Jazz legend Herbie Hancock, the brains behind International Jazz Day, an event that aims to encourage and highlight the “power of jazz as a force for freedom and creativity”. Credit: A.D. McKenzie

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, May 2 2015 (IPS)

Against the backdrop of civil unrest in Baltimore, Maryland, the fourth annual International Jazz Day was celebrated with events around the world and appeals for peace, unity and dialogue.

“Each of us is equal. All of us inhabit this place we call home,” said American jazz legend Herbie Hancock. “We must move mountains to find solutions to our incredible challenges.”“Each of us is equal. All of us inhabit this place we call home. We must move mountains to find solutions to our incredible challenges" – American jazz legend Herbie Hancock

Although the organisers of the event held on Apr. 30 did not refer directly to the protests that have followed the funeral of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray, an African-American who died in police custody, Hancock told IPS in an exclusive interview that musicians were conscious of this and other cases.

“Every time those kinds of things happen, not just with African-Americans or people of African heritage – but with different groups, whether it’s women being slaughtered, children being abused, ethnic groups being oppressed – we have to work to change things. This gives the music value and meaning,” he said.

Cover of the programme for International Jazz day 2015. Credit: A.D.McKenzie

International Jazz Day is Hancock’s brainchild, and it is presented each year by the United Nations’ cultural agency UNESCO in partnership with the U.S.-based Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. The organisers say the day is aimed at encouraging and highlighting the “power of jazz as a force for freedom and creativity”.

It is also meant to promote “intercultural dialogue through respect and understanding, uniting people from all corners of the globe,” says UNESCO.

In a sign of how significant the event has become since its launch in 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will host the 2016 International Jazz Day and its signature event, the ‘All-Star Global Concert’, at the White House in Washington, D.C., Hancock announced.

“I spoke to Obama almost a year ago, at an event, and he said ‘let’s make it happen’. That wasn’t a promise because it was just in the moment, but he did make it happen, and the concert will be at the White House next year,” he told IPS.

After its beginnings in Paris three years ago, other cities which have played host to the global concert include Istanbul, Turkey, in 2013 and Osaka, Japan, last year.

The 2015 Global Host City was Paris once more, and jazz lovers were able to enjoy a day-long series of performances and educational programmes in different districts of the French capital. The presentations included workshops, master classes, discussions and jam sessions, in venues ranging from community centres to soup kitchens.

Coinciding with UNESCO’s on-going 70th anniversary celebration, the ‘All-Star Global Concert’ took place in a packed auditorium at the agency’s headquarters, with top United Nations and French officials among the audience, including U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon and France’s Justice Minister Christiane Taubira who has long fought discrimination.

“Jazz has taught me much,” said Ban. “When things become difficult, I’ve learned that you just have to improvise.”

He and the multi-cultural audience then settled back to enjoy the show, with its line-up of 30 renowned artists. The concert kicked off with vocalist Al Jarreau warming up the crowd and moved to a stirring tribute by South African musician Hugh Masekela to his country’s late icon Nelson Mandela.

As Ban had remarked, the concert was like a “mini-UN”, as American pianists such as Hancock and John Beasley (the show’s musical director) joined with Brazilian vocalist Eliane Elias,

Scottish-born Annie Lennox, more known for her rock singing, was one of the star performers at International Jazz Day’s ‘All-Star Global Concert’ 2015. Credit: A.D.McKenzie

Scottish singer Annie Lennox, Tunisian oud virtuoso Dhafer Youssef, French percussionist Mino Cinélu, Chinese teenage pianist A Bu, and a host of others to celebrate jazz and its influence.

Hancock said musicians and others were working for tolerance, mutual respect and global peace. “I’ve seen musicians from opposing sides unite to play the most beautiful music and tell the sweetest stories,” he said in his speech to the audience.

The ‘Who’s Who’ of jazz also included singer Dee Dee Bridgewater, who thanked France for opening doors and welcoming jazz musicians; saxophonist Wayne Shorter, who played alongside the young Washington, D.C.-born bassist Ben Williams and oud player Youssef for a world-premiere piece; and vocalists Dianne Reeves and Lennox (more known for rock), who drew cheers for their powerful renditions.

