The Loss of a "Deeply Personal Freedom"

SCOTUS kneecaps Planned Parenthood ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌


Three Questions About...Toni Morrison

She had a whole other job, and she was brilliant at it.

By Rebecca Carroll

Toni Morrison wrote some of the greatest literature of all time. It is less known, though, that she also edited some of the greatest literature, and that is what makes Dana A. Williams’s new book, Toni At Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship, such a gift. Williams, a professor of African American literature and the Dean of Graduate School at Howard University, conducted hundreds of interviews (including a handful with Morrison while she was still living) and unearthed letters and conversations between Morrison and the authors she published—among them Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Gayl Jones, and Angela Davis—during her nearly 20 years as an editor at Random House. The result is a thoughtfully reverent, always engrossing, and occasionally juicy narrative that confirms Morrison’s intricate genius, as well as her deep love of Black writers, Black books, and Black language.   

Rebecca Carroll: What did you learn about Toni Morrison, the editor, that you did not know about Toni Morrison, the writer?

Dana A. Williams: I think they intersect, but Toni Morrison as editor was fully involved in the publishing community. I think of Toni Morrison-as-writer as someone writing in isolation—someone writing at their desk, really thinking about her story and her characters. Morrison as editor was everywhere. She was at every party. She was in the design team’s face, sometimes to their dismay. She was on the street trying to find writers, because she really did have to kind of beat the bushes in those early years to identify writers who had not been signed up by other houses. Angela Davis told me that her office was always bustling. There were people in and out all the time, which is part of the reason why, when she was working on a book of her own, she would not go in the office in the same way. 

One of the beautiful things about this book has been rediscovering books I’ve loved forever, like Toni Cade Bambara’s Gorilla, My Love, now knowing that Morrison played such an integral role in shaping them. Were there books that you returned to in the same way during the process of writing this one? 

I absolutely went back and reread [Bambara’s] The Salt Eaters because I thought, Now I think I know what’s happening in this book. I love The Salt Eaters. I taught The Salt Eaters, but I never got all of it. The same thing was true of Leon Forrest, who I probably knew more about than any of the authors. All the fiction—the fiction [Morrison edited] was what I was so drawn to to begin with….But the more [Morrison and I] talked, the more she continued to ignore my questions about fiction. She was like the queen of indirection from the beginning to the end, because she never said, “This book really shouldn’t be about the fiction only.” She would drop hints like, “Have you seen Paula’s last book? Now that’s a book. If you’re going to write a book, that’s a book.” She was talking about A Sword Among Lions by Paula Giddings, which was interesting, because it is a biography of Ida B. Wells, and every time I would ask [Morrison] a question about herself, she would say, “I'm not interested in myself.”

After spending over a decade on this book, do you have a strong sense now of what Toni Morrison thought made good writing?

I kept asking her that question, and she said, “Well, obviously if it’s nonfiction, the argument has to be sound and it has to be compelling, and it has to make the case for the reader in a way that nobody else has made it before.” If she was editing on a topic that she didn’t know as much about, she was literally reading everything about the current conversation to make sure [the author was] moving this argument in a different direction. Editors don't have to do that. 

For the fiction…I think she was more drawn to experimental writers than to straight beginning, middle, and end writers. She said, “With Gayl Jones, I had to ask questions about characters: What is motivating this character?” With Bambara, she said, “I just needed to make sure that she didn't leave the reader behind, because she’s moving so fast.” I kept thinking, There has to be this kind of crystallized way of saying [what good writing is]. But it was the interrogation. I think that was her distinguishing mark—to publish what stories she wanted to be told, and to let the writer be the writer. 


Moving Past the Shock of Dobbs

 

 

Our new normal and how to fight back ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌


It's Been Juneteenth All Year Long


megan greenwell and book cover

Three Questions About...Private Equity

In her new book, author Megan Greenwell humanizes the horrors of a secretive industry

By Nona Willis Aronowitz

When journalist Megan Greenwell scored her dream job as the editor-in-chief of the sports website Deadspin, she hadn’t thought about private equity at all. She had never done any finance reporting, and she had only the vaguest sense of what private equity even did. But when, in 2019, Deadspin was being destroyed by the firm that owned it, she wrote a scorched-earth resignation letter and resolved to learn more about the human cost of this ubiquitous and insidious industry. Her resulting book, Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream, tells the story of four people whose lives were upended by private equity–and how they all fought back.

John Oliver once said, “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.” Your book is not boring, but I think for many of us, our eyes glaze over at financial terms we don’t know. How do you explain private equity to get laypeople to care?

