Congressman John Lewis, 1940-2020

Posted on July 20, 2020 by stevemasy

Congressman John Lewis, from Apple.com

This past weekend, the nation lost a legendary civil rights leader in the passing of Congressman John Lewis. A passionate advocate of racial equality and civil rights, Congressman Lewis rose to prominence during the Civil Rights Movement, one of the leaders of the Freedom Rides, speaking at the 1963 March on Washington and playing a key role in the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge out of Selma, a day which came to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ for the violence of the law enforcement response.

John Lewis was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 as a consequence for his part in the Freedom Rides, sent to Parchman Penitentiary for using “white” restroom https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/486142489527844865

Lewis’ speech at the March on Washington is worth a watch. Interestingly, his speech was rewritten literally at the last minute to tone down his powerful words.

Congressman Lewis was a paragon of civic engagement, a leader in the fight for justice, and a strong advocate for holding our nation to the ideals laid out in its Founding Documents. May we all learn from his example.

Differences in COVID-19 response

Posted on July 20, 2020 by Peter

Women, college graduates, Democrats more likely to self-isolate to reduce coronavirus risks

Survey also finds differences in prevalence of COVID-19 testing based on geographic, personal and socio-economic factors

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass (July 20, 2020)—Women, older Americans, Democrats and people with more education are more likely to try to isolate themselves from contact with other people to reduce COVID-19 transmission risks, according to a new Tufts University national survey.

The survey also identified notable differences in whether people have received testing for COVID-19 based on geographic regions, age group, educational level, political affiliation, income, race/ethnicity and gender. Those who have been tested for COVID-19 most commonly live in the Northeast, are affiliated with the Democratic party, and are African American, according to the research.

“The results of our survey indicate that there are significant demographic and geographic differences in how people respond to COVID-19 pandemic risks, and that these disparities in protective responses need to be taken into account by public health and public policy officials,” said Tom Stopka, an epidemiologist at Tufts School of Medicine, and a co-lead on the study.

“As public health officials continue to increase access to testing across the U.S. in light of persistent surges in COVID-19 infections in many states, they need to consider how to increase testing in geographic hotspots and the highest-risk groups to better understand infection patterns and inform data-driven public health and clinical responses,” Stopka added.

The survey was designed and analyzed by Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement. The research group previously released data showing that only 57 percent of Americans plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19. The group will soon release additional research about the economic impacts of the pandemic.

Self-isolation rates differ

Overall, 71% of adult Americans say they have tried to separate themselves from others to avoid COVID-19.

Women are about nine percentage points more likely to self-isolate (75% versus 66% for men). People with a bachelor’s degree are almost 20 percentage points more likely to self-isolate than those with a high school diploma (79% versus 59.3%, respectively). Democrats (77.5%) and Independents (73%) are about 10 points more likely to self-isolate than Republicans (66%). Almost eight out of ten Americans who are 60 or older report trying to self-isolate, while two-thirds of respondents in all other age categories report similar attempts.

The disparities among those who are more likely to self-isolate may reflect opportunities and perceived risks, according to the researchers. For instance, retired people and people who work at computers can isolate more easily than people who provide in-person services. Also, people in older age groups may be paying close attention to the elevated risks that they face based on national and international epidemiological data and news.

“Below age 60, all age groups are self-isolating at the same rate. That may counter speculation that the young are flouting restrictions,” said Peter Levine, an associate dean of academic affairs at Tufts’ Tisch College.

Testing rates vary by geographic region

Overall, 7% of those polled say that they have personally been tested for COVID-19, and 17% report that someone in their family has been tested.

These testing rates vary by region. In the Northeast, 10% have been tested, and 21% have a family member who has been tested, compared to 5% and 14% in the Midwest, respectively, with the other regions in between. Democrats are significantly more likely to have been tested (9%) or to have a tested family member (22%) than Republicans (6% and 13.5%, respectively). African Americans are the most likely to be tested (10%) or to have had a test in the family (26%), compared to 5% and 14% for Whites, respectively. Increased testing may reflect the higher rate of infection among African Americans that has been widely reported.

About the survey

The survey was fielded online by Ipsos between May 29 and June 10, 2020, using its KnowledgePanel. The sample was nationally representative, and the number of complete responses was 1,267 non-institutionalized adult residents of the United States. More technical information about the survey is at https://equityresearch.tufts.edu/the-survey/.

Tufts University’s Research Group on Equity in Health, Wealth and Civic Engagement was established in 2019 as part of a strategic effort to use resources and expertise across the university to address major global issues. It brings together researchers from across Tufts campuses and schools to discuss and investigate aspects of equity and inequity in the United States and the world. The research has been funded by Tufts University’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research as one of several such initiatives.

The group’s principal investigators are Jennifer Allen, professor of Community Health in the Tufts School of Arts and Sciences; Levine; and Stopka. Other members of the group can be found here.

By September 2020, the Research Group will launch a website at https://equityresearch.tufts.edu that will allow anyone to explore numerous dimensions of equity and inequity with an interactive data-visualization tool. Tufts’ Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life is funding the data-visualization tool.

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About Tufts University

Tufts University, located on campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville and Grafton, Massachusetts, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university’s schools is widely encouraged.

