Whats the difference between Trump conservatism and Gainesville liberalism?

When he killed Obama-era fair housing rules, Donald Trump bragged that he did it so suburbanites wont be "bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built in your neighborhood."

But we Gainesville liberals arent comfortable demonizing the poor. So when we want to torpedo affordable housing, we call it a sneaky plot to benefit greedy developers.

That certainly took care of GNV Rise, a modest proposal to incentivize lower-cost housing construction in Gainesville that died in the face of nearly hysterical opposition from neighborhood associations.

That was in 2018, and virtually nothing has happened on the affordable housing front since.

But, listen, things are going to come to a head pretty quickly.

Call it the looming clash of the moratoria.

Theres a good chance the city will impose a development moratorium in an attempt to head off the spread of student housing into historic black neighborhoods like Fifth Avenue and Pleasant Street.

A time out period of, say, a year, would give the city time to engage in better neighborhood comprehensive planning, advocates say.

Maybe so. But another moratorium is going to be lifted a lot sooner than that the stay on evictions of people who have lost their jobs to the coronavirus crisis and can no longer pay their rent.

When that happens, homelessness is going to explode, both locally and nationally.

And "people of color" will be "especially vulnerable" to the coming eviction crisis, reports CNBC.

"We know evictions have always had a disproportionate impact on tenants of color due to discrimination and lack of wealth," John Pollock, of the National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel, told the network.

Weve been talk, talk, talking about Gainesvilles affordable housing shortage for years.

And the fall of GNV Rise is a textbook example of why Gainesville remains all talk and no action.

Essentially we expect our commissioners to achieve goals that, on their face, appear to be mutually exclusive.

Lower housing costs so that everybody can afford to live in Gainesville.

But protect existing residents from policies that, homeowners perceive, will hurt their property values.

You would think a progressive university city like ours would be up to solving that conundrum, right? But town-gowns can be just as obstinate when it comes to deciding who should be allowed to live where.

"My own city of Berkeley, renowned for its progressive values and liberal politics for 50 years has suppressed new housing of all kinds and now has an almost unsolvable problem of affordability and homelessness."

This from Dorothy Walker, founding president of the American Planning Association in an important Streetsblog essay.

"The fact is, local control over land-use decisions has obstructed efforts for racial justice and social equity in housing since the beginning of our profession," she argues.

If you think a one-year time out will finally give Gainesville "equitable development," you havent been paying attention. Itll do no good unless we are willing to confront, and change, long entrenched zoning and land use restrictions that "perpetuate classism and racial segregation," as Walker puts it.

Single-family residential zoning, for instance, is the most rigidly enforced, and effective, instrument for segregation in American society.

Trump understands that, and he intends to use that ugly truth to his advantage.

We Gainesville liberals probably get it too. But greedy developers.

Ron Cunningham is former editorial page editor of The Sun. Read his blog at http://www.floridavelocipede.com. Email him at rondarts2008@gmail.com.

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Ron Cunningham: Single-family zoning is an instrument for segregation - Palm Beach Post

Derek Thompson: Three decades ago, America lost its religion. Why?

Yet the Judeo-Christian tradition excluded not only Muslims, Native Americans, and other non-Western religious communities, but also atheists and secularists of all persuasions. American Jews themselves were reluctant adopters. After centuries of Christian anti-Semitic persecution and philo-Semitic fantasies of Jewish conversion, many eyed the award of an honorary hyphen with suspicion. Even some anti-communist politicians themselves recognized the concept as ill-suited to Americas postwar quest for global primacy in a decolonizing world.

The mythical Judeo-Christian tradition, then, proved an unstable foundation on which to build a common American identity. Today, as American democracy once again grasps for root metaphors with which to confront our countrys diversity and its place in the world, the terms recuperation should rightfully alarm us: It has always divided Americans far more than it has united them.

Although the Jewish and Christian traditions stretch back side by side to antiquity, the phrase Judeo-Christian is a remarkably recent creation. In Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy, the historian K. Healan Gaston marshals an impressive array of sources to provide us with an account of the modern genesis of Judeo-Christian and its growing status as a linguistic battlefield on which conservatives and liberals proffered competing notions of America and its place in the world from the 1930s to the present.

Before the 20th century, the notion of a Judeo-Christian tradition was virtually unthinkable, because Christianity viewed itself as the successor to an inferior, superseded Jewish faith, along with other inferior creeds. A good example of this comes from Reverend Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College and the most important intellectual in the early American republic, who wrote of religious freedom in 1785:

The most ample religious liberty will also probably [be obtained here] The United States will embosom all the religious sects or denominations in Christendom ... The Baptists, the Friends, the Lutherans will cohabit together in harmony That liberal and candid disquisition of Christianity which will most assuredly take place in America, will prepare Europe for the first event, with which the other will be connected, when, especially on the return of the Twelve Tribes to the Holy Land, there will burst forth a degree of evidence hitherto unperceived, and of efficacy to convert a world A time will come when six hundred millions of the human race shall be ready to drop their idolatry and all false religion, when Christianity shall triumph over superstition, as well as Deism, and Gentilism, and Mohammedanism.