The only way I wanted to write this book was if it was for people who have some sense that private equity is important and has negative consequences, but have zero idea what that means. Here’s how I describe it: The engine of the private equity machine is leveraged buyouts, which are when a private equity firm pools money from outside investors–pension funds, university endowments, ultra-wealthy individuals, what have you–and combines that money with a huge amount of bank loans, then uses that combined fund to buy companies. 

The trick is that the debt from the loans is assigned not to the private equity firm but to the company it is acquiring. That’s the detail I think gets people scandalized. They take companies that are pretty strong in a lot of cases and turn them into companies absolutely hamstrung by debt payments, and as a result, 10 times as many companies owned by private equity declare bankruptcy than other kinds of companies. The private equity firms themselves don’t take on any risk, but this has horrible effects on communities, workers, tenants, patients, everybody.


The book’s subtitle mentions “the death of the American dream.” How did this theme play out in your reporting? (Also, I have to ask: Was it just a coincidence that three out of four of your protagonists were women, or do you think there’s a throughline there?)

I picked the industries first, and I landed on media, healthcare, retail, and housing. Private equity didn’t cause the root problems in these industries; instead, they capitalized on those problems for their own gain. Once I had my protagonists, the interviews drove the American Dream theme rather than the other way around. One is a Mexican immigrant who moved here in middle school, not speaking a word of English, and who managed to become a professional journalist. Another grew up poor in Texas, and his version of the American dream was becoming a community doctor who provided care to his neighbors. Another was a woman who escaped public housing (and a lot of other things), so for her, living in her apartment complex really was the Dream. And the last woman is an Alaska native who moved to the mainland and supported a family of five on a Toys “R” Us retail salary so her husband could go to pharmacy school and make a better life for all of them. In each case, private equity ended up tearing down the things that were most important to these people. 

[And about the three-out-of-four women factor,] it’s not surprising to me that women were the majority of people I ended up talking to–not just [of] the four, but the 150 to 200 people I spoke with before I found my protagonists. In part, it’s because there are specific vulnerabilities of being a woman in 21st century America [like poverty] but also because I chose people who were fighting back, and women seem to be more involved in these community fights. 

Yes–all of your subjects actively resist their circumstances to varying degrees after private equity shatters their lives. What can someone whose job or industry is being eviscerated by private equity learn from the people in your book?

The four characters in my book all fight back in very different ways. Some put pressure on elected representatives [to regulate private equity]–although there are limitations to that at the federal level, because fully 88% of members of Congress and the Senate take private equity donations. Another character does some lobbying in front of pension funds to get them to stop investing in private equity firms that hurt workers. There’s some true grassroots community organizing to build something new. Some of the most interesting reporting I did was in the media section, where the focus is on people who are trying to create a new nonprofit system. Is that at a big enough scale now that it is fully replacing private equity-owned corporate media? No. But some startup nonprofit local news sites are doing really, really well economically and are becoming amazing sources of news in places that didn’t have news. I think about Mississippi Today, which did not exist until a few years ago, but which won a Pulitzer by exposing a massive scandal in the governor’s office involving Brett Favre. That’s genuinely inspiring to me.


"Trying to Break Us Won't Work"


Trump's Updated EMTALA Guidance Tells Docs, "You're On Your Own"

BY SHANNON MELERO AND NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ

On Tuesday, the Trump administration rescinded guidance the Biden administration had issued in 2022 explicitly stating that hospitals are to provide abortion care to patients in emergency medical situations, even if the hospital is located in a state with an abortion ban. The guidance came just as news of desperately ill pregnant women being turned away from hospitals was beginning to emerge, and it clarified the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), a 1986 law that requires hospitals receiving federal funding to provide stabilizing care for any individual experiencing a medical emergency. This week, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a statement that the 2022 guidance did “not reflect the policy of this administration” and that it would “work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”

Which is ironic, because the thing currently creating massive confusion among providers, patients, and the media is the rescission of the guidance, not the guidance itself. Allow us to clarify: EMTALA has not been repealed; it is still the law of the land and, should you need care in an emergency, your nearest hospital is obligated to provide it or to transfer you to a facility that can—yes, even if that care includes an abortion. 

“I want patients to know that nobody should be denying you care because of this memo,” Dr. Dara Kass, a former regional director at the Department of Health and Human Services and an emergency physician in New York, tells The Meteor. And if you do think your providers violated EMTALA, she notes, you can still issue a complaint.

So what’s the purpose of the memo, if it doesn’t change the law? Trump may just be looking for a way to pay lip service to the anti-abortion movement. And the memo’s specific language may also be strategic, as Jessica Valenti points out in her newsletter: The CMS memo says EMTALA still requires treatment of “emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.” The phrase “unborn child” (which also appears in EMTALA) hints at fetal personhood and sets up a showdown between a woman who has a life-threatening condition, like an ectopic pregnancy, and her fetus.

It’s all very chaotic. And chaos is the point.