At the launch, UNESCO’s Director-General Irena Bokova said: “Jazz means dialogue, reaching out to others, bringing everyone on board. It means respecting the human rights and dignity of every woman and man, no matter their background. It means understanding others, letting them speak, listening in the spirit of respect.

“All this is why we join together to celebrate jazz; this music of freedom is a force for peace, and its messages have never been more vital than they are today, in times of turbulence,” she added.

Other countries that staged events to celebrate the day included South Africa, where organisers presented a series of workshops, seminars and performances with the theme of achieving change, and the United States, where award-winning artists gave concerts in New Orleans and other cities.

Edited by Phil Harris    

*   This article is published in association with Southern World Arts News (SWAN).

Police barricade in Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations (May 2013). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Tessa Love
ISTANBUL, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

A year after the Gezi Park uprising – a protest that began as an act to save trees – exploded into anti-government riots around the country, sparking cohesive community efforts to fight urban sprawl, the face of environmental activism and awareness in Turkey has changed.

“It’s no coincidence that the demonstrations were ignited by an ecological issue, by concerns of urban development,” said Morat Ozbank, an assistant professor of political theory at Bigli University and a board member of the Turkish Green Party. “And this later became an issue of human rights and democratisation.”

At 11 pm on May 27, 2013, bulldozers moved into Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations.  They were there to clear the trees for the controversial construction of an Ottoman-era style shopping mall.“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul. All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction” – Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners

Within 20 minutes, throngs of people filled the park to block the construction, and they stayed for 20 days before being forced out by police.

The proposed shopping mall was just one of a long list of mega-projects spearheaded by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Other projects include a third bridge across the Bosphorus, a tunnel for private vehicles beneath the same waterway, the world’s largest airport, and a second Bosphorus on the Asian side of the city.

Many of these projects are being carried forward despite opposition from bodies such as the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), which is responsible for assessing the potential impact of proposed projects and advising against those that could be detrimental to the environment.

According to Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners, all of these projects fit that description.

“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul,” he says. “All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction.”

Atlar believes that every neighbourhood in Istanbul should legally have a certain amount of green space to uphold urban planning standards. Nevertheless, public parks are being destroyed and, beyond the city limits, miles of wild forests have been destroyed to make way for the third bridge and the second Bosphorus.

While all of these projects had elicited outcries from various small organisations and legal action from TMMOB before May 2013, nothing came close to the response at Gezi Park.

“Gezi was a unique moment is Turkish history,” says Atlar. “There was no leader, no formal organisation. It was an awakening.”

One year later, this movement is still alive and although policies regarding urban planning have not changed at governmental level, grassroots organisations have joined forces in the hope of making changes where they can.

One of these – Northern Forest Defence – is a movement organised by free volunteers to defend the last forests of northern Istanbul. Known as the “Child of Gezi,” it works to halt the development of mega projects like the third bridge, as well as working within small communities to stop the destruction of public parks for development.

While many of these efforts are small, Cigdem Cidamli, a founding member of the organisation, believes that they are essential to the progress of urban defence. “Small movements can’t change as much as big movements,” she says, “but we can’t have big movements without the small ones. So now we are trying to create more integrated channels of solidarity.”

Cidamli, Atlar and Ozbank all agree that the integration of organisations is the most recognisable accomplishment of Gezi so far. Many neighbourhoods now have an urban defence group to discuss a wide range of issues including urban development.

Many of these groups have come together to form larger organisations such as Taksim Solidarity, Istanbul Urban Defence and Northern Forest Defence.

One small group, Caferaga Dayanismasi, is a collective in the Kadikoy neighbourhood that conducts meetings and organises activist movements from a “squat” – an abandoned building that members have occupied and are renovating.