Religious freedom meant freedom for Christians. Jews might be accommodated, though not necessarily with full equality, on a temporary basis until their eventual conversion. Like many other founding-era leaders, Stiles actually exhibited deep curiosity about Jews and Judaism. He spent six months attending services at the Newport, Rhode Island, synagogue to learn from a rabbi, Haim Isaac Carigal. The experience inspired Stiles to institute a short-lived Hebrew-language requirement for all Yale College freshmen. Yet he held to a theology of replacement in which Judaism would yield along with other faiths to a world unified in Christianity. Nor was he alone in this conviction. True, Western thinkers spoke of Athens and Jerusalem, but the latter was exclusively embodied in the Christian Church, not the rabbinic tradition. If anything, the shared patrimony of Judaism and Christianity was more a point of theological friction than a site of secular reconciliation.

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The Problem With the Judeo-Christian Tradition - The Atlantic

Al Diamon

In the complicated debate over how to correct injustices heaped upon Maines Indigenous People, theres a word nobody dares to use.

No, not the former name of whats now known as the Washington Football Team. (Too bad they didnt rename it Washington Team Football, because then the initials would have accurately reflected that organizations long history of racism, sexism and inept sports management.)

The term that everyone is tiptoeing around as the Legislature considers a massive revamping of the states relationship with its tribes isnt one of those unacceptable epithets concerning race or sex. So why isnt anyone courageous enough to come right out and say it?

Because its really about that other thing that makes folks squeamish:

Money.

Obviously, thats not the word nobody will use. People of all ethnicities talk about money all the time. The innocuous collection of syllables that cannot be uttered in public is less about cash itself than the grubby business of how to get it.

So naturally, its in all the parties best interests to avoid the shunned word, and put the emphasis in the debate on something more principled. Unfortunately, that means other serious issues are being employed by the participants as camouflage to obscure what none of them wants to mention.

Change must be made in our education, judicial and law enforcement institutions, Donna Loring, a Penobscot Nation elder, wrote in a June newspaper op-ed.

Hard to dispute that.

In February, Maulian Dana, the Penobscots tribal ambassador, told the Portland Press Herald, Indigenous nations are not special interests, and these are equal rights, not special rights.

Amen to that.

According to a story in the Original Irregular, Bert Polchics, a Penobscot Nation member, told the Carrabassett Valley selectmen last month, We need to be able to control our own destinies. [O]ur ways are not to create harm in any way, to endanger or to destroy. Were trying to protect and make things better.

Everybody get on board. But before the love train leaves the station, make room in the caboose for that thing that isnt being talked about:

The C word.

The 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act gave the tribes that were parties to it lots of land. But it also put lots of restriction on how that land could be used. Native Americans couldnt simply decide to build a nuclear waste dump. They couldnt unilaterally start selling recreational marijuana. And they couldnt legalize gambling.

Which brings us finally to the dreaded C word. Readers whose moral principles prevent them from watching TV shows preceded by warnings that theyre for mature audiences should forego the remaining paragraphs. Because the C word is:

Casino.

Buried in the 22 proposed changes to Maines laws governing its relationship with the tribes is a section allowing gambling on all Indian land. But any clods so lacking in social graces that theyd actually bring up that point should be prepared to be buried in self-righteous indignation.

Were not here for casinos, Michael-Corey Hinton, a lawyer for the Passamaquoddy Tribe told a legislative committee in February. We are here to restore our sovereignty and our ability to self-govern.

Then he added, Under federal law, that would include the right to game.

Hinton wasnt talking about partridge.

I live in an area of western Maine almost entirely surrounded by land the Penobscots bought under the Settlement Act. If this legislation is approved, theres a good chance Ill have a gambling emporium for a neighbor. Ive got no problem with that. Except for one thing.

Maine needs to revise its gaming laws not only to allow Indian casinos, but also to permit any other reasonably qualified entity willing to pay a hefty licensing fee and a ridiculous tax on profits to offer slot machines and table games. For too long, gambling policy has been set by referendums, rather than sensible regulations.

Either everybody should be able to operate a casino, or nobody should.

Thats just a matter of a phrase that also begins with C:

Common sense.

Raise the stakes by emailing me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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Politics & Other Mistakes: The C word - Daily Bulldog

The image of a small Midwestern college is one of quiet, peaceful campus nestled in a rural town.

Some now fear the global pandemic could silence many small schools altogether.

The coronavirus upended higher education this spring. Colleges had to lock down and refund thousands of dollars of tuition to students.

On the heels of financial struggles in higher education, the pandemic could land a death blow to smaller colleges dotting rural Missouri and Illinois. Over the past several years, economists have made dire predictions that many small colleges, possibly up to half, will go bankrupt and close in the next decade.

We get concerned about it. However, we've been fortunate that we see more folks wanting to be here, said Don Lofe, interim president at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

Through the Civil War, world wars and plenty of economic downturns, colleges like Westminster have continued to graduate students. But over the past two years, about a dozen small colleges have closed for good. Among them is MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois. After 174 years, the coronavirus pandemic was one punch on the chin too many.

School leaders argue they still hold a valuable position in the higher education landscape: a robust liberal arts education rooted in small class sizes, strong student support services and idyllic settings.

I still believe personally, and I think a lot of people do, that there is a need for traditional college education, said Dan Westhues, a board member at William Woods University, also located in Fulton.

Higher education financial experts are less rosy on the outlook.

Forbes magazine gives colleges letter grades based on their financial health. Numerous small schools in Missouri and Illinois earn poor marks. Westminster and Williams Woods get Cs. Culver-Stockton College, