Here’s the thing about “American Psycho”: It’s a movie full of violence toward women, specifically sex workers, who are frequent targets of violence both in real life and onscreen. In life, it’s appalling; in film, it’s a frustrating if dull trope. Story goes Gloria Steinem talked Leonardo DiCaprio out of getting involved in the movie for that reason (I guess that was before she became stepmom to Christian Bale the same year the film premiered). But here’s the other thing about “American Psycho”: It’s directed and written by women (Mary Haron directed; she and Guinevere Turner adapted the novel) who reconfigured author Bret Easton Ellis’ misogynist blood lust as a biting though still questionable satire of toxic masculinity—at the very least, they cut Ellis’ unforgivable scene where Bateman performs rat torture on a woman in the worst possible way. All of this is to say, I just want to watch that bumptious dickhole Jared Leto get butchered, Huey Lewis blasting, all the time. He’ll be turned into pulp on the big screen tonight in the latest installment of Gunky’s Basement, co-hosted by Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche. Feb. 28, 9 p.m., The Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Ave., (410) 752-8083, mdfilmfest.com, $10 ($8 for members).

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The product of thousands of devil-centric found footage clips slowed down, sped up, and spliced together, “The Great Satan” is a profoundly dense 75 minutes of Christian hip-hop puppets, the little known superhero “Bibleman,” pasty televangelists proclaiming that “if you listen to heavy metal music, the devil will make you kill your mom,” occult porn, somehow a lot of singing ducks, and even more cursory blips of what just happened at Vine speed.

This dizzying visual essay on humanity’s desperate attempts to both squash and indulge in hedonism is the work of Everything Is Terrible, the Los Angeles-based collective responsible for six found footage features including a remake of “Holy Mountain” comprised entirely of dog-related clips, plus a still-growing collection of 15,000 “Jerry Maguire” VHS tapes amassed to eventually form a pyramid in the desert. EIT will present “The Great Satan” with a live show complete with costumes and puppets at the Parkway on March 7 as part of their nationwide tour (during which they will be accepting “Jerry Maguire” VHS donations).

While “The Great Satan” leaves one spinning and likely nauseated, it’s the logical culmination of modern life, especially for viewers like myself who were born during and in the wake of Satanic panic and whose religious upbringing coincided with the dawn of YouTube and randomcore. EIT approaches found footage filmmaking as an exquisite corpse: In this case, Satan is something of a unifier as the film shuffles through a loosely connected stream of thematic threads ranging from dogs to she-demons, drugs to literal rebirth, law enforcement to Dungeons & Dragons, demonstrating that the devil is indeed everywhere you turn.

The majority of these clips are saturated with a certain dread—the laughing-to-keep-from-crying kind that comes with the glass half empty sense that nothing matters—that would be paralyzing if not for the rapid fire speed that leaves no time to dwell, which is really a blessing. Audio of children singing a quasi-reggae rendition of Matthew 6:34—“Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself”—plays over footage of a sad polar bear sitting on melting ice cap. The most time we’re given to meditate on a single image is about 15 seconds, and it’s just a single shot of an obese, bewildered cat sitting up next to the words “it’s a wonderful life” painted in what appears to be blood. The rest is too-brief-to-register snippets of dicks getting ripped off in B-horror movies, that one brilliant hip-hop number from “Teen Witch,” a poorly rendered CGI demon fucking a guy from behind, and celebrity cameos from Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Bee Gees, a three-eyed Whoopi Goldberg, what appears to be a young Keegan Michael Key of “Key & Peele,” and Gene Simmons, obviously.

Soon enough, Christian, Satanic, and secular material become fairly indistinguishable. Every fragment feels like humanity flailing about in search of direction where there is none, twisting some moral significance out of anything and everything. Here, evil at work looks like feminism, Limp Bizkit, and a man’s face adhered to a wall like a taxidermy buck head claiming that he’s there “hiding from god.” Righteousness is praying with such intensity that it literally sets off explosions in Satan’s lair. Dredged in historical precedent, ministry as warfare is taken to the next level here; cue a beheading montage set to the kids’ marching tune ‘I’m in the Lord’s Army.’

Altogether, this is unequivocally an endurance test, less a hate watch than exposure therapy to human folly distilled into its core kitsch. Heed the advice delivered at the film’s introductory sequence—“fasten your spiritual seatbelts.”

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If you missed the blessing that was AMC theaters screening Jordan Peele’s social thriller for free on President’s Day, you can still see it again on the big screen today—which is especially useful considering folks (The Golden Globes) who misinterpreted “Get Out” as a comedy apparently need a careful rewatch. Because really, it’s more “a documentary,” as the director tweeted. That “Get Out” opened last year and has already earned a spot in The Charles’ Revival Series speaks volumes to its deserved status as an instantly iconic film, and moreover a resonant indictment of white liberalism. See it tonight ahead of the Oscars next week, when it may or may not be awarded Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and/or Best Original Screenplay. By the way, look out next week for The Beat’s Fake Oscars issue, in which we’ll award the true movie winners this year—because as we all know, more often than not, there’s no justice in the Academy. Feb. 22, 9 p.m., The Charles Theatre, 1711 N. Charles St., (410) 727-3464, thecharles.com, $11.

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Crisis exists where answers do not. From there, it grows, chewing at the fixtures that keep you in place till they’re so far apart it’s impossible to piece them together, and you’re left with nothing to hold onto. The old tools—effort, resilience, hope—stop working. “Skeleton Crew,” Dominique Morisseau’s ordinary, monumental drama now being performed at Center Stage, excavates crisis as it expands.