Bahadir, a member of the squat, says that the best thing they have done as a group is to have occupied and cultivated an empty lot that was going to be turned into a car park. Now it is a community vegetable garden where neighbours, both the young and the old, get their hands dirty.

Cidamli is thankful to Gezi for this development. “After Gezi, people are looking inward to create solidarity in small ways,” she says. “We can’t have Gezi every day. So, instead, we cultivate tomatoes.”

With this growth in community-minded activism, Bahadir says that the city cannot cut down a single tree without sparking a protest.

But so far, the only major development that has successfully been halted is the shopping mall at Gezi.

“The funny thing is, they can’t do anything in Taksim Square right now,” says Ozbank with a smile. “They can’t touch anything … not even to beautify the place.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Among the labyrinth of winding narrow streets just outside a major shopping centre in the Kumkapi neighbourhood of Istanbul is a rundown road, congested with shops and apartments stacked atop one another.

Istanbul’s “Somalia Street” – so called because immigrants from Somalia (and elsewhere in Africa) have adopted it as a staging post during long, rigorous journeys to find permanent homes. Credit: Hannah Tayson

Cars somehow manage to come barrelling down the street as people slowly move to the narrow pavement already full of food carts and clothes strewn out on blankets for sale. Trash lazily rolls past groups of men engaged in conversation while sitting on buckets or leaning against shop windows. The area feels oddly serene.

This street is host to a community of African refugees, with the majority comprising Somali natives, and aptly named “Somalia Street”. Through word of mouth and family ties, Somali refugees seek a temporary home in this nook of Istanbul, in order to find some respite from the political and natural disasters that have devastated Somalia for decades.

Istanbul has become a staging post for Somalis hoping to eventually travel on to Australia, Canada or the United States, migration trend watchers say.  Because of the constant population flux, it is difficult to estimate the number of refugees actually living on the street at any given moment, but street residents say that there are a few hundred Somalis living there.

Dalmar, 30, a Somali refugee, has only been in Istanbul for a month with his brother Amet, 20, and lives in a small apartment with 12 other refugees. This arrangement is very common here. Often, refugees will live in small apartments with 20 or 30 other people.

“Istanbul is very temporary,” said Dalmar. “The living conditions are poor. Istanbul is expensive, and it is very hard to find work here.”

Turkish labour laws require a passport and residence card for employment, neither of which refugees can easily obtain. This has led to much illegal work, usually consisting of manual labour and odd jobs.Through word of mouth and family ties, Somali refugees seek a temporary home in this nook of Istanbul [Somalia Street], in order to find some respite from the political and natural disasters that have devastated Somalia for decades

A refugee who has lived in Turkey for many years, Liban, 31, said he worked in various manual labour jobs when he first arrived in Istanbul. He pointed out that that the language barrier between Arabic and Turkish makes it “difficult to get jobs in the first place.”

Yet inhabitants appear to have established a unique community along the littered, cobblestone street. Most Somalis interviewed said they enjoy life in Istanbul. The community takes care of them as they arrive in droves. Often, refugees will find work with Kurdish shop owners, who seem rather protective of them.

During one interview with a group of refugees, a Kurdish man popped his head of his shop out to make sure they were not being harassed.

The Katip Kasim mosque stands on Somali Street, its low brick wall recently painted white and orange. The mosque is rather unassuming compared to the grandiose and elegant mosques around Istanbul.

Muammer Aksoy has worked as Katip Kasim’s imam for 19 years, and has seen the community change significantly. This area of Istanbul has always been a refuge for minority groups in Istanbul, beginning with Kurdish migrants from Turkey’s east. Romanian refugees arrived in the 1980s and 1990s. There has since been an increase in African refugees to the area, the majority arriving within the last five years.

During the holy month of Ramadan, Somalia Street unites. Somalis are very devout Muslims. Once the sun begins to set, the Katip Kasim mosque courtyard fills with people waiting in line to receive their dinner to break the fast, or iftar.

Imam Aksoy began the community iftar dinners eight years ago, after seeing a Somali refugee attempt to break his fast with a small piece of bread, and by drinking soiled water from the fountains used to wash feet before entering the mosque.