The Frontier Beyond Open Access Publishing? Commoning

Posted on July 17, 2020 by David Bollier

For nearly twenty years, the idea of “openness” for Internet content has been seen as the gold standard for progressive scholarship. If content can be freely shared, goes the thinking, then it will improve the quality of our scholarly and scientific inquiry, democratic debate, and cultural creativity. It will empower individuals and yield a richer collective wisdom.

Well, it hasn’t really worked out that way. While corporate publishers initially resisted open platforms, most have conceded the inevitability of open networks and shifted to clever business models that allow for a version of openness. Closed and proprietary content has often become (more) open and shareable, within limits.

But that shimmering mecca of emancipation symbolized by “openness”? It has proven to be a mirage. Academic publishers have shown themselves adept at adapting to open access publishing models while consolidating their proprietary market power and control. The benefits to scholars, students, academic disciplines, university budgets, and freedom of expression have not been what they were cracked up to be.

It was with great pleasure, therefore, that I recently encountered a major statement by some British open-access renegades calling for a “commonifidation of open access.” The call to action is entitled “Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences,” by Andreas E. Pia, Simon Batterbury, and eleven other colleagues.

The manifesto essentially makes the point that openness is not the same as commoning. My colleague Silke Helfrich and I had this epiphany when writing our book Free, Fair and Alive. In a section called, “How Commoning Moves Beyond the Open/Closed Binary” (pp. 68-72), we note how the open/closed binary focuses on the supposed status of the content itself – open or closed – and not on the social dynamics by which a community generates the content in the first place. (The chapter with these pages can be found online here.)

It turns out that the social system for generating, curating and maintain knowledge is critical to how that knowledge can circulate. As more scholars are discovering, open and closed are both compatible with predatory forms of corporate control – high subscription fees, limited user access, copyright and contract restrictions, encrypted formats, and even outright censorship in response to nations like China.

Commoning, by contrast, puts the responsibilities and entitlements of commoners as the primary goal. This helps to ensure that peer-generated knowledge is accessible and shared in ways that are free, fair, and respectful.

With that preamble, I’d like to share some excerpts from the “Labour of Love” manifesto and invite you to read the full piece at at The Commonplace, a project of the Knowledge Futures Group. The Commonplace is “a space where people discuss the digital infrastructure and policies needed to distribute, constellate, and amplify knowledge for the public good.”

The manifesto declares at one point: “With this manifesto we wish to repoliticise Open Access to challenge existing rapacious practices in academic publishing—namely, often invisible and unremunerated labour, toxic hierarchies of academic prestige, and a bureaucratic ethos that stifles experimentation—and to bear witness to the indifference they are predicated upon.”

You had me at “re-policiticise.”

The manifesto makes clear the “paradox of knowledge commons” in academia, noting that “academics are effectively required to hand over their research, which is often supported by public funding, to publishers whose primary goal is to earn profit rather than to make the material freely and uncompromisingly accessible.” This is “the real threat to academic freedom,” the group declares.

The problems that flow from this paradox are myriad, as the manifesto explains. (All links and boldface below are in the original text.)

In recent decades, academic publishing has been transformed into a highly profitable business. In the past, scholarly journals were primarily published through professional associations or academic institutions; today, many are owned or distributed by commercial publishers with large profit margins. These profits are achieved through a system of academic exploitation: not only is the writing and reviewing provided free to the publisher, but authors are increasingly required to pay an article processing charge (APC) to avoid having their work being placed behind expensive paywalls. Libraries face a rapid increase in costs, at an aggregate rate of 11% per annum, to maintain access to journals and their contents.

Meanwhile, insofar as publication in “high-ranking” journals and name-brand presses is required for jobs, tenure, funding, and research assessment exercises of all kinds, academics feel under increasing pressure to “play the game.” This has serious implications for scholars with interdisciplinary or otherwise unconventional research agendas, and it places enormous pressure on early-career and precarious academics. It is particularly punishing for women, who are still disproportionately charged with various forms of care work.

While this dismal state of affairs is fast approaching what property rights theorists call “a tragedy of the anti-commons,” the irony of seeing the same communities that make qualitative social scientific research possible excluded from full participation in the production of knowledge (in the form of expensive journal subscriptions and APC charges) is too often lost on researchers consumed with the forward progress of their own careers.

Over the past few years, a number of high-profile incidents have further exposed the corrosive influence of commercial considerations, including the willingness to censor content in order to maintain access to profitable markets. In August 2017, it was revealed that Cambridge University Press had complied with the demands of Chinese government censors to block access within China to over three hundred “politically sensitive” articles published in the prestigious journal, China Quarterly. Prompted by public outcry, the press ultimately reversed its stance, restoring access to the censored contents for Chinese readers and making them available free of charge for all.

Unfortunately the Cambridge University Press incident was just the tip of the iceberg, and there have been numerous other examples of major publishers censoring content on behalf of the Chinese government. In October 2018, it was revealed that Springer Nature had been removing chapters dealing with “sensitive subjects” from its Transcultural Research book series, unbeknownst to the authors or editors. Despite public outrage from the academic community, Springer Nature remained defiant. The company refused to reverse its actions and justified them as being necessary for the advancement of research.

