Democracy

Gerrymandering Critics Suffer Twin Blows at the Supreme Court (Governing)
The Texas case involves racial gerrymandering, while the North Carolina case deals with partisan gerrymandering -- something the justices have hinted is unconstitutional but have yet to rule against.

The latest sign of political divide: Shaming and shunning public officials (Washington Post)
Anger and division in American politics are creating a rising phenomenon: the public shaming and shunning of political figures while they are going about their private lives.

How we know journalism is good for democracy (Local News Lab)
According to new data being released later this month, at least 900 communities across the United States have faced profound erosion in their access to local news and information since 2004.

Opportunity/Inequality

The Minimum Wage Just Turned 80. Economists Don't Give It Enough Credit(Fortune)
At the deepest level, the minimum wage embodies justice. It speaks to the words of Martin Luther King Jr. that "all labor has dignity"-and so deserves a decent rate of pay..

'Squeezed' Explores Why America Is Getting Too Expensive For The Middle Class (NPR)
Author Alissa Quart writes that the costs of housing, child care, health care and college are outpacing salaries and threatening the livelihoods of middle class Americans.

An autopsy of the American dream (Vox)
Brill has been writing about class warfare in the US since 2011, and the picture he paints is as depressing as it is persuasive.

Engagement

Re-released, Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connection (PACE)
So much about our lives, communities, and social compact is being re-envisioned. Yet here, in the intersection of information, technology, engagement, and public life, are seeds of current American upheaval.

Civic engagement declines when local newspapers shut down (Journalist's Resource)
Studies have found that areas with fewer local news outlets and declining coverage also have lower levels of civic engagement and voter turnout.

Smart Cities 3.0: 5G, Edge Computing and Citizen Engagement(State Tech Magazine)
With advanced technology and careful planning, city governments can alleviate growing problems seen in many of today's urban communities and become more sustainable for future generations.

K-12

AmeriCorps 'volunteers' in Denver schools were district employees, investigation finds (Chalkbeat)
The AmeriCorps program in Denver Public Schools has been terminated after an investigation found the district broke rules by recruiting its own employees to serve as volunteers, according to a report released Wednesday.

New education budget threatens dozens of low-performing Detroit schools with closure - again (Chalkbeat)
Dozens of struggling Detroit schools could face closure once again after Gov. Rick Snyder signed an education budget on Thursday that seeks to stiffen consequences for low-scoring schools.

A $1 billion Gates Foundation-backed education initiative failed to help students, according to a new report - here's what happened (Business Insider)
A seven-year, nearly $1 billion education initiative centered on improving teaching quality in low-income schools - and bankrolled in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - largely failed to help students, according to a new report from nonprofit policy think tank RAND.

Higher Ed/Workforce

Vocational Programs Get Boost From Congress(Wall Street Journal)
Bill that provides incentives for technical training programs set to pass, in rare moment of bipartisan agreement.

Should America's Universities Stop Taking So Many International Students? (The Atlantic)
Critics say the country's higher-education institutions should focus on ensuring more Americans get four-year degrees, but college presidents highlight the benefits of global diversity on campus.

Health Care

Can Low-Intensity Care Solve High Health Care Costs? (The Upshot)
The shift toward cheaper settings like outpatient clinics and homes is a worthy goal, but new research is showing us where we shouldn't cut corners.

White House wants to cut this public health service corps by nearly 40 percent (Washington Post)
The White House is proposing to reduce by nearly 40 percent the uniformed public health professionals who deploy during disasters and disease outbreaks, monitor drug safety and provide health care in some of the nation's most remote and disadvantaged areas.

Fewer Americans are spending their final days in the hospital and more are dying at home(Los Angeles Times)
The American way of dying seems to have become less frantic, desperate and expensive. That's the upshot of a new study that finds that seniors insured by Medicare who died in 2015 were less likely to do so in a hospital and more likely to pass away in a home or other community setting than those who died in 2000.

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Four years ago, Matt Leighninger, Public Agenda's vice president of public engagement, wrote a paper called "Infogagement" for Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE). In the paper, Matt predicted that journalism, technology and civic engagement were on a collision course. It seems today we're witnessing that collision and its harmful effects on our democracy in the form of fake news, echo chamber groupthink, information overload, populist instability, the erosion of local journalism and the acceleration of society's trust crisis.