“I feel like nothing’s familiar anymore,” says Faye (played by Stephanie Berry), a veteran auto factory worker staring down joblessness in Morisseau’s Detroit. She once saw herself as a warrior woman, but that foundation is wavering. She’s had some time to sit with the knowledge that the plant is going to be shut down, that she and her fellow workers for whom she’s responsible as union rep will join the casualties of the 2008 recession. In this moment, she says to Reggie (Sekou Laidlow), the plant’s foreman—he and Faye go way back—she recognizes no before and foresees no after. She offers this confessional in the employee break room, where the entire play is set, surrounded by lockers accented with HOPE-era Obama campaign stickers.

In “Skeleton Crew,” the final installment of Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy (a nod to August Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle) after “Detroit ‘67” (which appeared in Center Stage’s 2015/2016 season) and “Paradise Blue” (set in 1949), crisis has consumed the industry that once made Detroit the Motor City. The play’s title refers the bare-bones assembly line keeping the city’s last exporting auto plant afloat, while also gesturing toward the demise of their livelihoods. All familiarity has disappeared—or become unrecognizable—and that hits particularly hard for this crew, whose labor is based in routine.

At the center is Faye, the workplace matriarch who’s put in nearly 30 years at the plant. She has loved and lost, survived cancer, and as a single parent raised a son who would grow up to reject her as she started dating women—Faye doesn’t hesitate to remind her coworkers that she’s seen it all, or a lot anyway. She wears her conquered hardships as a badge, and the fact that she’s made it through everything in one piece gives her license to gamble constantly on the little money she has and keep up a chain smoking habit while she’s at it, despite her health record and the notice Reggie’s posted in the break room that reads “NO SMOKING FAYE.”

Then there’s Dez (Gabriel Lawrence) and Shanita (Brittany Bellizeare), both younger factory crew members who share Faye’s skill and enthusiasm for the work. A second-generation autoworker who, by the way, is visibly pregnant, Shanita in particular loves the craft and takes pride in knowing her handiwork will go on to bear witness to important moments in the lives of everyday people. She’ll shut off the boombox playing Dez’s pump-up anthem (‘Get Dis Money’ by Detroit rap crew Slum Village, who have also endured plenty of attrition) so she can listen to the steadying music of cranking and clanging on the line: “Sounds like life happening.” Dez too takes pleasure in the grind but aspires to run his own car shop. It’s not even finished yet and he’s already haunted by the “ghosts” on the assembly line. Despite his practical optimism— “better to wait till the last possible minute to start worrying,” he says—fear commands him; he packs a gun in his backpack every day, which inevitably gets him into deep shit.

Morisseau builds up the chemistry between Dez and Shanita—he knows how she takes her coffee!—and, at times, it’s undeniably heartwarming. But the charm is unfortunate: Here we have another representation of a meant-to-be pair that begins with incessant sexual harassment (at the beginning of the play, Dez is at strike number 5,062 by Shanita’s count) and ends with the harasser getting what he wanted and his target realizing this is want she wanted all along, despite resisting all those times before. A tired, toxic trope that mars Morisseau’s otherwise thoughtful storytelling.

In this intimate reckoning of the modern era’s greatest financial crisis, Morisseau pays no mind to the suits responsible for and complicit in the devastation; they’re not worth any time on her stage. They appear only though the battles fought offstage by Reggie, who is charged with the impossible task of pleasing everyone. He comes from the same world as his employees, the same neighborhood; a high school dropout who’s since pulled himself up into white collar comfort more or less, but only to find himself isolated. He identifies with neither his employees, some of whom—Dez in particular—figure he’s rejected where he came from; nor his own employers, who understand nothing of those origins.

Under the incisive direction of Nicole A. Watson, the cast delivers the rhythm in the script’s lyricism while cutting deep into the tension that breaks it up. Morisseau tells each character’s story lovingly—the most notable divergence from her muse and fellow social observer Wilson, who offered just a sliver of redemption to his great tragic hero Troy Maxson. For people inching closer toward rock bottom in a city depicted here as thoroughly “desperate,” all four characters remain true to themselves and to each other, even as they must reassess what all that means. They don’t slump under the weight, although that doesn’t mean they follow the increasingly irrelevant rules keeping them all in line: Among other transgressions, someone has been stealing parts from the plant for resale.

As all this unfolds, a mountain of crumpled car scraps peaks from behind the break room walls, a shadow looming over the brightly-lit, well-loved gathering spot. In the play’s final moments, the factory floor is revealed in full, barren except for the piled remnants. It’s a chilling image, but there’s a sense that this is only a graveyard for the industry; the assembly line ghosts of Dez’s imagination are all but absent. The experiences that took place here—the identities forged, the bonds strengthened—can be taken apart and put back together beyond the factory.

“Skeleton Crew,” a part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival, continues through March 4 at Baltimore Center Stage.

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West Wednesday. Tawanda Jones, the sister of Tyrone West, a man killed in police custody in July 2013, has been gathering every Wednesday with other activists in the city to call attention to West’s death and police brutality in Baltimore. Feb. 14 and 21, usually held at the intersection of 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue, check facebook.com/justicefortyronewest for details.

#BaltimoreVotes Information Session. Register to vote with the Baltimore City Board of Elections, learn about resources being used around the country, and more. Happy hour to follow. Feb. 15, 5:30-7 p.m., The Motor House, 120 W. North Ave., citizenartist.vote.