“It is my responsibility as the imam to take care of my community,” said Aksoy. “I don’t discriminate between people here. Everyone is welcome.”

The imam has enlisted a different shop owner on the street each evening to provide the iftar dinner for 300 people.

A long-time resident and family friend of the imam, Arzu, has also seen the change in the community. “Refugees come because they heard people take care of them here,” she said proudly.

Turkey and Somalia have an unlikely partnership. According to a 2013 report by the Norwegian Peace Building Centre, Turkey has established networks in Africa, Somalia in particular, to enable peace-building efforts and humanitarian initiatives. In turn, says the report, this “strengthens Turkey’s international image as a global peace actor.”

“The relationship between Somalia and Turkey is very recent. It was just in 2011 that this relationship began,” said Dalmar. “Now there are scholarships and programmes for students.”

Somalia receives more aid from Turkey than any other African nation, with 93 million dollars in 2011, and 1,500 Somali students received scholarships to study at the public Istanbul University in 2013.

Abdifitah, 25, who has been living in the community for one year, was a scholarship recipient. To take advantage of the opportunity, Abdifitah and his family moved together from Somalia. His family cannot find work, but has moved with him in order to support him.

“Istanbul gave me a chance to learn,” said Abdifitah.

Recently, Somali refugees have been moving to Turkey’s capital, Ankara, because work is easier to find, and housing is cheaper than in overcrowded Istanbul.

Liban lives with his family in Ankara, but makes a living as a translator for the local African football league in Istanbul. When asked if he would like to go somewhere else, he shook his head.

“When I was younger, I really wanted to go to America. Now, if someone handed me an American passport, I wouldn’t take it,” said Liban. “I have everything I want here.”

Freelance writer Hannah Tayson was a foreign correspondent intern with the Institute for Education in International Media (ieiMedia) in Istanbul during the summer of 2014. She can be contacted at htayson@scu.edu

A smashed NTV satellite van in the centre of Taksim Square in Istanbul highlights protesters' frustration with how Turkish media has covered their movement. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Jun 7 2013 (IPS)

Sitting with hundreds of other protesters in the centre of Istanbul’s Gezi Park Thursday night, Arzu Marsh rummages through her backpack to show off what she calls her makeshift “emergency kit”: medical masks, a red spray-bottle filled with a liquid that lessens the effect of tear gas, a scarf and some food.

But perhaps the most important item is what’s sitting in her lap, and, every few seconds, lights up with incoming text messages: her cell phone.

“I’m from Ankara, so all my friends and all my family are from Ankara, and as soon as I put [photos and videos on] Facebook, everyone saw it, and of course they also shared,” Marsh explained, referring to images of recent anti-government protests in Istanbul.

“Now, we are all following…Facebook or Twitter. We are not following any [traditional] news,” she said.

As spontaneous chants of “Everywhere is Taksim! Everywhere is resistance!” spread through the crowd, and a banner reading “Keep resisting Ankara – we are with you” hung overhead, Marsh told IPS that sharing information on social media about protests across Turkey has not only helped keep activists motivated but also built solidarity across political and geographical divisions."We all follow Facebook or Twitter. We are not following any [traditional] news."
--Arzu Marsh

“Yesterday we heard that… there was a [protest] in Rize, so we had an applause for Rize. It was very emotional, and it motivates you,” she said.

Distrust of traditional media

A smashed, bright yellow, satellite TV truck, belonging to one of Turkey’s leading broadcasters, NTV, sits in the centre of Taksim Square. Its doors are ripped off, windows shattered and tires punctured.

It is also covered in graffiti and highlights protesters’ frustration with the mainstream media in Turkey.

At the height of police violence in Istanbul’s Gezi Park last week, most local television networks ignored the events and instead continued with their regular programming, including cooking and travel shows.

While these same stations are now reporting on the protests – and NTV issued an apology for its initial lack of coverage – activists say social media continues to fill an important void and is the primary source of information for many.

