Stage 8: Commentary Response #2

I am not in favor of my colleagues ideas about the usefulness of law enforcement having cameras nor individuals paying for their own (legal difficulties in using a privately owned camera on the job?). I would rather have the enormous costs of cameras go towards 1) their salaries and 2) massive overhaul of "use of force" policies 3) nationwide training in deescalation. The problem isn't evidence, the problem is police and citizens fearing one and other. 

 We've had enough filmed deaths and altercations to prove that the presence of cameras doesn't stop cops from whipping guns out in excess. In states that have started using either body or dash cams there have been instances of police turning off or readjusting cams before they go forward with questionably scandalous interactions with citizens. Tapes can also be detained even while going through investigations. In the video of Sandra Bland's arrest, the video had been edited to loop despite the officers audio continuing. Even while being filmed police can be caught doing legally questionable acts and it takes public outrage for it to be called into question. Think about the officer who became a viral meme during the Occupy Wallstreet protests. After he point blank sprayed pepper spray into the eyes of a row of peaceful protesters, not an uncommon occurrence, he was held accountable by the outrage of the nation. Initially he was being considered for a paid leave of absence until the storm passed, but as the storm raged on he was sacked while being awarded with $38k in workers compensation for the psychological damage of becoming an internet joke. This was a rarely exhibited transparent case of how the judicial system gives law enforcement the benefit of the doubt even in cases of excessive force. 

While I don't want to discount the real danger that officers face, it is imperative to include the fear people also face when dealing with an entity that has a robust history of excessive force especially against non-white peoples. Consider the findings of this UC Davis study, 

“evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.”**

and from Washington Post data,

 “when factoring in threat level, black Americans who are fatally shot by police are, in fact, less likely to be posing an imminent lethal threat to the officers at the moment they are killed than white Americans fatally shot by police.”**

These statistics point to deeper roots that cause distrust between law enforcement and the public, and it isn't a lack of communication that can be solved with greater transparency.  

As far as government is concerned, it concerns me the lack of leadership supporting stricter regulations on law enforcement misconduct and use of force. At the same time it doesn't surprise me because law enforcement is so closely linked with gun regulations and no one wants the NRA against them. Why not push for deescalation training? I believe it empowers and validates the complaints of brown and black communities as well as young liberals, groups not desirable to the majority Republican party. Government has a tradition of giving great trust to law enforcement, but I believe their tactics need to be reviewed for accountability nationwide. 

( **http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/data-police-racial-bias )

Blog 7 Commentary

Many Americans have a people problem. A shoot first ask questions last kind of problem. Trump’s campaign, border politics, ICE raids in sanctuary cities, and an attempt at a Muslim-centric travel ban, have created a national narrative that focuses attention on race relations in a manner that only favors white Americans. Politicians should make connections to the fact that heightened racial profiling and distrust of immigrants eventually leads to more violence.

We know a shift towards aggressive immigration and religious profiling can lead to catastrophic consequences. This is especially pertinent for a country with the largest military in the world, the highest incarceration rate, lenient gun control, and its short history as a nation consistently underwritten by slavery and intense racial violence including genocide.

In this opinion article**, Stark Trek star George Takei talks about his childhood in 1942 on a japanese internment camp in California. He writes,

“It didn't matter, back then, that most of us were US citizens and had never even been to Japan. We were presumed guilty, and held without charge for four years, simply because we happened to look like the people who had bombed Pearl Harbor. For that crime, we lost our homes, our livelihoods and our freedoms.”

This article notes that when Trump was asked how he would have responded to Pearl Harbor, if he would have used interment camps he said he wasn't sure and he would have had to have been there. Even though it was never proved that anyone from the internment camps could be linked to pearl harbor, he would still have to think about it. This should come as a huge concern coming from the man who is in favor of a national muslim-registration.

Generation after generation of American history see’s political “othering” lead to problems. Fear and loss of control are currently producing national policy without the examination of their origin or rationality. It is imperative for our progress as a nation that politicians are proponents of racial inclusion.



** - http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/18/opinions/george-takei-japanese-american-internment-day-of-remembrance/index.html

Pee for Proof

I want to address some logistical and moral issues I have with my colleagues Paige's editorial in favor of drug testing well fare recipients.