“This action doesn’t change hospitals' legal obligations,” Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement, “but it does add to the fear, confusion, and dangerous delays patients and providers have faced since the fall of Roe v. Wade.” Dr. Kass adds that while the 2022 guidance “signaled to doctors that the government had their back,” the rescission tells doctors, “You’re on your own” and erodes their confidence that the government will protect them. There will inevitably be more “physicians who are not sure what they’re allowed to do,” she says, “and therefore they might do less.” 

Meanwhile, more pregnant patients will suffer as doctors are forced to contend with legal quandaries under pressure. We’ve already seen what happens when emergency rooms are slow to act; Amanda Zurowski, Kaitlyn Joshua, and Amber Nicole Thurman have each paid the price for a hospital’s confusion over what doctors are allowed to do—Thurman with her life.

(L-R) America Ferrera, Joshua Zurawski, Amanda Zurawski, Dr. Jennifer Lincoln and Dr. Heather Irobunda speak onstage during The Meteor: Meet the Moment Summit at Brooklyn Museum on November 12, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for The Meteor)

For better or worse, Dr. Kass doesn’t see this latest move as dramatically changing “the care on the ground.” (Indeed, even with the 2022 guidance in place, there have been dozens of documented cases of pregnant women being denied emergency care or treated negligently.) Rather, she sees this as “a distraction from what we need to do—which is to reinstate access to abortion services in every state.”


A Plea for the "Disappeared" at the Statue of Liberty


Is the Last Abortion Haven in the Caribbean Closing?

How U.S. influence has been quietly reshaping access in Puerto Rico

By Susanne Ramirez de Arellano

Dr. Yari Vale's petite frame is no longer weighed down by the nine-pound bulletproof vest she wore when anti-abortion threats increased after the end of Roe v. Wade, but she hasn't gotten rid of it. The security guard at Dr. Vale's Darlington Medical Associates clinic in Río Piedras is no longer at the door; still, she has him on standby. With the return of Donald Trump to the White House and Jenniffer González, a Trump devotee, in the governor’s seat, Dr. Vale is bracing for an escalation in the fight to safeguard reproductive rights in Puerto Rico.

The predominantly Catholic island is “on paper one of the most accessible places in the Western Hemisphere” to obtain an abortion, NPR reported just after Roe was overturned. But with the U.S.'s shift toward right-wing Christian nationalism, that could be changing.   

Dr. Vale, an OB/GYN at the Darlington clinic—the only one of the island's four that does late-term abortions—is on the frontline of the fight to keep what’s happening in the United States from happening in Puerto Rico, euphemistically called an unincorporated territory (it's a colony, really). It's a battle that, she says, feels like “throwing a firecracker up in the air, and it's just smoke and no one hears you.” But she persists, knowing that the first line of defense is the clinics.

Dr. Vale at her clinic in Río Piedras (Photo courtesy of Dr. Vale)

The Legacy of Pueblo v. Duarte

For years, Puerto Rico has been known for its liberal abortion laws: The right is enshrined in the island’s constitution (which exists separately from the U.S. Constitution) and is protected by the right to intimacy under Puerto Rico’s penal code. Abortion is legal on request if it is performed (or prescribed) by a physician to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health—and health includes mental health. There are no limits (abortion may not be banned before viability; post-viability abortions are permitted for the preservation of the pregnant person), and the procedure doesn't require the consent of partners, ex-partners, or, in the case of minors, parents. 

However, these laws have their roots in a dark colonial history. In 1902, four years after invading the island, the U.S. enacted policies to control the population, although abortion was still prohibited without exception. Then, in 1937, colonialists who wanted to further limit the Puerto Rican population passed legislation based on racist neo-Malthusian and eugenic theories, virtually legalizing abortion on the island if it was to protect the life and health of the patient. These changes later facilitated clinical trials of the contraceptive pill and mass coerced sterilizations—a procedure that became so common that it was known among Puerto Rican women as “la operacion.” 

In 1980, a case involving a minor and her doctor went even further, and set up modern abortion law in Puerto Rico. In the landmark Pueblo v. Duarte, Dr. Pablo Duarte Mendoza, who had performed an abortion on a 16-year-old girl in her first trimester, was sentenced to four years in prison. He appealed, and the Puerto Rican Supreme Court agreed with him, stating that through the island’s penal code, abortion is legal if it is performed to save the woman's life or health, including mental well-being.

Like many things on an island impacted by colonialism, abortion access is still limited for everyday Puerto Ricans. A surgical abortion costs $250, and a medication abortion between $300 and $350; meanwhile, about 43% of Puerto Ricans live below the poverty line, and insurance plans on the island do not cover abortion. And in addition to cost, religion and social stigma—the “what-will-my-family-say” factor—serve as deterrents for many women.