“There’s a new, young generation that does not trust mainstream media broadcasts and they seek information that is independent and objective,” explained Emrah Ucar, an Istanbul-based activist who founded a popular social media network, called “Ötekilerin Postasi”, or “The Other Post”.

Indeed, as demonstrations continue across the country against the government’s increasingly authoritarian controls, protesters have developed an elaborate – and often times, humorous and creative – social media network to organise and sustain their protest.

The “Ötekilerin Postasi” now gets 1.7 million clicks per day, Ucar said, and is reaching a more widespread and politically diverse segment of Turkish society than it ever did before.

“What’s most important about social media is making people feel that they are participating in the production of news. When they get this feeling, they make it an issue for themselves and they participate in the commenting and spreading of the news,” he told IPS.

Government policies create ‘chilling effect’

Widespread arrests and detention of journalists, defamation lawsuits and government pressure on critical media outlets and columnists – including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s publicly calling out journalists for their reporting – has had a “chilling effect” on the Turkish media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Turkey jailed the highest number of journalists worldwide in 2012, often through the use of draconian and easily applied criminal laws. The government has also imposed fines on major media conglomerates, forcing them to sell off assets and downsize their operations, and helped facilitate the transfer of large news outlets to pro-AKP owners.

“We have seen changes in the editorial management of newspapers, firing of critical columnists, and a gradual but consistent shift away from commentary and news that are unpleasant or critical of the government,” Asli Aydıntasbas, a columnist at the daily Milliyet newspaper, told CPJ.

“Newspapers routinely exercise self-censorship and suppress critical information and news—even in the face of declining circulation,” Aydıntasbas added.

According to Selcan Kaynak, a political science professor at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, the media’s failure to promptly report on the Gezi Park protests reflects its overall refusal to report on issues that are critical of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party-led (AKP) government.

“It’s really, in one word, hegemony that is being established. There are some critical columnists, or independent newspapers, but they’ve been marginalised. There [have] been very strict controls [of what goes] reported and unreported,” Kaynak told IPS.

Still, the fact that there was a complete media blackout at the start of the recent protests in Istanbul was “shocking”, Kaynak said. “They thought, I guess, that by ignoring this, the rest of Turkey…would have no idea, and it would just go by and they would go on with the usual business.”

Social media ‘menace to society’

According to Aslı Tunç, head of the media and communications department at Istanbul Bilgi University, social media helped give a platform to opposition voices in Turkey that were growing online, even before the protests began.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” Tunç told IPS. “Those voices were there already. But the mainstream media did not cover [them], did not give them a voice on their televisions or [in their] newspapers, and they tried to marginalise [them].”

On Wednesday, 29 people were arrested – and later released without charge – in the city of Izmir for allegedly “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” after posting things about the protests on social media website Twitter.

In a speech last weekend, Erdogan himself called Twitter “a menace to society”. He also said “the best examples of lies can be found there”.

The defiant prime minister, who just returned from a diplomatic visit to North Africa and has refused to back down from his aggressive position against the demonstrations, has also called protesters deviants, extremists, and even looters – “çapulcu”, in Turkish.

In response, protesters quickly re-appropriated the word, and are now proudly calling themselves Çapulcu, using it in posters around Taksim Square, and in photos and updates shared online. Protesters even created a website, called ÇapulTV, where they are live streaming from Gezi Park, while an Anglicised version of the word – “chapulling” – has taken on the new meaning of fighting for your rights.

“[The protesters] proved that Twitter, social media, is a very powerful organisational tool,” Tunç said. “The young people especially proved that social media is part of media now. You cannot ignore the power of social media.”

Protesters gather in Taksim Square in Istanbul, not far from Gezi Park, where protests were sparked last week against the government's most recent urban redevelopment project. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Jun 6 2013 (IPS)

Few imagined that the symbolic act of standing in front of bulldozers in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in an effort to block a development project near the city’s central square would have caused the reaction it did.