Public Health: From East Baltimore to the World and Back. Lecture from Karen Kruse Thomas, historian of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Feb. 15, 7:30-9 p.m., Village Learning Place, Inc., 2521 St. Paul St., (410) 235-2210, villagelearningplace.org/programs/baltimore-history-evenings.

Civilian Review Board. Monthly meeting of the independent agency tasked with investigating complaints against police. Feb. 15, 6 p.m., Office of Civil Rights and Wage Enforcement, 7 E. Redwood St., (410) 396-3151, civilrights.baltimorecity.gov/civilian-review-board.

Survive Hunger – Second Annual Black History Month Tribute to Bea Gaddy. Tribute to the late Bea Gaddy, an advocate for the homeless and founder of Patterson Park Emergency Food Center, with free meals for 1,000 people experiencing homelessness. Feb. 17, noon-5:30 p.m., Baltimore War Memorial, 101 N. Gay St., facebook.com/BDeeBaltimoreLove.

Meeting of the Baltimore City Council’s Public Safety Committee. On the agenda: ordinance “prohibiting the purchase of prostitution in Baltimore City.” Feb. 20, 9 a.m., Baltimore City Hall, 100 N. Holliday St., baltimore.legistar.com.

Small Business & Tax Preparedness Workshop. Greenworld Bookkeeping presents a seminar designed to help the creative entrepreneur get a handle on their taxes—learn about cash flow, tax deductions, keeping good records, and much more. Feb. 20, 6:30 p.m., City Arts 2, 1700 Greenmount Ave., (410) 528-9239, facebook.com/events/150955558942797, free.

Safer Consumption Spaces with Nurses For Justice. Nurses for Justice and Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition host a panel on safer consumption spaces and how this harm reduction approach to drug use could save lives in our community. Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m., Red Emma’s, 30 W. North Ave., (443) 602-7585, redemmas.org, free.

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Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald—long-known here and now internationally for her grayscale African-American figures dressed in bright clothing and set against flat planes of buzzing color—unveiled her portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama Monday morning alongside Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of former President Barack Obama at the National Portrait Gallery, which commissioned the paintings. Sherald is the first-prize winner of the Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait competition. Selected by the Obamas, Sherald and Wiley are the first black artists commissioned to paint a presidential couple.

Sherald’s portrait depicts the former first lady seated and dressed in a flowing white dress with geometric accents, forming a kind of pyramid against a field of sky blue. This portrait is more reserved in the intensity of its hues than other Sherald paintings (check out the vivid, almost psychedelic ‘Grand Dame Queenie’ in the National Museum of African American History and Culture), bringing more attention to Obama’s pensive gaze—she almost looks like she’s about to offer a challenge. As she often does with her subjects, Sherald painted Obama’s skin and hair in gray tones, in effect challenging the centralization of race upon skin color.

“This experienced has humbled, it has honored and informed me in ways that will stay with me forever,” Sherald said at the unveiling. “So thank you again for bringing light and clarity to my journey as a painter of American stories.”

“Within the first few sentences of our conversation I knew she was the one for me,” the former first lady said at the unveiling ceremony of her meeting with Sherald, noting that upon meeting the presidential couple, both of whom the artist was being considered to paint, Sherald seemed particularly intent on painting Michelle.

“I’m also thinking about all the young people, particularly girls and girls of color, who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution,” the former first lady continued. “And I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls.”

Former President Barack Obama thanked Sherald for capturing “the grace, and beauty, and intelligence, and charm, and hotness of the woman I love.”

Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Michelle Obama’s husband also shows the former president seated, but in full color with a lush and ornate environment (specifically, a wall of green leaves and small bursts of flowers) typical of Wiley’s portraits. Like their subjects, both paintings defy the rules that historically determined what they could be.

Both paintings were unveiled in front of an invitation-only audience, which included Baltimore Museum of Art Director Christopher Bedford, as well as celebrities like Tom Hanks, star of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘I Really Like You’ music video.

This career milestone comes right after Sherald snagged another big honor, the $25,000 David C. Driskell Prize, which recognizes contributions to African-American art; and not long after Sherald was named a new board trustee at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Next up: Sherald’s first solo museum show at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, opening in May.

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Feb. 9 & 10

Years ago, my partner and I decided to celebrate our anniversary by driving to Philadelphia to visit the Mütter Museum, a collection of artifacts, skeletons, and parts in jars illuminating medical history and pathology. There you have slices of Einstein’s brain, malformed fetuses, a corpse that turned into soap (look it up)—it’s creepy stuff. At the time, we thought we were being real original with our romantic date choice, but it turns out that place hosts weddings all the time. All this is to say that the macabre is a more popular gateway to romance than you may expect. This Valentine’s weekend, there are two ways for you and your flame to get shivers (other than the standard Netflix-horror-movie and chill): Baltimore Ghost Tours offers a special trip through local spooky love stories, including a failed fling of Baltimore’s doomed sad boi Edgar Allan Poe; and DSW shoestore-turned-haunted house attraction Bennett’s Curse hosts a themed production wherein an evil spirit overthrows cupid and makes people miserable, or something like that. Think romantic date at the Prime Rib, except more like Prime Ribcage trap in “Saw III.” Haunted Hearts Pub Tour: Feb. 9 and 10, 7 p.m., meet outside Max’s Sidebar, 731 S. Broadway, baltimoreghosttours.com, $22. Bennett’s Curse Presents A Valentine Fear Experience: Feb. 9 and 10, 7 p.m., Bennett’s Curse Haunted House, 7875A Eastpoint Mall, bennettscurse.com, $30-$50.