All of this is alarming in its own right, especially since the consolidation of OA publishing under corporate publishers is becoming a new normal. The manifesto states:

Over the next decade, Open Access (OA) is likely to become the default in scholarly publishing. Yet, as commercial publishers develop new models for capturing revenue (and as policy initiatives like Plan S remain reluctant to challenge their centrality), researchers, librarians, and other concerned observers are beginning to articulate a set of values that critically engages the industry-driven project of broadening access to specialist scholarship. [Plan S is the proposal of a coalition of national research funding organizations that seeks to ensure that research is routinely published in open access journals, repositories, and platforms.]

….. The undersigned are a group of scholar-publishers based in the humanities and social sciences who are questioning the fairness and scientific tenability of a system of scholarly communication dominated by large commercial publishers. With this manifesto we wish to repoliticise Open Access to challenge existing rapacious practices in academic publishing—namely, often invisible and unremunerated labour, toxic hierarchies of academic prestige, and a bureaucratic ethos that stifles experimentation—and to bear witness to the indifference they are predicated upon.

In this manifesto we mobilise an extended notion of research output, which encompasses the work of building and maintaining the systems, processes, and relations of production that make scholarship possible. We believe that the humanities and social sciences are too often disengaged from the public and material afterlives of their scholarship. We worry that our fields are sleepwalking into a new phase of control and capitalisation, to include continued corporate extraction of value and transparency requirements designed by managers, entrepreneurs, and politicians.

We fervently believe that OA can be a powerful tool to advance the ends of civil society and social movements. But opening up the products of our scholarship without questioning how this is done, who stands to profit from it, what model of scholarship is being normalised, and who stands to be silenced by this process may come at a particularly high cost for scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

….. What is clear to us is that the future of a more accessible, ethical, transparent, and creative form of scholarly communication largely relies on a labour of love—unremunerated, off-work time that is freely given as a result of political, emotional and otherwise idealistic investment in projects that transcend the quest for academic prestige and seek to transform the publishing system from within. However, scholar-led OA publishing can also benefit from the expertise and institutional solidity of other actors. While scholars can provide the carefully-argued analysis, the peer review, and the editorial work, we also need the support of our universities, libraries, and other like-minded organisations to ensure that our collective effort can be sustained, archived, and scaled up to meet the challenge of the digital information era.

The manifesto concludes by calling for the commonification of Open Access – “scholarship that is collaboratively and responsibly built and shared.” Check out the specific recommendations for authors, senior scholars, deans and provosts, librarians, and journal editors. It's a good outline for how pressure should be applied to universities from the bottom up.

This piece is a gust of fresh air – a much-needed, long-overdue challenge to the corporate and university powers that control academic publishing. Through inertia, ignorance, and sometimes complicity, universities are not challenging the distinct limits of corporate-controlled “openness" and defending the ideals of academic scholarship. Nor are they adequately investigating the countervailing appeal of the commons, which offer a better framework for reinvigorating the life of the academy.

NCDD Confab: Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Courtney Breese

NCDD is excited to announce a special Confab Call for folks using dialogue & deliberation pedagogy in Higher Education:

Planning D&D Pedagogy in an Uncertain Fall
Using this as a time to collaborate, discover, and create shared resources

This free event takes place Thursday, July 30th from 1:00-3:00 PM Eastern/10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific. All who are working with students using dialogue & deliberation are welcome to join. Register today to secure your spot and complete a survey that will help us shape the session to respond to needs!

The upcoming fall semester is full of uncertainties. Even if there will be in-person instruction, it seems for many in Higher Education that online components will be a significant part of courses. For those who teach dialogue and deliberation to students, this presents some challenges. How can we do this work with students smoothly in a hybrid or fully online format?

The special NCDD Confab Call is intended to help Higher Ed folks – faculty and student affairs staff working with dialogue & deliberation pedagogy – share and explore together resources for transitioning to a predominantly online format in the fall (and perhaps beyond). On the call, participants will share resources they have been using, as well as talk about what the kinds of resources are needed to assist in this new format. NCDD hopes to utilize this event to help boost collaborative efforts and identify many resources, tools, and approaches that can be cataloged as a resource for everyone going forward.

If you have developed lessons, or tools, or have experience with student dialogues in an online format, join us and share! If you are still figuring out what you will do, bring your questions and needs to the discussion! This Confab is all about working together to make everyone’s work easier, as well as to help show just how connected and vibrant this field is and reinvigorate D&D studies in Higher Ed. We’ll share and explore perhaps what still needs creating for the fall and beyond.

Unable to join us? Fill out the brief survey we have created so we can learn more about your needs and offerings.

Don’t miss this collaborative event – register today!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls

Confab bubble image NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Confabs are free and open to all. Register today if you’d like to join us!

Shelley: England in 1819

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Peter

England in 1819

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

This is one sentence. Minus the adjectives and adjectival phrases, it says: “A king, princes, rulers, people, army, laws, religion, and senate are graves from which a phantom may burst to illumine our day.” (It’s interesting that one phantom will arise from all these separate graves.)

