Protecting those buffers through sound environmental practices would prevent further occurrences.

Other issues

Gerrymandering

He said state legislative districts still haven’t been redrawn and points the finger at Republicans for that. He added that if elected officials felt more responsible to the voters in their district, “they would listen to the scientists or at least appear to be reasonable instead of being rabid Trumpites.”

“I think part of the reason for all the craziness in Harrisburg is because [party] leaders feel like they’re in secure enough districts…to be running around threatening the governor because he wasn’t re-opening the state for their favorite summer holiday. I think that kind of craziness only happens when you’re absolutely certain you’re not going to lose that seat.”

COVID and Donald Trump

“COVID-19 and Donald Trump are the bookends of my campaign. The way he is, it’s like a cancer, and it’s just spread down, down, down into our state House.”

He contended that some of that craziness included Republican in the state legislature with COVID not wearing masks, he alleged. However, he could not think of a specific legislator who did that. [Note: A quick web search did not confirm the allegation.]

Qualified Immunity

Qualified immunity for police officers – granting them immunity for wrongful actions if they didn’t know the actions were wrong — must go, he said. It damages community trust

“I’ve been very clear with law enforcement officers. I think they have a special relationship with the public that requires the public to know that [police] are not receiving any additional protections that the rest of us aren’t,” Andrew said. “When young people trust police officers, they share information,” so police can make real interventions before there’s violence.

He said he supports police collective-bargaining regarding wages and benefits, but not with the ability to bargain away wrong-doing and the ability to be disciplined when an internal affairs unit finds evidence of that wrong-doing.

“We need to make sure that there isn’t even a perception that they are protected more than they should be.”

Drug War and Mandatory Minimums

One issue that has been on a back burner is the drug war in general and, specifically, cannabis legalization.

Andrew said he came to see early in his law career how the drug war manifested racism to the black community. As a public defender, my first job was dealing with the unintended casualties of the drug war. I was creating alternatives to incarceration for juveniles who were absolutely getting devoured.”

He said addiction needs to be treated medically, not criminally, and that there needs to be something other than jail for those non-violent sellers who are just trying to feed their families.

And he added that mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenses “doesn’t make sense…It strips flexibility away from the judges and other mitigations that make justice just.”

Andrew said two years ago that the 160th is “flippable.” He’s sticking to that thought for this year’s election.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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Art Live: Bob’s world

Arts & Entertainment

Bob Hakun with his piece Remember — Bob Hakun with his piece 'Remember'

When you need an escape from the ordinary, spend some time with the artwork of Bob Hakun. This maker is creating some of the most stimulating, thought provoking works of assemblage around. Hakun’s years as an artist are as varied as his pieces. After receiving his BFA from Kutztown University, he spent almost 20 years sculpting Halloween masks and screen printing Halloween Costumes for Collegeville Costumes. “We had many licensed characters from Warner Brothers, Universal and other movie and TV studios. I sculpted an E.T. mask that sold over a million copies.”

Bob Hakun working on his piece ‘Gretaman’

When the business moved overseas in the 1990s he took a job as a graphic design artist. “I became fascinated by Photoshop and tried my hand at fine art digital designs among other things. But all this time I was creating stuff according to the specifications of others and my artistic ideas were put on hold.” It’s a hard pill to swallow when your art journey begins as a child. “When I was a kid, I loved to paint and draw and I was also fascinated by the gears, pipes and wires in my father’s car engine, the heating system in the house and the natural world too; bird nests, dead insects, bones and rocks all made their way into my collections.”

Hakun’s circuitous route was not without challenges. After 38 years working for other people, Hakun suffered a major health setback in the 2010s that eventually forced him into early retirement. “After I lost my job I was determined to finally make art just for myself; not to please some boss. I lost fine motor coordination because of my illness, so I had to accept a cruder, looser and freer means of expression. I started collecting all those bits of nature that fascinated me as a child and with string and wire, I latched them to some of the old mechanical parts that seemed so mysterious to me when I was a boy.”

He began to see things differently. “My illness awakened something that I hadn’t given much attention to previously. I took long walks through the woods. The decaying and worthless debris I saw, became my inspiration and my art materials.” Hakun will consider using anything except an object that is too heavy or is made of plastic. Sometimes he’ll make drawings or he’ll take photos of individual objects and assemble them in Photoshop. Other times he’ll assemble things loosely on the floor and arrange them a few times to see what works. “I discard pieces that don’t work in a pile on the side. Then I look at the pile on the side and see that it’s beautiful so I make that pile the new piece of art! Ha!” When it comes to themes, he enjoys throwing in some irony with a little whimsy. “I like juxtaposing something familiar with something that isn’t normally associated with it, triggering the mind to ’hiccup’ for a second and then re-evaluate what it is seeing. Many of my bits already have a narrative associated with them. The old worn tool has a story behind the way it looks. The broken stick and the stained, torn cloth have been through ‘something’. I provide a lot of little details which the viewer can piece together to form their own story line.”

In less than 10 years, Hakun’s made a name for himself as an award winning artist. But what he really enjoys most are the social interactions of his world. “Exhibiting what really are your innermost feelings is beautiful when showing with other artists. We support each other through successes and failures. This heartwarming benefit continues to be the best part of being an artist!” Not surprisingly, Hakun is inspired by Thornton Dial. “He was an untrained outsider artist who made art out of whatever he could find on his farm and threw it together without following any proper rules or techniques. He changed my ideas about what beauty really is.” Hakun typically shows work in more than a dozen group shows a year at venues in several counties including Berks, Montgomery and Chester. For more on Hakun’s activities, visit his Facebook page.

‘Cat Call’ by Karen Weber at Visual Expansion Gallery

Events worth checking out this month: In West Chester, Visual Expansions Gallery kicked off October with the two woman show, “Weber and Weber” featuring Merrill Weber and Karen Weber. While they won’t be hosting any events, visitors are encouraged to drop by during business hours to see their paintings. Stay tuned for more on this show in next week’s column.

In Greenville, DE, Station Gallery is hosting board members of the National League of American Pen Women, Diamond State Branch. This group show is on view through October 28^th.

Whatever you do this week, support the arts!!

About Constance McBride

A native of Philadelphia, Constance McBride lived in Arizona for 16 years, where desert observations made a transformative impact on her work as a research based visual artist. Passionate about contemporary art, she was actively engaged in the local arts community. She served as a board member for several art organizations, managed an artist collective/gallery space, curated and juried several exhibitions and wrote for two arts publications in Phoenix. She taught ceramics at Shemer Art Center and Museum and exhibited her work both locally and nationally. McBride returned to Pennsylvania in 2018 and resides in Chester Springs with her husband and two dogs. In West Chester, she serves as a board member at The Art Trust Gallery at Meridian Bank and teaches ceramics at Chester County Art Association. She also teaches at Clay on Main in Oley, PA. She is a member of American Craft Council, Philadelphia Sculptors, and Women’s Caucus for Art, Philadelphia Chapter.

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