I want to start off by citing some results from states that have implemented drug testing for applicants. In the first year Missouri initiated drug testing they spent +$336k on tests and found 48 non-compliers. Over two years, Oklahoma spent +$385k and found 297 non-compliers. In Utah, the cost of testing was +$64k and they had 29 positive results. That's less than 1% non-compliers in all three states. Best case scenario, for the continued implementation of this initiative is that it scares people into clean testing, but how can that be quantified? Where is the proof that it was effective what-so-ever. The positive drug result rates for these applicants was even lower than the national average rates for positive drug tests. (1)

However, my real issue with the drug testing welfare recipients is the stigmatization. Let me draw a totally hypothetical situation that would never happen, with a different subset of people. From the national budget, education and medicare/health are roughly funded equally. Imagine you wanted to make cuts from that the education budget and proposed weeding out students who weren’t serious about their education from accessing pell grants. It would be massively expensive to weed through all college students so maybe you focused on community colleges, since four year universities typically have an academically higher performing population. You’re going to target community college students and require them to take a drug test to prove they are deserving of public assistance. Weed out the ones that could be taking advantage of the very expensive pell grants.

What requiring that proof by drug test is going to do is 1) be massively expensive to enforce 2) promote feelings of distrust between students and the institution 3) create a culture of shame for even being a student at a community college and needing financial aid which in turn 4) discourages people from utilizing those resources (how effective is not helping people with a problem?), and 5) disadvantage students who use weed, which, let’s be real, is similarly as low-risk as alcohol. Of course this would never happen. It’s shameful to stigmatize students, but what about stigmatizing welfare participants?

When talking about welfare budgets and recipients it’s important to know the whole figures. The budget for welfare programs encapsulates programs we don’t commonly consider such as social security, WIC, temporary unemployment, and the earned income credit (EOC) (the refund that goes to anyone making between less than $13k - $44k per year depending on your status, that’s a lot of folks.) Usually when opponents refer to welfare recipients they’re referring to food stamps and temporary assistance for needy families (TANF), and it is common that they are referring to those people in a negative, undeserving context. They see someone buying a cake and soda with their food stamps and suddenly that persons birthday supplies have become a public matter. Where is the outrage at politicians? At 3 million federal dollars being spent each weekend Trump spends at his resort in Florida instead of the white house? At $300 million dollars from the federal budget going to protect Melania Trump each year she lives at Trump Tower? Abuse of federal money happens at every level, why is the discourse focused on the poor and not on the people that control tax dollars?

1. https://thinkprogress.org/what-7-states-discovered-after-spending-more-than-1-million-drug-testing-welfare-recipients-c346e0b4305d

Blog Stage 5 - Who's afraid of the locker room?

The new monster is in the locker room. No, it’s not Donald Trump’s locker room talk about unwanted sexual advances, and no, it’s not your own insecurity (or is it?). It’s the other people - trying to discreetly change without anyone noticing them or feeling shamed (so wait, is that you?). There has a been a wild new rash of anti-LGBTQ bills in states, in particular public discourse on sharing spaces with those that identify as transgendered. As the issue of trans-bodies is being contested in court rooms, the community is hitting legal pratfalls. There are no precedents of courts establishing them as a protected class, making them vulnerable to fundamentalist push-back.

Republican backlash aimed at critiquing social customs around LGBTQ acceptance could be possibly out of moral outrage, possibly in order to appear Republican-Bonafide to the socially conservative electorate. Whichever the case, scenarios are frighteningly scared up on podiums of deviant monsters lurking in locker rooms and bathrooms when crimes committed against transgender people happen at higher instances than the people propenents wish to shield. For instance, in 2015 it was reported that of TGQN (transgender, genderqueer, nonconforming) college students 21% had been sexually assaulted. That rate was 3% higher than gender conforming females. (1) The trans community experiences homicide rates far disproportionate to their population size. 2016 saw the highest homicide rates recorded at 24, just surpassing 2015, though likely more deaths go unrecorded. (2) Despite the majority of those targeted being transwomen of color, none of the cases in 2015 were able to be tried as hate crimes. (3) Trans-WOC are the most vulnerable in the subset due to their placement in the triad of racism, sexism, and transphobia. Key problems for the community as a whole are job discrimination and extreme poverty. Considering the difficulties it takes for a trans person to exist in our society, it begs the question of why this decade has seen a recent flurry of bills nationwide targeting LGBTQ rights and why the supreme court won’t make a precedent towards protecting them under the 14th amendment.