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There’s no single kind of person who dials the Baltimore Abortion Fund’s helpline.

Established in 2014 and growing in numbers and reach since, BAF offers financial assistance to Maryland residents who can’t afford the full cost of their abortion. Given the wide-ranging medical charges—not to mention the socially-imposed shame that prevents many from otherwise seeking help from friends, family, or work—many would-be patients find themselves in need.

“I think that the people that call us are very reflective of Baltimore City,” says Ann Marie Brokmeier, a BAF case manager. “We have people of various racial backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, ages, economic backgrounds. . . . I just feel like there’s a lot of stigma around asking for funds for your abortion and I think that people wanna think that there’s a specific person that’s asking that. The more I work the line the more I see that’s not really true.”

A study by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy organization, backs this up: As of 2014, no single racial or ethnic demographic in the United States obtained more abortions over another. In addition, 62 percent of women having abortions claimed a religious affiliation, 60 percent were in their 20s, and 59 percent already had children—overall, the characteristics of people seeking abortions vary.

More consistent are economic circumstances. According to the same study, three quarters of women seeking abortions are economically disadvantaged—which is why nonprofits like BAF, one of over 80 similar organizations throughout the country, are necessary in ensuring safe and equitable abortion access.

Still, the board members and volunteers at BAF report often assisting people seeking abortions who ostensibly have the money or health insurance to cover the costs of the procedure, but encounter other obstacles. BAF case managers have run into situations where the procedure is not covered by a patient’s otherwise decent insurance due to their religious affiliation of their workplace. BAF Board President Annie Hollis recalls funding a first-year college student who couldn’t use her parent’s health insurance because if they found out, they’d pull her out of school.

“Through no fault of her own, she is not able to use the medical insurance that she has,” Hollis says. “That’s one of the particular issues with abortion—if it was any other medical procedure, of course she could use her parents’ insurance.”

The team, which is made up entirely by volunteers, says the only thread shared by the people they help is sincere gratitude—even when BAF can’t cover the full cost or as much as they’d like—and a sense of resolve.

“Almost all of our callers are very sure of their decision,” says Spencer Hall, BAF’s founding president. “It’s not our job to counsel; we’re not really trained for that. But we do have these other resources if somebody seems like they’re on the fence, we can be like, hey, here’s another organization you can call and get some totally non-judgmental feedback about your options or your choices.”

The case managers who answer calls to the helpline are also sure to confirm that it’s the patient seeking the abortion and not someone else.

“We always have to talk to the patient themselves,” Hall says. “We have some callers who are in tougher situations, either a domestic violence situation or they have family that’s not supportive or maybe there’s a language barrier . . . so if we’re talking to a spouse or a boyfriend or a friend or a parent we do make it a point that we have to have some kind of contact with the patient themselves because we wanna make sure that they’re not being coerced or otherwise forced into this.”

Once the case managers gather basic information from the patient, including how far along they are in gestation, the funds raised by BAF go directly to the clinic providing the abortion. Though patients will often call BAF before making an appointment at a clinic so they can know they can afford it beforehand, the case managers need them to make an appointment first.

“We need to know how far along they are and we need to know what the clinic is going to charge them,” says Brittany Eltringham, vice president of the BAF board. “So we’ll usually work with them and explain the process and then they’ll call us back after they’ve scheduled an appointment. We get an idea of how much the procedure is, and then we refer them also to the D.C. Abortion Fund and the National Abortion Federation, and between the three funds we’re usually able to help someone cover the full cost of their procedure—very rarely is any one fund covering the entire cost for someone.”

Initially following the launch of its helpline in October 2014, BAF funded only residents of Baltimore City and Baltimore County, but has since expanded its services to all of Maryland (with the exception of residents of Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties, who can find help instead from the D.C. Abortion Fund). In extreme cases, the team has helped out some non-residents coming into Maryland, and hopes to one day more consistently fund patients coming from other states with more restrictions and fewer clinics. Maryland’s only abortion restriction requires that patients under 18 notify at least one parent before obtaining the procedure (physicians may waive parental involvement under some circumstances). Most states have this and more restrictions in place.

“I think people recognize that [Maryland] is a little bit of a safe haven especially for folks in the southeast,” Hollis says. “We get people coming from the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, even from the midwest where the laws are getting really restrictive. So we want to be able to show that support too.”

Despite our state’s generally pro-choice-leaning legislature, Maryland is not immune to the national threats against reproductive justice that appear intensified by the Trump era, and measures to make abortion access safer and more equitable are not always met with support. Last month, a federal appeals court panel upheld a ruling against a 2009 Baltimore law requiring crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)—essentially non-medical, often Christian-affiliated counseling services that discourage women from terminating their pregnancies under the guise of medical care—to disclose that they do not provide abortions to patients through clear signage displayed in their waiting rooms. The court ruled that the law violated CPCs’ first amendment right to free speech. (The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar California law.)

Because they’re not medical facilities, CPCs are easy to open and therefore frequently outnumber actual clinics, often setting up shop in close proximity to abortion providers. In Baltimore, there are only two abortion providers within city lines (Planned Parenthood and American Women’s Services, plus Potomac Family Planning Hillcrest Clinic and Whole Woman’s Health just on the outskirts), and a quick Google search will present several CPC locations throughout the city.

“There’s a CPC like three blocks from my house,” says Brokmeier, who lives in Hampden. “There’s CPCs everywhere and they’re all doing this, so even in a state that’s really supportive of reproductive justice, it’s still happening all the time.”

