Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■The music was thumping, the pink flags were flying, and despite the low turnout the Free Britney campaign was back in the nation’s capital. Fewer than two dozen protesters gathered outside the White House on Saturday for their third rally this year in support of ending the 13-year legal conservatorship of pop superstar Britney Spears. The movement marked a major success last month when a Los Angeles judge ruled that Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, would be suspended as conservator of her estate. Though a November hearing could end the conservatorship entirely, the legions who mobilized on her behalf are aware that the 39-year-old Spears is far from the only one stuck in an allegedly toxic arrangement. “Jamie is only part of the problem,” said Cassandra Dumas, who’s helped organize the “Free Britney” rallies. “If we want meaningful change in this country to happen, we need to look at all the bad actors associated. ” Dumas and the group Free Britney America are pushing for federal legislation. They say they’ve been involved in conception of the Freedom and Right to Emancipate from Exploitation Act, a bipartisan bill to make conservatorships more transparent, and they’re demanding the restructuring go even further to include criminal penalties for those found to be exploiting the system. On Saturday, their mission was to, yet again, try to be seen as more than just a dance party and an opportunity for a selfie. Their message to the tourists around the White House: Come for the fuchsia glitter, stay for a lesson on fiduciary abuse, disability discrimination and judicial accountability.
■ Retired Pope Benedict XVI has said he hopes to soon join a beloved professor friend in “the afterlife,” in a sign that the 94- yearold pontiff is not only accepting his eventual death but welcoming it. Benedict penned an Oct. 2 letter to a German priest thanking him for letting him know of the passing of the Rev. Gerhard Winkler, a Cistercian priest and academic colleague of the retired pope, the former Joseph Ratzinger. “Of all my colleagues and friends he was the closest to me,” Benedict wrote, according to the letter reproduced in German media. “Now he has reached the afterlife, where many friends certainly await him. I hope I can join them soon.” Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to resign when he renounced the papacy in 2013, saying he didn’t have the strength of body and mind to guide the Catholic Church. Throughout the papacy of Pope Francis, Benedict has lived in a converted monastery in the Vatican gardens, occasionally greeting visitors and writing, but by and large keeping to his vow to live “hidden to the world.”