The “king” is George III, suffering by now from advanced dementia. He has seven surviving sons, which would be the narrowest definition of “princes.” But Shelley could mean a broader category–“princes” in the sense of the crowned heads of Europe. They are back on their thrones after Waterloo, erecting a system of reactionary absolutism that will last until 1830.

“Rulers” would mean the whole government, starting with the Prime Minister, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, who suspended civil liberties from 1817-19. The “people” are suffering from the Corn Laws (which prohibit importation of grain) and early industrialization. The “army” refers to the cavalry who charged a peaceful demonstration for parliamentary reform (the Peterloo massacre of August 16). The “senate” is parliament, although I don’t quite follow how that noun relates to “Time’s worst statute.” And the “Phantom” is something like liberty.

The situation is bad but unsustainable. The rulers may be evil, but they “drop, blind in blood, without a blow.” The army wields a two-edged sword, liable to slice its own bearer. The people, however, seem passive: they think and do nothing in particular but are “starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field.” The Phantom may (or may not) burst forth; it’s not clear that the people can decide that.

The poem is a sonnet: fourteen 10-syllable lines, rhymed, with a final couplet that answers the question posed by the rest of the poem: What will happen? However, the form is not strictly conventional. Shelley uses just four endings (-ing, -ow, -ield, and -ay) in an ABABAB CDCD CC scheme.

Christopher Spaide says that the poem was too radical to publish in 1819. By the time Mary Shelley included it in Shelley’s posthumous Poetical Works (1839), she thought it needed an explanation, since the “younger generation … cannot remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were regarded some few years ago.” In other words, the sonnet went from revolutionary to quaint in 20 years–not because an actual revolution ensued in Britain, but because the political situation mellowed as reforms eased the crises of the day. No Phantom burst, but the laws arguably became less sanguine and the people less likely to be starved and stabbed.

Interview with Joan Blades of Living Room Conversations

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Isabella Guzman

This story about Living Room Conversations, a longstanding NCDD friend and member organization, articulates the vision and relevance of gathering with others to practice communication in spite of differences. In 2010, Joan Blades in collaboration with friends from different political identities, created Living Room Conversations when they noticed the increasing difficulties in communicating with people across political divides. Living Room Conversations provides an important practice space where people can meet and discuss issues that matter greatly to communities across America. These online gatherings allow, respect, and celebrate the diversity of viewpoints which are as varied as topics and participation.

The entire interview can be read below and you can find the original posting on the Gratefulness site here.

Grateful Changemakers: Living Room Conversations

Living Room Conversations envisions a world where people who have fundamental differences of opinion and backgrounds learn to work together with respect and even joy. The non-profit’s open-source conversation model — developed by dialogue experts — provides an accessible structure for engaging in meaningful, civil conversation — anywhere in the world, even virtually — with those who may have different viewpoints. Anyone is welcome to use Living Room Conversation’s free resources, which can be adapted to address the needs of any community working to bridge divides. Co-founder Joan Blades (who also co-founded moveon.org) shares more about how Living Room Conversations build relationships that support collaborative problem-solving and generate compassion.

What sparked the creation of Living Room Conversations?

In 2004, I wanted to understand why conservative people saw things so differently than I did. This required intentional effort to spend time with people that have very different views. I made friends and learned a lot, but by 2010 it was actually harder to have a good conversation about the climate with a conservative than it was in 2005. This inspired me to work with dialogue experts to design a simple and small conversation format that is massively reproducible, and so I co-founded Living Room Conversations with a conservative and independent friend.

How does Living Room Conversations fill a need for our society?

We have teased ourselves apart so that we primarily spend time with and talk to like-minded people. This is making it easier and easier to demonize good people who have different beliefs than we do. Living Room Conversations invite us to reach out and get to know people who have different views than we do. The conversations allow us to deepen our own understanding as well as deepen relationships with friends and family. They improve our listening and connection skills. We have over 100 conversation guides based upon the current interests and needs of our users. The upcoming presidential election has inspired conversations about how we want to contribute to the political conversation.

A few years ago I began to describe this work as domestic peacebuilding. Terrible things can happen when we demonize people. Everybody I know from across the political spectrum wants good things for their community, their family, and the world. This is an important starting place. To address the big challenges we face, we need everyone’s best ideas and the capacity to work together.

What do you think inspires people to participate in Living Room Conversations?

Sometimes the motivation is an invitation to join a friend. Sometimes it is curiosity about a particular topic. Or the opportunity to get to know new people. Faith communities, libraries, and other groups offer Living Room Conversations to their members to deepen ties and also invite in missing voices. We have over 100 conversation guides on different topics, and the reasons for participating are as numerous as our many guides! As polarization has escalated in the U.S., more and more people no longer want to talk to “those people,” while there are others who are recognizing the deep dysfunction of dismissing entire segments of our population. And now with the coronavirus, there are people looking for meaningful connections at a time when they are feeling cut off from their normal social connections.

How does Living Room Conversations bring gratitude to life?

I’m grateful for the wonderful people I meet and the friends that join me. I’m grateful for increased understanding and sometimes increased confusion because I better understand the complexity of a challenge. I think everyone gets something different out of the conversations, but my experience may be a good sense of how this practice enriches our lives.