The Dobbs Effect 

When 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision removed the constitutional right to an abortion in the U.S., it didn’t automatically affect rights in Puerto Rico (unlike on the mainland, where “trigger bans” were in place). In fact, some U.S. women began to travel to Puerto Rico from states with restrictive abortion laws, such as Florida. It was the return of the “San Juan holiday.”

The national campaign for Free, Safe and Accessible Abortion in Puerto Rico called a demonstration on Saturday July 9th to demand that the Legislature protect reproductive and sexual rights in Puerto Rico. (Photo by Alejandro Granadillo/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

But Dobbs did embolden conservative Puerto Rican politicians and pro-life groups, who saw a window of opportunity and seized it. Shortly after the decision, the right-wing religious party Proyecto Dignidad (PD) adopted the U.S. anti-abortion lobby's blueprint and tried to push through several bills to curtail access to abortion, and even criminalize it. They argued that the end of Roe implicitly negated Pueblo v. Duarte. The Senate ultimately defeated the bills; according to many Puerto Rican legal experts, Pueblo v. Duarte rests on the Puerto Rican penal code, which has no analogy in the U.S. Constitution—and should, therefore, not be affected by Dobbs.

An Ascendant Right-Wing Movement

Abortion-rights advocates warn that efforts to criminalize abortion in Puerto Rico are not over. Traditionally, “the issue of abortion in Puerto Rico has not been the overriding controversy that the anti-abortion and ultra-religious politicians want to make it out to be now,” says Senator Maria de Lourdes Santiago, a lawyer and Senator for the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). But, she says, the anti-abortion campaign orchestrated by Proyecto Dignidad now "magnifies the issue to demonize it." 

Founded in 2019, PD has capitalized on its nexus of Catholic and Evangelical churches; the erosion of the traditional duopoly of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD); and an increasingly ultra-conservative sector of the population urging a return to traditional values. Even though the party got only seven percent of the vote in the 2024 elections, its influence is strong island-wide, with a campaign that now hinges on the abortion issue. 

Proyecto Dignidad Senator Joan Rodriguez Veve, a canon lawyer and face of the populist religious right, has vowed to continue fighting to restrict access to abortion. She recently introduced legislation, PS 297, restricting access to abortion for adolescents under the age of 15. The bill is a carbon copy of one that the Puerto Rican House rejected a year ago. It calls for jail time for any doctor or person who assists a minor in getting an abortion, and a slew of other measures, including forensic interviews of minors seeking an abortion. 

The Senate approved the bill in February, and almost everyone I spoke to—politicians, legal experts, and abortion doctors—told me they believe it will pass, even though both pro-abortion and some anti-abortion groups have, for different reasons, voiced their opposition to the measure.  

A New Generation Stands Up

Young Puerto Ricans have become a more visible part of activist movements over the last few years. In 2020, thousands took to the streets to demand the resignations of corrupt government officials. (Photo by Jose Jimenez/Getty Images)

At the same time that PD is gaining influence, attitudes about abortion are shifting with the younger generation. Rising numbers of people support abortion rights, and young people have galvanized around the issue, taking to the streets in protest and amplifying groups like Aborto Libre Puerto Rico, Profamilias, and Proyecto Matria, among others. It’s a generation that, unlike its mainland counterpart, grew up without a sense of abortion as a wedge issue.

Most recently, health professionals and activists have spoken out against PS 297, warning that the bill puts women and girls in danger. “What's going to happen here is that young women and those most vulnerable will seek out illegal abortions and go to the places where illegal drugs are sold to purchase abortion pills, many cut with fentanyl, in doses that are not recommended,” says Puerto Rican feminist activist Alondra Hernández Quiñones

As religious and conservative groups gain traction in Puerto Rico, Dr. Vale worries that a girl of 15, whose parents are ultra-conservative and refuse to consent to her abortion (as the new legislation would require), would be forced into motherhood. Clinics like Darlington have stopped seeing patients younger than 15 at all, and Dr. Vale fears a future where abortion, currently a safe and regulated procedure, “will once again be a public health problem…where we don't know how many women end up in emergency rooms due to an [unregulated] abortion gone wrong.”

“This worries me a lot,” says Isharedmie Vazquez, a 17-year-old Puerto Rican student. “It seems incredibly wild to me that instead of guaranteeing secure options [for an abortion], what they are looking for is to criminalize it and force women to assume a responsibility for which they are not prepared. It's unfair that they want to take away the right to decide about our lives.” 

 

 

Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is an author on race and diversity, opinion writer, and cultural critic. The former news director of Univision, she writes for NBC News Think, Latino Rebels, and Nuestros Stories, among other outlets.


American Moms Are Not Okay

We have receipts ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