The aim of the disclosure law was to counteract the often misleading advertising (“Pregnant and scared?”) and stalling tactics used by CPCs to prevent women from obtaining abortions. Stalling is a key point here: At a certain point, the procedure can become prohibitively expensive.

“Up until the end of your first trimester it’s going to be about $400 give or take,” says Hall, noting that price points vary between providers and can also be affected by health conditions the patient may have. “But after that point, after about 13 weeks, every week or two, the cost of the procedure just about doubles.”

The persistence of anti-abortion sentiment and legislature in effect drives up abortion costs as well, especially for late-term abortions. Under threats of violence (among other incidents, late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was assassinated in his Kansas church by an anti-abortion extremist in 2009), clinics must pay for insurance and security that are unnecessary for other medical providers. On top of that, abortion providers face targeted regulation requiring them to make frequent updates to their facilities. Legislative demands to have clinics meet the standards of “ambulatory surgical centers,” which are necessary only for procedures riskier and more invasive than abortion, are designed to shut down clinics that can’t keep up and make the procedure appear dangerous. In reality, abortion is one of the safest medical procedures out there—less than .05 percent of abortion patients experience complications. As Hall notes, “it’s safer than getting your tonsils out.”

Only four doctors in the entire country openly provide late-term abortions, and one is located in Maryland. Germantown Reproductive Health Services, operated by longtime advocate Dr. LeRoy Carhart, closed its doors last August after its building was purchased by the anti-abortion group Maryland Coalition for Life. Carhart reopened in a new Bethesda location just two months later. The clinic is the only one on the east coast to provide late-term abortions. In late January, the new facility was blessed—not condemned—by four Christian pastors and one rabbi in an interfaith ceremony.

Late-term abortions are most often provided to women who learn late in their pregnancy that their fetus will not survive. Forty-three states prohibit some abortions after a certain point in gestation (17 states ban the procedure after 20 weeks), and President Trump supported a nationwide 20-week ban in his address to the March For Life last month. On Jan. 29, however, the Senate once again rejected a persistent bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks.

Just a year into Trump’s time in office, it’s difficult to gauge the impact of his presidency on reproductive justice, which experienced significant setbacks before he was even elected. The Guttmacher Institute reports that between 2010 and 2016, 338 new abortion restrictions were put in place nationwide—that’s almost 30 percent of the 1,142 restrictions since Roe v. Wade declared the criminalization of abortion unconstitutional in 1973.

Despite the surge in restrictions and the White House’s stance, members of BAF argue that since Trump has been in office, the dialogue surrounding reproductive healthcare has been in effect elevated. The fears and outrageous rhetoric of the administration are moving many more people to link reproductive justice and social justice.

“We talk a lot about people who have too many kids or don’t have enough income shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce,” says Eltringham. “There’s a lot of those stories that are very eugenics-sounding that float around, and I think that’s one of the things that I’m appreciating about people’s consciousness being raised since Trump’s election. Now we’re seeing the other side of that reproductive justice conversation where it doesn’t matter if you’re poor, you should still be able to make choices about your family, including having kids if you want to.”

“Folks that cut social programs often times also ostensibly claim to be ‘pro-life,’” adds Hollis, “and it’s like, well, which is it? Are you going to force people to have children and then not support them? It doesn’t work.”

In 2017, BAF raised $108,658.32 to fund abortions for those in need through monthly and one-time donors as well as happy hours and other events. Their biggest pull of the year is the Bowl-a-Thon: Last year, with the help of matching funds from the National Network of Abortion Funds, BAF raised about $60,000—more than double from the previous year. In their inaugural year, BAF funded 72 patients; in 2017, they served 126.

Though most interactions with patients are brief, the BAF volunteers carry their stories with them. Brokmeier recalls helping out a 15- or 16-year-old who was originally connected to BAF through her high school social worker. The student felt she couldn’t tell her parents and didn’t know where to begin in securing the procedure. The social worker directed her to BAF and opened up a conversation between the student and her parents.

“It was just like a really interesting journey through that week for this person and being able to see how supportive the school social worker was was really important to me because I went to high school in Kansas, which like, I could never have gone to anyone,” says Brokmeier. “I talked to this student twice. The first time you can hear her anxiety around everything and then finally, later in the week when her parents are calling with her, you can hear some of the relief of like, ‘this is really gonna happen for me, we can work through this.’”

The Baltimore Abortion Fund 2018 Bowl-a-Thon is scheduled for April 29 at a location to be announced (follow BAF on Facebook for updates), following a kickoff party at the Windup Space on March 10. BAF will receive 10 percent of sales from Sugar’s Sex Education Open House co-hosted by the Baltimore Beat on Feb. 8 from 6-8 p.m.

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BROS & Arena Players Present: Constellations & Crossroads. The Baltimore Rock Opera Society and Arena Players team up for a double feature: “Determination of Azimuth” about NASA pioneer Katherine Johnson and “The Battle of Blue Apple Crossing” about bluesman Robert Johnson. Feb. 9–11 and 16–18, Arena Players, 801 McCulloh St., baltimorerockopera.org, arenaplayersinc.com, $20.

Chippendales. The all-male strip revue returns to Baltimore on its About Last Night Tour, just in time for Valentine’s. Feb. 7 and 8, 9 p.m., Baltimore Soundstage, 124 Market Place, (410) 244-0057, baltimoresoundstage.com, $35-$50.