How does Living Room Conversations help cultivate qualities like awareness, appreciation, and compassion?

Living Room Conversations are a listening practice. Listening fully to others is generous and fulfilling. Awareness, appreciation, and compassion flow naturally out of the human connection that is nurtured. Conversations about forgiveness, hope, status and privilege, finding meaning, and many others offer space for self-reflection and more intentional living.

What are some of the common barriers, obstacles, and fears that arise for participants? How are they navigated?

Many people feel like they don’t have the time for a 90-minute or hour conversation. I think one of the reasons our model has been embraced in faith communities is that this practice speaks to our desire to be the best version of ourselves, which is what I think we seek in faith communities. Also some people are anxious about conversation with people who hold different views. It is easy to choose a conversation topic that is reflective, such as Forgiveness, rather than one that is focused on a controversial topic, such as Guns and Responsibility.

What has been the impact of the project thus far?

We have some sense of the impact but not nearly as much as we would like because our model is open-source, and we often don’t hear about outcomes. Fortunately there has been some research that has revealed evidence of immediate and longer-term impacts:

Immediate – improved mindset, listening skills
Immediate – learned something new every time
Longer-term – application of tools to other parts of life
Longer-term – interest in systemic change spurred by mutual understanding and “humanizing the other”

How does Living Room Conversations plan to grow/move forward?

We are working to support individuals and communities around the country in their use of Living Room Conversations. Also, we have wonderful partners. We know that the conversations have been used around the world, but our focus is the U.S. because this is where we have maximum cultural competence, which is key for this kind of work. These conversation guides are free to all that want to use them, and no fancy event or skilled facilitator is typically needed. We hope that massive numbers of people will choose to have Living Room Conversations and help create the kind of community we all want to live in.

In this particular time of transformation, Living Room Conversations have adjusted course to adapt to new needs — to help our in-person communities transition to video and enable people who are feeling isolated to connect in meaningful conversations. Our Minnesota leaders were having conversations about Covid-19, and now they are using our Race in the Time of Corona and Police and Community Relations conversations guides as well as writing new conversation guides to meet the needs in their community. These conversation guides are available for communities anywhere.

I dream of this work creating culture change — a world in which respect and dignity for all people is the norm. And even though we have not yet achieved this big vision, each conversation is beautiful and enlightening on its own. I am incredibly grateful to be able to work on this!

If you could share one message about gratefulness with the world, what would it be?

This world is amazingly beautiful. And the people I meet want good things for their communities and future generations. This gives me hope that we can do what we need to do if we can discover each other. I am grateful for this. If you too dream of a world in which respect and dignity for all people is the norm, please help us share this practice in whatever way you see it may serve this purpose.

You can find the original version of this interview on the Gratefulness site at gratefulness.org/grateful-news/grateful-changemakers-living-room-conversations/.

there has been no decrease in toleration of differences

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Peter

The Harper’s Letter decries “A new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.”

If the Letter is reasonable at all, such claims must be testable. I think that someone who fully endorses the Letter should hypothesize that Americans have–for better or worse–grown less likely to tolerate hateful speech, such as explicit expressions of anti-Black racism.

Have they? Since 1976, the General Social Survey has asked Americans whether someone should be allowed to give an anti-Black racist speech in their community. There is no significant change in responses to this item. It is true that the lowest rate was measured in the most recent year: 2018. But the difference between 2018 and the average year was within the margin of error (+/- 2.6 points), and the line has long wobbled around the mean.

Maybe the left has forgotten about the First Amendment? Here is the trend for people who identify on the left end (1 or 2) of a 7-point ideology scale:

Liberals (as the survey names this group) have been a bit more likely than the population as a whole to think that a racist speech should be allowed (mean = 67.6% vs 61.3% for the whole sample). The only reason this second line wiggles more than the first is that the sample is smaller. The trend is again essentially flat.

Or perhaps it is “the young” who have forgotten the First Amendment?

Maybe, to a limited extent. The third graph shows the trend for people who were 18-29 at the time of each survey. There has not been much change since 1982, but the 2018 result is well below the 1976 number.

By the way, I am not sure that I believe a racist speech should be allowed in my community. The First Amendment applies–there should be no state censorship–but if my “community” is something like my school, religious congregation, university, or town council, I’m against a sanctioned, formal speech “claiming that Blacks are inferior” (which is how the GSS phrases the question).

The GSS has also asked about other forms of speech or speakers: a speaker who is gay, a speech advocating military dictatorship in the USA, a communist speaker, or a Muslim clergyman preaching hatred of the USA.

Generally, the trends are up. I find it troubling that ten percent still don’t want to permit a person who is gay to speak in their community. I also find the level of tolerance for the Muslim clergy-person worrying, although the question is worded in a particular way that’s arguably Islamaphobic itself. But overall, the trend is that more people would tolerate more differences.

Of course, another trend is taking place–albeit harder to quantify. Nowadays, an incident that reinforces the beliefs or concerns of a given group can easily “go viral.” Given our tendency to confirmation bias, we can select and share news items that confirm almost any belief. Incidents that are widely shared represent severe selection bias. I have read about true stories of problematic (or even scandalous) intolerance on the left. I see no evidence that these stories are common or becoming more so. Absent empirical evidence, can we avoid making sweeping empirical claims?