Last week, PACE, in partnership with Public Agenda, re-released this important paper which contains a new introduction from Matt and a series of commentaries from thought leaders across the fields of civic engagement, journalism, technology and philanthropy. How can we engage people constructively and productively in the digital age? What are the dangers we must overcome, and how can we do so?

The challenges are vast, but, as Matt notes, "... it isn't all bad news."

Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connection is a must-read for anyone who wants to explore the implications of digital information and communications for democracy.

John 8:3-11:

³ And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

The “scribes and Pharisees” arrive as an undifferentiated group. They act in concert. No names or adjectives distinguish them, but they share a social role as experts on the law and as men of writing.

The one person who stands out is the woman. She comes passively (presumably compelled). She is the sole female character and the only one who is never described in this passage as either reading or writing.

⁴ They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

The Gospels are written in the past tense, but here the Greek (like the English) is suddenly in the present: “they say.” I think the speakers are living completely in the present moment–so forcefully that it flows into the narration as an example of “implied indirect discourse.” The scribes’ and Pharisees’ mode is to ask what the abstract categories of the written law mean for what is to be done now. They don’t reflect on their pasts, nor on the woman’s future, for she has none in the minds.

⁵ Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

Here they invoke the written law, the commandment that comes to us from an author (notably, Moses rather than God) through his writing. The text is meant to determine our judgment, speech, and decision.

⁶ This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

They have set a trap for Jesus. He must either blatantly violate the rule of law or else abandon his message of love. If he does the former, they “might have to accuse him.” In their minds, this would not be a choice. It would be determined by the application of the law, which (again) is an artifact of writing.

So Jesus also writes. Since he stoops down, we cannot see the text that flows. Indeed, it might not be text: the Greek verb katagraphein is unusual (appearing just here in the whole New Testament). It can mean “to scratch,” so Jesus might be making a wordless shape in the dust. Euclid uses katagraphein 40 times in his Elements, as a verb for drawing shapes. It can also mean to “write against,” as in framing an indictment.

Jesus’ act is mysterious. He is literally in touch with the earth. His act is public in the sense that he performs katagraphein as his response to the scribes and Pharisees. It’s private in the sense that we cannot know what he writes; and probably they cannot either, since he “stoops down.”

⁷ So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

They keep asking him, he keeps writing, and then he stands to address them face-to-face (leaving his writing behind) and gives his famous verbal response: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”

⁸ And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

He then goes back down to the earth, to his private stance, and writes. This time the verb is graphein, the ordinary word for writing.

In these verses, the woman is invisible to us. She neither speaks nor writes nor acts.

⁹ And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

The scribes and Pharisees are no longer an undifferentiated group, acting in concert and in unison. Each has turned his own mind toward his own past. They exit one by one, making individual choices to break with the group. The one with the longest record of conscience, the eldest, is the first to break.

Now Jesus is alone, and the woman is “in the midst” (more literally, “being in the middle,” or “being in the center”). It’s just the two of them, quiet. Jesus is still stooped down and does not look at her.

¹⁰ When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

Now he makes eye-contact, as he did earlier with the scribes and the Pharisees, and he asks her what happened, although he must know it already. “Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?”

¹¹ She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

At last she speaks, addressing Jesus as her lord. He speaks in the first person, placing himself in the same position as the Scribes and Pharisees who have chosen individually not to accuse her. And he sends her away from the center, on her own.

Questions

What did Jesus write? There is obviously no way to know, but here are some possibilities: 1) He listed the sins of each of the scribes and Pharisees. 2) He noted his own judgment of the Woman, privately. 3) He described the specific situation concretely–in contrast to the abstractions of the categorical law. 4) He drew an abstract image.

Why can’t we know what he wrote?

Why did his act change the situation?

When does private–or public–writing liberate? What about the text of the Gospel of John?

See also: Sessions and the fate of Herod; the Gospels on two hot-button issues; and the prospects for an evangelical turn against Trump.