The court cases Romer V. Evans and Howe, et al. v. Haslam are good examples for teasing out where the courts stand on gender-identity and sexual identification. In Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado’s anti-LGBTQ legislation on the basis that LGBT was not exactly a recognized class to be discriminated against (because who’s ever heard of homosexuals being singled out and discriminated?). Gender and sexual identification are scrutinized under the equal protection clause by “rational basis”,  meaning there aren’t precedents guaranteeing them protection as a group. In contrast, race, religion, and sex have more protections in place and are highly scrutinized over in court. The ruling that LGBTQ identifiers aren’t a defined class has lead to many politicians taking advantage of the ambiguity to short-circuit statewide anti-LGBT laws. The first to successfully piggy-back off Colorado was 2011’s Howe, et al. v. Haslam in Tennessee, where the state was able to pass “anti-anti-discrimination" laws. It was particularly in regards to protecting private businesses right to refuse services to gay couples. Thanks to the case in Colorado, they realized that they didn’t have to explicitly state their motive; making it more of a “freedom of choice” or a “you can be gay, but not on my face” issue.

The successful win in Tennessee spread to other states most notably in North Carolina and now Texas where strict bathroom and locker room stipulations are butting up against transgendered people in school and the workplace. The laws could potentially out them and infringe upon their own security for the benefit of others. While it is contested that the bill violates Title IX protecting against sexual discrimination, advocates state that it is sexual discrimination to force anyone to share bathrooms or changing rooms with someone who was born biologically different than them. (4)

Along with changing social values, legal battles like the anti-LGBTQ win in Tennessee and the Supreme Court win for gay marriage equality have lead to nationwide bills and discourse on how this unclassified group of people should be contained for the comfort of others. What right do other people have to know about such personal matters in ones life? Well that depends on whether you have the legal right to a personal life. The largely Republican body of politicians pushing the who’s-in your-pants?-agenda are protecting the interests of the socially conservative that elect them. Who is protecting the underrepresented transexual community? Not their constitution.

1. https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence
2. https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/11/2016-deadliest-year-record-transgender-americans/
3. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/13/transgender-homicide-victims-us-has-hit-historic-high
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/01/the-cunning-trick-in-north-carolinas-radical-new-anti-lgbt-law/?utm_term=.03e1920990f2

Blog Critique - Assignment 4

“Dear Apathy: You’ve Trumped us” is a short call to action (written 2/27/17) by musician Joshua Thomas, who has published three opinion articles with The Huffington Post. I believe the article's intended audience was for anyone, though probably not aimed at the elderly who vote and are more civically engaged.

The writer makes the claim that American's are more disengaged from one another than ever before which has lead to Trump’s election. Though American media consumption isn’t the sole reason for Trump’s election, he proposes that it is the most troubling.

He argues that private-life privatization happened with the advent of television and got worse with media moving more and more into the nooks and crannies of people’s lives. Thomas supports that claim with a study by Robert D. Putman in 1996 which showed a decline in civic engagement:

“from 1965 to 1985, membership in community groups such as the PTA, Red Cross, the Elks club, and labor unions was down by 50 percent. Surveys also showed collective political participation down in huge percentage points from the 1970s to the 1990s.”

While Thomas asserts that television is to blame for the initial slide away from communal engagement, it is unclear whether he means to say that this was Putmans conclusion as well. From this point, his argument sort of slides into liberal soap-boxing to pick up arms, get off the couch and into the street. A cute quote, “the time has come for us to begin looking at each other again and to throw the selfie out the door.”

I don’t disagree with his statements, but I don’t think that his call is particularly helpful or new. The post Trump liberal mediasphere is plastered with appeals for change with little detail or direction. Perhaps he could be more specific: how did this media saturated election not get consumers out to vote? Could he make a stronger link between online news consumption and level of civic engagement? Could he divulge into why we are staying in our bubble more? What is it he propose we do once we are in the street?

He argues that organized protests like the Womens March are unignorable and catalyze change. To throw aside online discussion, go out and revolt. While I agree that protests are great for morale, I believe the days of large protests influencing policy based on showup alone are over. Let’s recall a similar administration during the Iraq war. George Bush jr. blatantly stated he wouldn’t be affected by world wide protests, anger fell to the wayside, and the occupation lingered on.