The defiant act – and the Turkish police’s violent response – pushed thousands of Turks out into streets across the country over the last week to decry their government’s increasingly authoritarian controls, lack of public accountability, police violence and numerous urban development projects that are irreversibly changing the face of the country.

For many, the plans to uproot trees in Gezi Park are just the latest in a long string of urban projects that ignore the cultural and historic heritage of Istanbul. More over, these projects are built at the expense of the poor and fail to consider residents’ input.

“The poorer people are being driven out of the centre of the city and pushed to the edges,” explained Kevin Robins, an Istanbul-based urban planning researcher. “On the other hand, [there is] the taking over of more and more inner-city areas for the young, affluent middle-class.”

“The mixture…of classes that existed in Istanbul is now being eroded quite dramatically,” Robins told IPS, describing the phenomenon as “polarisation”."The mixture...of classes that existed in Istanbul is now being eroded quite dramatically."
-- Kevin Robins

“There’s a general feeling that there’s an attack on the way of life,” he added.

According to a report last year in The Guardian, redevelopment projects are slated for some 50 neighbourhoods in Istanbul, and in 2012 alone, 7.5 billion Turkish liras were allocated to urban renewal across the city.

Last week, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister and head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), unveiled his controversial plan to build a third bridge – a 1,275-metre suspension bridge, with an expected price tag of six billion dollars – across the Bosphorus, linking the European and Asian sides of Istanbul.

Opponents to the plan say the bridge will destroy some of the only remaining green areas in the city and have condemned the government’s lack of consultation with local community groups.

Erdogan has also pushed for building a shipping canal across the Bosphorus, calling it “a project of such immense size that it can’t be compared to the Panama or Suez canals”. In May, the government signed a contract to develop a third airport in Istanbul, with a capacity of 150 million passengers.

In recent years, residents of many Istanbul neighbourhoods, especially those home to impoverished, minority groups, like the Tarlabaşı or Sulukule areas, have also been pushed out to make way for real estate developers and luxury housing projects.

So-called gecekondu neighbourhoods – unlicensed shantytowns established decades ago by migrants from eastern Anatolia who moved to Istanbul for work opportunities – are particularly vulnerable to being displaced for the sake of development, with the government and its agencies not only confiscating land but also evicting and sometimes relocating residents to the city’s outskirts.

According to political scientist Mine Eder, the rapid pace at which the Turkish government has launched these urban redevelopment projects is what sets gentrification in Turkey apart from other developing countries around the world.

“There’s a deliberate demolishing to create more money, and really, to create this exclusionary zone for the rich. There is a whole re-appropriation, re-definition, and privatisation of the public space,” explained Eder, who teaches at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University and specialises in the impact of gentrification on minority groups in Istanbul.

“[Erdogan’s] vision is driven by this sort of obsession with tourism and Istanbul becoming this big, giant, commercial centre,” Eder told IPS. “That vision is behind that unquestionable bulldozer construction. ‘Bulldozer neo-liberalism’ is a term that sort of encapsulates the whole thing.”

Nor is the government’s aggressive push for urban development projects limited to Istanbul.

On the road leading from the airport to Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, tall apartment blocks are being erected on numerous hilltops, construction cranes pepper the skyline, and huge billboards, sponsored by the government’s housing authority, TOKI, aim to entice potential homeowners.

“It’s happening everywhere. You see quite dramatic changes going on in Anatolian cities now, making them unrecognisable. Istanbul is clearly the dominant focus, but Ankara also has huge expansions, huge developments, and huge middle-class housing areas,” Robins said.

By 2023, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish republic, Turkey hopes to be among the top ten economies of the world and reach a gross domestic product (GDP) of two trillion dollars and 500 billion dollars in exports annually.

According to Eder, the protests in Gezi Park signal a historic moment in the reign of the current AKP government, forming the strongest and most unified opposition movement in recent years to these unsustainable economic and urban development projects.

“Until now, there was absolutely no one who could actually sit, metaphorically, in front of that bulldozer, and say you can’t go in here,” she said. “Now, they’ve done it.”