Club Orbit. Improv, stand-up, and sketch followed by an all-comedy open mic. Feb. 9, 8 p.m., Charm City Comedy Project at Zissimos Bar, 1023 W. 36th St., charmcitycomedyproject.com, $5.

“The Death of Walt Disney.” The regional premiere of Lucas Hnath’s biographical play about the megalomaniacal mind of Walt Disney. Through Feb. 25, Single Carrot Theatre, 2600 N. Howard St., (443) 844-9253, singlecarrot.com, $25-$29.

Godfrey’s Valentine’s Day Special. The actor and comedian has appeared in the films “Zoolander,” “Soul Plane,” “Original Gangstas,” and more. Feb. 14, 8 p.m., Baltimore Comedy Factory, 5625 O’Donnell St., (410) 547-7798, baltimorecomedy.com, $25-$50.

“I Hate Hamlet.” An actor who hates “Hamlet” takes on the title role and encounters the ghost of John Barrymore. Feb. 9-March 4, Spotlighters Theatre, 817 St. Paul St., (410) 752-1225, spotlighters.org, $10-$22.

Jeff Dunham. “America’s favorite ventriloquist” stops in Baltimore on his Passively Aggressive Tour. Feb. 10, 5 p.m., Royal Farms Arena, 201 W. Baltimore St., (410) 347-2020, royalfarmsarena.com, $54.50.

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical drama spans one day in the life of a family troubled by addiction and the inability to let go of the past. Through March 4, Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette St., (410) 752-2208, everymantheatre.org, $43-$65.

Mortified Baltimore: Doomed Valentines. Everyday adults read from their most cringe-worthy adolescent love letters, poems, locker notes, and diary entries. Feb. 10, 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., The Ideal Arts Space, 905 W. 36th St., (443) 529-5937, mortifiedbaltimore-feb2018.eventbrite.com, $17-$20.

My So Called ‘90s Comedy and Trivia. Seven comedians and seven rounds of trivia celebrating nostalgia. Feb. 8, 8 p.m., The Crown, 1910 N. Charles St., facebook.com/TheCrownBaltimore, free.

“Out of Darkness: Two Remain.” The Peabody Chamber Opera presents Jake Heggie’s 2016 opera with a libretto by Gene Scheer inspired by the true stories of two Holocaust survivors. Feb. 8-11, Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St., (410) 752-8558, theatreproject.org, $10-$25.

“Red Velvet.” The biographical play from Lolita Chakrabarti tells the story of the 19th century African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. Through Feb. 25, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, 7 S. Calvert St., (410) 244-8570, chesapeakeshakespeare.com, $16-$43.

The Second Saturday S#!t Show. John Conroy headlines Ottobar’s monthly stand-up show hosted by Mike Quindlen. Featuring Alexx Starr, Maria Sanchez, Carlos Garcia, Scott Seiss, Kim Ambrose, and Brock Snyder. Feb. 10, 7:30 p.m., The Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St., (410) 662-0069, theottobar.com, free.

The Short Cutz Show: V-Day Edition. A short form oral storytelling slam and party jam starring professional African-American barbers. This month’s story theme is “A Love Supreme,” featuring celebrity storyteller Ladawn Black (from New York’s 107.5 FM WBLS). Feb. 12, 7 p.m., Motor House, 120 W. North Ave., (410) 637-8300, motorhousebaltimore.com, $10.

“Skeleton Crew.” In the third play in Dominique Morisseau’s Detroit trilogy, four workers at the city’s last exporting auto plant face down an uncertain future. Through March 4, Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., (410) 332-0033, centerstage.org, $20-$79.

“The Sleeping Beauty.” The State Ballet Theatre of Russia performs the Grimm fairytale choreographed by famous choreographer Marius Petipa. Feb. 9 and 10, 7:30 p.m., Hippodrome Theatre at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw St., (410) 837-7400, baltimorehippodrome.com, $61-$83.

Sputniks Cabaret. Baltimore and D.C. artists participate in a night of slam poetry, comedy, music, sideshow, and burlesque. Feb. 14, 8:30 p.m., The Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St., (410) 662-0069, theottobar.com, $8.

Tassels & Champagne: Love By Any Other Name. Gilded Lily Burlesque brings an evening of classic burlesque and variety featuring Oca O’Leary, Maria Bella, Nona Narcisse, Mourna Handful, Ruby Spruce, Gigi Holliday, Sophia Sunday, and Valeria Voxx. Feb. 10, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave., (410) 276-1651, creativealliance.org, $22-$28 for single ticket, other ticket packages available.

When ___ Met ___ : An Improvised Romantic Comedy Starring You. Baltimore Improv Group stages a fully improvised Valentine’s Day rom-com with two leads played by audience volunteers. Feb. 10, 8 p.m., The BIG Theater, 1727 N. Charles St., (888) 745-8393, bigimprov.org, $6.27.

The post Stage: Feb. 7-14 appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

As dozens of the city’s leaders and activists took to the stage in front of City Hall on Jan. 20 and thousands more marched and chanted to mark the first anniversary of the Women’s Marches protesting Donald Trump’s inauguration, a quieter act of resistance took place on 23rd Street between Charles and Maryland in Old Goucher. A small cluster of onlookers gazed up at the wall of a brick building where a large print of Zoe Leonard’s notorious 1992 manifesto had just been installed to overlook the street and demand a leader this country has never seen.

“I want a dyke for president,” the prose poem begins. “I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia.”