At the Austin Women's march I saw thousands of people walking hand in phone, live-feeding their experience. I spent more time reading or watching coverage about the march than actually there. A great contribution to morale was that we all saw each other on our facebooks and televisions. I don’t see a future where the “revolution will not be televised”. I’m not arguing that civil disobedience isn’t working. I’m arguing for this musician to make more substantive pleas. Go deeper, including in critiques against society and what to be done about it. “Seize the means of production!” could make for a hit pop song right about now.

Original link- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dear-apathy-youve-trumped-us_us_58b4595ae4b02f3f81e44a77?8ads1ih8flayvi&

Blog Stage 3

Washington post- Opinion- If abortion rights fall, LGBT next.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-abortion-rights-fall-lgbt-rights-are-next/2017/02/22/7d976f5c-f479-11e6-b9c9-e83fce42fb61_story.html?utm_term=.739d3de5f38e

In the opinion post, “If Abortion Rights Fall, LGBT Rights are Next” the authors implore the “first they came for…” argument that Trump and his administration will attempt to fulfill campaign promises to undo abortion rights. Further, if successful, we could expect LGBT attacks through the same legal channels. They make their appeal to not only the LGBT community but anyone sympathetic to both interest groups.

It was submitted through the Washington Post by Nancy Northup who is the chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Rachel B. Tiven, the chief executive of Lambda Legal. They open the article stating that they represent organizations that have fought and won Supreme Court cases protecting LGBT and reproductive rights, specifically: Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 and Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt in 2016.

Trumps stance on both interest groups is well known. During Trump’s campaign he was blatant about his opposition to both the Obergefell result which secured equal rights for same-sex marriages, and promised to put a supreme court judge on the bench who would be pro-life. As the vetting for the new Supreme Court Justice looms near, he has adopted an ambiguous note on LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage. The authors propose that this is a tactic to cause derision among pro-life and LGBT proponents. They are pulling from an interesting interview of Trump on 60-minutes (short details found here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/11/14/trump-says-gay-marriage-is-settled-by-the-courts-but-not-abortion/?utm_term=.e3068a094329)

Where Trump is evasive about his opinions on the LGBT community and marriage equality, but gives a thumbs up to the potential for repealing Roe V. Wade. If we are to believe Vice President Pence’s word that the president and congress are in the “promise-keeping business” that should give immediate concern to not only pro-choice supporters, but LGBT community based on his previous stance and current stance of much of his cabinet.

The articles main logistical point is framed around the historical legacy of Supreme court decisions that upheld the “highly personal decisions about our family and personal lives — decisions central to our equal dignity and rights of conscience — [which] are for each of us, not the government, to decide.” They argue that abortion rights are wrapt up within the same protection guaranteed to LGBT members. If one is successfully limited, it will carve a legal foothold for its neighboring interest group.

I agree with the authors fear especially the ending argument that we need extreme vetting of the next supreme court justice. With every interest group afraid for it’s own interest, it may be easy to overlook the injustices being done elsewhere. We need a supreme court justice who will not be swayed by the mighty push of the controlling party.

Court Refuses to Reinstate Travel Ban, Dealing Trump Another Legal Loss

Trump's bid to reinstate his controversial travel ban has been struck down by a federal Appeals court.
Earlier this month Trump made an executive order banning travel into the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries. When a federal judge issued a halt on certain restrictions of his issue, Trump swiftly retaliated. The article delves into the aftermath of the review, and contention surrounding Trumps and the courts decisions.

The article outlines the decisions of the federal courts and the heated responses of the president. The court decided in a unanimous vote that the order "did not advance national security" as "...the administration had shown no evidence that anyone form the seven nations - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen - had committed terrorist acts in the United States." In an aside, the courts rebuked Trumps challenge that courts should have interfered in his executive issue stating that their involvement checking executive orders is imperative for our form of democracy. Opinions on both
sides are heatedly noted.

The articles goes into the account of consequences immediately following the ban as slews of people were suddenly barred entrance. The court is still deciding on certain details of the issue as well as larger implications. Notably, it is deferring the question of whether the ban is unconstitutional because of its target on a specific religious group. The court is still deciding if some restrictions should be implemented indefinitely, as well as considering the addition of more countries being added to the list.

This article highlights key contention between executive and judicial players at the highest level of our government. Despite a stay being placed on his order, I expect that the after effects of our president's actions will have lasting negative effects on our foreign policy. As the final verdict is still out on certain aspects, this could could go down as a first instance of Trump bullying other branches into agreement. If the spirit of anti-muslim/anti-brown people continues to infect the united states discourse and policy I think you could easily refer to this article as an account.