EvDem Joins Virtual Conference on Jail Reform and Equity

Posted on July 13, 2020 by Isabella Guzman

This story is shared by Everyday Democracy an NCDD member organization, who participated in a nationwide virtual conference on the criminal justice system. The conference was hosted by The Safety and Justice Challenge and gave way for in-depth exploration at educational, networking, and dialogic solutions to the criminal system, and specifically jail reform. EvDem has been providing community engagement technical assistance to the Safety and Justice Challenge since 2018 and was honored to moderate an exchange session at the virtual convening. In the session, EvDem shared the progress achieved in two jurisdictions where their dialogue to change approach is being implemented.

Read more about the overview of the convening and watch EvDem’s session in our post below, you can also find the original posting on the EvDem site here.

Equity in Criminal Justice and Strengthening Community Trust Through Dialogue to Action

The Safety and Justice Challenge supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has been working with leaders across the country to tackle one of the greatest drivers of over-incarceration in America – the misuse and overuse of jails. Since January 2018, Everyday Democracy has been providing community engagement technical assistance to the Safety and Justice Challenge network and has helped specific jurisdictions adopt and implement racial equity-driven community engagement practices.

Everyday Democracy has focused its efforts in five geographical areas: Cook County, IL; Charleston, SC; Palm Beach County FL; Pima County AZ; and Spokane WA.

A Nationwide “VIRTUAL” Networking Conference Brings Social Justice Advocates Together for Next Steps in Meaningful and Sustainable Change in Justice System Inequities. From May 19 – May 21, social justice advocates from coast to coast gathered “virtually” for a three-day deep dive education and networking convening designed to bring people together to share challenges, talk about the roles in the system in the COVID-19 environment, build collective capacity and inspire and motivate those who are tirelessly doing what is needed for equitable changes in jail reform and the criminal justice system.

The days were filled with a wide range of plenary sessions, workshops, networking opportunities and the collection of a plethora of resources that can be accessed on an ongoing basis. Everyday Democracy moderated an exchange session that provided an overview of the progress made in two communities, Cook County, IL and Charleston, SC using its dialogue to change approach and the resulting action forums that are driving change in those jurisdictions. Everyday Democracy Co-moderators Carolyne Abdullah, Senior Director, and Gwendolyn Whiting, Director of Training and Leadership Development facilitated the exchange where each site could share their dialogue to change and community engagement experiences and outcomes.

From the greater Chicago community in Cook County, community engagement coordinator, Kim Davis-Ambrose spoke of their challenges and successes. She explained how the dialogues allowed those voices of the community who have not been heard on this critical issue to be heard in an “up close and personal” way and how issues of trust between the community and system actors improved over the course of the 5-week dialogue project. She shared that the dialogues were not a fix, but the transparency they offered resulted in authentic partnerships between those in government, the community and with system-impacted individuals with lived experience. Going forward, those who participated in the dialogues aim to continue to work on issues of systemic racism, white privilege and unjust bias, and they will work toward creating more opportunities for the community to stay involved and to address the mental health issues, concerns and challenges faced by those most impacted.

Kristy Pierce Danford who led the efforts in Charleston County, SC stressed the importance that their objective was to go beyond speaking engagements and that the Dialogue to Change process allowed for that. They aimed to raise awareness of the inequities in their criminal justice systems by using a step-by-step implementation approach. They held big events which led into facilitator training and roundtable dialogues – then community surveys to community actions forums. The continuum of activities and feedback received from representatives throughout their community informed their 3-year strategic plan.

Many of the other sessions at the virtual networking conference were eye opening and informative. Some of the many topics included: The Role of People with Lived Experience in Efforts to Reduce Jail Populations; System Responses to COVID-19; Addressing Racial and Ethnic Disparities; A Toolkit on the Use of Person First Language When Discussing Directly Impacted People; Access to Counsel at First Appearance; Reducing Court Continuances and Performance Data.

As the Convening sessions were nearing completion, Gwendolyn Whiting noted that inequities, particularly for black and brown people was the thread throughout. Racial equity is at the core of the reform needed, and she challenges everyone to work toward eliminating the structural racism that stands in the way of a truly equitable and fair system for all, and especially those who are most impacted.

Keith Smalls participated in the Everyday Democracy workshop and is participating in the Charleston Dialogue to Change efforts. Keith said that is all about building community trust. After having served 19 years in the Dept. of Corrections, he stated that the punishment outweighed the rehabilitation. But he is grateful for the opportunity to mend broken fences in this dialogue process. “Being part of the conversation, enabled me to apologize to the community and build a bridge back. It also created the opportunity for me to come back as a concerned citizen.”

It is rewarding for all when there are opportunities for people, institutions, and government to work together for the common good. Outcomes in both Cook County and Charleston, as well as in other jurisdictions active in the Safety & Justice Challenge are showing that when we authentically engage with each other through productive dialogues and work together, we can see changes in policy and system reforms are starting to make a difference. The technical support for these jurisdictions were by Gwen Wright in Cook County and Gwen along with Alex Cartagena in Charleston, both who are network consultants for Everyday Democracy.

While there is much more to do, the needle is moving in the right direction. In the closing plenary session of this nationwide Convening, participants were encouraged to remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” All are encouraged to reimagine, reconstruct, recalibrate, and re-envision a criminal justice system the whole community can benefit from.

You can find the original version of this announcement on the Everyday Democracy site at www.everyday-democracy.org/news/equity-criminal-justice-and-strengthening-community-trust-through-dialogue-action.

Black Commons, Community Land Trusts, and Reparations

Posted on July 10, 2020 by David Bollier

African Americans have long been victimized by the theft of their land, labor, and the ability to buy land as they wish. Following the Civil War, few former slaves actually received the 40 acres and a mule promised them, and in later decades, all sorts of discriminatory federal policies and bank lending practices made it harder for Blacks and other non-Whites to acquire land. This only served to make it harder for them to earn a decent income, amass household wealth, and improve their lot.

Following the Black Lives Matters protests there have been a spate of important proposals for addressing these forms of structural racism and inequality. One idea gaining momentum is to move more land into community land trusts (CLTs), making it easier for African Americans to gain access to land for farming, housing, and other purposes while neutralizing capitalism’s tendency to generate greater structural inequality.

Shirley Sherrod, cofounder of New Communities Farm land trust, near Albany, Georgia

Acquiring more land for CLTs dedicated to African-American cultural use would be a great way to address a colossal historic wrong. It would serve as a practical and effective reparation that would benefit many African Americans and communities, and could at the same time reclaim land for ecological and socially valuable purposes.

Theft of Black land has been remarkably common over the decades, as a number of journalistic accounts have documented in recent years. In 2019, for example, Pro Publica and The New Yorker described how white developers and lawyers used legal trickery and corrupt judges to take over ancestral land owned by two Black brothers in Carteret County, North Carolina. The practices have been widely used in the South as a way to steal land from African Americans.

Between outright bans on black ownership of land, discriminatory lending policies, racially motivated zoning, and legal ploys to steal land, African Americans have often had trouble acquiring land and thereby the wealth that could bring them into the middle class. It is estimated that between 1910 and 1997, African Americans lost an estimated 90 percent of their farmland.

Professors Julian Agyeman of Tufts University and Kofi Boone of North Carolina State University recently noted that “land loss has plagued black America since emancipation.” They suggested that it is time to look again at ‘black commons’ and collective ownership as a solution.

In a piece on The Conversation website, they cite a study showing “a 98% decline in black farmers between 1920 and 1997,” which contrasts sharply with “an increase in acres owned by white farmers over the same period. In a 1998 report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and ‘well-documented’ history of discrimination against black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA discriminatory practices dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.”

What might be done to reverse this injustice that has caused a cascade of harm to African Americans for generations?

Agyeman and Boone call attention to collective ownership of land as a historic vehicle for Black emancipation and progress. For example, they note the cooperatively run “Freedom Farms” that civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer established on 40 acres of prime Mississippi Delta land in the mid-1960s. Her idea was to enable former sharecroppers and poor Black farmers to become independent of local white landowners and their political power.

The current issue of Harper’s magazine has a wonderful piece, “We Shall Not Be Moved,” by Audrea Lim, which describes another civil rights experiment – community land trusts – that has helped Black farmers take charge of their lives.

In 1969, Shirley and Charles Sherrod other civil rights activists – including Bob Swann, founder of the Schumacher Center – came together to create one of the first community land trusts, New Communities Farm, near Albany Georgia. While the project eventually went under – a victim of a severe drought and discriminatory USDA finance practices – the venture was the beginning of a much larger CLT movement that has grown and flourished since then, thanks in part to the fierce advocacy of Bob Swann.

The Schumacher Center for a New Economics has seen CLTs as a powerful tool for addressing inequities in wealth in general and for African Americans in particular. In a 2018 proposal, the Schumacher Center suggested that a Black-led CLT could be used as “a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a Black Commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low cost access for Black Americans hitherto without such access. In short, creating one piece of a Black Reparations Movement.” (Read the full proposal here.)

As the proposal explains:

The community land trust is a tested and known entity for holding working lands in a commons while at the same time facilitating leaseholders ability to build equity in homes and other improvements on the land. Donors would be assured that their one-time donation of land would not again enter the market but would remain a permanent part of a Black Commons. Individual leaseholders could change, and buildings sold, but the land would continue to be held in the nonprofit structure dedicated to serving those disenfranchised by a history of discriminatory practices.

The concept of Black Commons has great appeal on a number of levels. It would serve as a fitting, effective vehicle of reparations. It would ratify a rich history of African American collective emancipation while embracing new forms of collective action and peer governance. One can, in fact, trace a direct line from Fannie Lou Hamer’s Freedom Farms and Black CLT farms to the traditions of Black credit unions and mutual aid funds, as described by Jessica Gordon Nembhard in her book Collective Courage.

The digital world of peer governance and provisioning is another space for such peer-support to flourish. Check out such Black commons as Urban Patch, a nonprofit that uses crowdfunding to build community spaces in the inner city of Indianapolis and foster economic development; and the Movement for Black Lives, as cited by Professors Agyeman and Boone.