At the unveiling, Jamie Grace Alexander, a writer and member of the Baltimore Transgender Alliance, delivered Leonard’s words as if they were her own—because, really, they are hers in the sense that Leonard’s text is a precise distillation of anger shared by a healthy fraction of Americans, especially someone like Alexander, whose identity has been represented in no way by the presidency in the nearly 300-year history of the office. The fervor of Alexander’s voice intensified on “I want a candidate who isn’t the less of two evils,” and she stopped briefly at “I want a Black woman for president.”

“Yeah I’m going to pause for that one,” she interjected. “2020, y’all.”

Leonard’s original piece quietly emerged out of the height of the AIDS crisis and the government’s refusal to do much at all about it, circulating at first via below-the-radar networks. The queer magazine that commissioned Leonard to write it folded before the piece could be published (this queer art journalist’s heart aches), so her friends passed around copies. In 2006, it was published as a postcard by feminist genderqueer art journal LTTR. Then there was queer and openly HIV-positive rapper Mykki Blanco’s biting rendition captured in a gorgeous short film by Adinah Dancyger for Dazed, released just ahead of the 2016 election; and around the same time, a looming display wheat-pasted to New York City’s High Line, much like it’s displayed today in Baltimore. The rise of “I Want A President” has been a slow build. Today, it’s widely recognized (among people less likely to be elected president, at least) as a political document just as valid if not more reliable than those upon which our country was loosely, often neglectfully built.

Introducing the installation in Baltimore, Kelly Cross, president of the Old Goucher Community Association and a former Democratic primary candidate for 12th District City Council, noted how Leonard’s words still resonate a quarter century later and function on both macro and micro levels.

“We have a problem with our political establishment, we have a problem with our establishment in general, with the way we’ve done politics, with the way we’ve approached how we deal with our city,” Cross said.

Cross later told the Beat that the Old Goucher Neighborhood Association corresponded with Leonard, who is based in New York, to bring “I Want A President” to Baltimore. On a visit to the city, Leonard herself picked the location on a wall overlooking a relatively quiet and narrow block around the corner from busy Charles Street. Just around the corner, sex workers (many of whom are transgender) work the stroll up Charles Street from North Avenue, and clubgoers file in and out of landmark gay bar The Eagle. According to Cross, the piece will remain there indefinitely.

“She wanted people to be very deliberate in seeing it,” Cross says, “so that folks actually have to get out of the car and stand across and read it.”

Leonard’s display is the first in an ongoing public art initiative Cross says is designed to “bring art that’s really relevant to neighborhoods where people are on the street and seeing it, not in some super abstract way that doesn’t connect to their lives.”

That Leonard’s piece was installed by a neighborhood association, of all things, is remarkable when you consider that social media will not tolerate its language.

An image of the original text was posted to the Instagram account @lgbt_history and repeatedly removed for violating “community guidelines.” An email from the Beat to Instagram asking for an explanation received no response as of press time. Matthew Riemer and Leighton Brown, who run the @lgbt_history Instagram account out of D.C., told the Beat via email that Instagram had taken down the post on Monday, Jan. 22, the day after @lgbt_history put it up to mark the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March. Riemer and Brown put it back up, only to have it taken down after a few hours. They put it up twice more that Monday night, each post taken down swiftly. By then, the post and the fact of the removals were reposted and circulated widely. Instagram removed reposts from other popular Instagram accounts, such as that of Helen Molesworth, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which will host a survey of Leonard’s work in November.

Riemer and Brown waited until late the following Wednesday to put it up again, and as of press time, it was still there—apparently, the account and its thousands of supporters wore Instagram down. The couple said they have not been contacted by Instagram beyond the notification of the removal.

“We’ve had posts pulled before, but ‘I Want a President’ is different. It’s one of the community’s anthems. It’s mournful, sure, but it’s an expression of pride. The hookers are better than the johns,” Riemer and Brown wrote to the Beat, referring to Leonard’s line decrying the president as “always a john and never a hooker.”

Despite the removals, Riemer and Brown maintain that they appreciate Instagram as an outlet to share and celebrate queer history. The issue is not Instagram, they said:

“The problem is that there seems to be a one-sided discussion going on about who gets to decide what content is ‘acceptable’ and there plainly are gaps in the process that have to be fixed,” Riemer and Brown wrote. “If ‘I Want a President’ is subject to censorship by trolls, then so too is our entire account. Queer history is offensive to the dominant culture; the mechanisms that Instagram has put in place to ‘protect’ us are being used to erase us when we don’t stay within the bounds of ‘respectability.’”

The origins of Leonard’s piece lie in dialogue surrounding so-called political correctness and the nature of censorship. “I Want A President” is modeled on the presidential campaign announcement of the poet Eileen Myles, author of the 1994 queer cult novel “Chelsea Girls.” Sparked by George H.W. Bush’s 1991 University of Michigan commencement speech in which he declared free speech “under assault,” Myles entered the 1992 presidential race as a write-in candidate—the only “openly-female” candidate (more recently, Myles has been using gender-neutral pronouns). In a letter announcing their campaign, they wrote:

“[Bush] stated that ‘the politically correct’ are the greatest threat to freedom of speech in America today. By that he means members of ACT-UP, victims of bias crimes: women, homosexuals, ethnic and racial minorities. He would like them to shut up. As President he functions as a grand employer who has a complaint box. Each of us may get our two cents in. Once. After that we’re on our own because there is no special treatment for the vast majority of Americans today. There is very special treatment for white upper middle class heterosexual men and their spouses and children, there is such treatment for fundamentalist Christians and fetuses. . . . I am a 41-year old American, a female, a lesbian, from a working class background, a poet, performer and writer making my living pretty exclusively from those activities. I’ve lived the majority of my adult life under the poverty level, without health care. More Americans, far more Americans are like me than George Bush. Why is he ruling this country and our lives?”

“I Want A President” reflects Myles’ letter both in form and content: It’s printed in the same crusty font and candidly confronts the gaping absence of representation that has enabled the exclusivity of a country and government created for few but proclaimed to exist for all.

Needless to say, Myles was not elected. But they did give an acceptance speech—20-plus years later, two days before Trump was elected in 2016. They delivered their long, ambling address nearby the New York High Line display of “I Want A President.”

“We will occupy all government buildings and memorials, housing and holding and loving the homeless and the sick and the starving,” Myles declared to an audience. “We’ll do what the statue says. You know, liberty. We will take buildings and we will build buildings and our culture, our new America will begin to live.”

“It was beautiful and complicated,” Myles later wrote of this moment for Artforum, “and nobody or I’ll just say I didn’t but I think I was part of a collective vibe—we were all out there thrumming our party of ideas along a slingshot to be fired into unknown straits way beyond our ken which we are now variously trying to occupy. Shit.”

Myles here might as well be describing—if perhaps a bit generously—the Women’s Marches that popped up in 2017 and again at the same time Leonard’s piece was unveiled in Baltimore. Given its numbers and the scope of its aims and grounds, the movement is fraught, perhaps inevitably so, though it still warrants (and requires) critique. Ahead of the inaugural march, Brittany Oliver, a Baltimore-based activist and founder of Not Without Black Women wrote an open letter to the Women’s March titled “Why I do not support the Women’s March on Washington,” citing the protest’s co-opting of language used in civil rights demonstrations, as well as the long history of exclusivity in mainstream feminism: “It has so often failed to give us a platform to discuss how racial inequality relates to gender inequality,” she wrote. (A year later, Oliver took to the stage to deliver an address at the Women’s March in D.C.)

When I stood at the Women’s March in D.C. last year and again in Baltimore this year, surrounded by pink (i.e. white) “pussy” hats, I’d leap from a sense of hope and resolve to resentful doubt that some of those hat-wearers would include my partner, a woman who was not born with a pussy, in their club. At this year’s march in Baltimore—under glorious, warming sunlight that made for a great photo—we heard hollow #girlpower declarations of some politicians at the stage whose decisions have directly harmed women in Baltimore (Mayor Catherine Pugh with her veto of the $15 minimum wage that she promised to put into effect during her campaign). I was more baffled by the presence of men, including members of our all-male congressional delegation, at the microphone—a point voiced by poet and activist Lady Brion at the end of the March at McKeldin Square: “[Women] don’t need you to speak for them because you don’t know their struggle more than they know their own struggle.”

But those beautiful moments were there. At the Baltimore march, white cis women like myself—many in pink hats—lit up the crowd, but we were not the dominant voice onstage. The mayor and congressmen were largely overshadowed by dozens of organizers and community members. We heard from women who have survived rape, who fear deportation, who are black, who respect sex, who have made mistakes and learned from them, as Leonard’s piece goes. Baltimore Transgender Alliance director Ava Pipitone reminded the sea of pussy hats that womanhood and genitalia are not synonymous; and Niaja Batts, Te’Ona Davis, and Michelle Waters, middle school students at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, delivered a commanding joint speech asking for “a seat at the table.” Too many issues addressed to count: immigration, abortion access, housing, intersectionality, living wage, equal pay, education, fighting the culture of sexual harassment and assault our president has openly embraced—a breadth of focus that some argue threatens to hinder the movement’s aims, but I see as a necessary reckoning of the forces that connect all of these crises and demands.

Anger turned celebratory as the march ended at McKeldin Square, breaking out into a brief Beyonce dance party, one that was populated by women of color, queer people, children—and yes, several pussy hats, plus one very hyped white man in sweats.

It was beautiful, and it was complicated.

“I Want A President” begins to ease that complexity, almost impossibly summing up this collective yet disjointed anger. Still, the piece is less a comprehensive list of demands than a template for building a new nation, one where women don’t have to see the man who sexually harassed or assaulted them elected to the highest office. A collective public reading by activists in front of the White House during the 2016 presidential campaign offered new candidates: “A Muslim refugee.” Someone who “respects and enjoys consensual sex”; “grew up in a place where the tap water was poisoned and officials knew and ignored it”; “had a dangerous illegal abortion at 14, became a parent at 15, an orphan at 16, an inmate at 17, and recovered and rebounded at 18.” Someone “whose son was shot by police.” Someone who “knows the difference between the sound of mortar, artillery and drones, who has crawled out of rubble happy to breathe again.” “Sandra Bland.”

Itself a riff on another declaration of resistance, “I Want A President” is endlessly riffable. Leonard leaves room to expand all while self-consciously acknowledging the sequence of questions and revisions that go into projecting a one’s voice. In the original letter, and apparent still on the Maryland Avenue wall, you can see she scratched out the words “and an attitude” after “I want some with bad teeth,” and “that nasty” in “someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food.” The message still strike hard, with a sense of immediacy culled from outrage, but not without consideration.

All this less than 300 words. Here I am pushing 2500. Shit.

The post Amidst women’s marches and one year of Trump, Zoe Leonard’s blunt, anti-establishment anthem displayed publicly in Old Goucher appeared first on Baltimore Beat.