The time is ripe to explore and develop these new sorts of commons, which can open the door for new types of social collaboration and solidarity in fighting racism and building flexible yet strong post-capitalist institutions.

the Harper’s letter is fatally vague

Posted on July 10, 2020 by Peter

This is the text of the letter that is working as a national Rorschach Test, appearing self-evident and overdue to some, offensive to others.

It is remarkably and intentionally vague. Trends are described, but without any data, timeframes, or evidence. For instance, “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments” is “weaken[ening] our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” Is that true? Which moral attitudes? Are they new (since when)? What is the degree to which disagreements are tolerated today? How does that vary by institution and community? How has it changed?

No proper names are used, but specific cases are surely being alluded to. For instance, “a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study.” That must be David Shor, fired from Civis Analytics for tweeting a summary of research by Omar Wasow. That sounded like an injustice to me and a way of blocking an important topic, but does it generalize? Why exactly did it happen? (I am guessing it was a business judgment, which doesn’t make it fair but does suggest that it wouldn’t happen in many other organizations.) Are there other cases like it?

“Journalists are barred from writing on certain topics.” That has happened since the dawn of journalism: reporters constantly negotiate their story ideas with editors. I presume the concern is about journalists who want to write on topics uncomfortable to the left, but that isn’t specified. How common are such cases? After all, a vast amount of journalism is uncomfortable–if not downright hostile–to the left.

The vagueness is fatal because the issues at stake are complex and subtle. I think all these points are valid but in tension:

It pays to wrestle constantly with diverse and conflicting ideas. That keeps you sharp, tough-minded, and creative.
Social movements are often essential to positive change. They work to create unity because it’s an asset for them (along with worthiness, numbers, and commitment–Charles Tilly’s WUNC acronym). They therefore tend to discourage internal disagreement.
It is much harder to face an open discussion if you are the topic of it. If people are talking about why you are socially disadvantaged, that can be (at best) deeply uncomfortable. Oppressed people are usually familiar with a wide range of opinions, including ones that are explicitly hostile to them. They may need a break rather than more exposure to challenging opinions.
Regardless of their social position, people tend to prefer ideas that confirm their own prior beliefs and avoid or minimize conflicting beliefs in ways that distort their thinking.
Strongly criticizing people is an act of free speech. Preventing or decrying strong criticism is not a way of supporting free speech.
Being criticized can have tangible costs, including losing your job.
Marginalizing odious views can be an appropriate way for communities to uphold norms. All decent communities marginalize some opinions.
We navigate a world of massively disaggregated media by making constant individual choices about what to read, watch, and share. Much more of our speech is now visible, searchable, and sharable compared to pre-Internet days. What is odious in one space is an assumed truth in another. Anyone can be perceived as an outlier and a threat somewhere.
Impartiality is a worthy goal for some people, such as public school teachers and editorial-page editors. Impartiality is not an empty concept, as you can tell by actually trying to act impartially.
No institution is a free-speech zone, because it must decide whom to admit, hire, promote, publish, reward, etc. These are inevitably value-judgments and they cannot and should not be content-neutral.

If we interpret the Harper’s letter charitably, it’s saying that people are forgetting #1 because they are only concerned about #2 and #3. I’m sure this is the case for some people, but how many? Is there any basis for thinking that “censoriousness is … spreading more widely in our culture”? In my experience, a lot of people actually see merit in many of the ten points listed above and struggle to find the right balance.

If the question is whether the government should censor speech, the answer should almost always be no. That case is worth defending and propagating. I would welcome a letter from diverse and distinguished thinkers that made the positive case for intellectual diversity and individual rights against the state.

If the question is whether you should join with other people on Twitter to criticize an individual in strong terms for saying something, that’s a much more complicated matter. It’s highly context-specific. It may depend how bad you think the targeted opinion was, how many other people have already piled on, and what consequences you expect to follow from the critique. If, for example, the target is the President of the United States, go for it. If it’s an untenured professor whose claim was subtly problematic, maybe you should back off. Your criticism is itself protected by the First Amendment, but that doesn’t mean it is justified or helpful–or effective.

I have no more right to generalize than the authors of the Harper’s letter, but if I dared to describe the American left in broad strokes, I would begin by observing that a lot of people are wrestling with versions of the ten points above and trying to land in the right place. Any given controversy provokes diverse and often conflicted reactions.

People are more aware of #3 (the negative impact of a diverse debate on the people being discussed) than they were in the ’60s or the ’80s, presumably because of the growing diversity of our population and leaders. We should be concerned about #3, but it doesn’t erase the importance of robust debate or the need to counter confirmation bias. A balance is required.

All of this is playing out in a very problematic institutional context. Twitter allows just a few words and makes it easy to amplify an attack without even reading the original text. Most professors hold precarious (non-tenured) jobs that can vanish if they become targets of controversy. More than half of reporters have been laid off, creating a massive shortage of paid positions for journalists and an unprecedented concentration of those jobs in a few newsrooms. Malicious actors love to stir the pot.

It would be hard to navigate this context even if we all radiated wisdom and beneficence. Considering that everyone is fallible and biased–and some of us are actually Russian bots–I would like to celebrate the many among us who are doing their best.

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Monthly Archives: July 2020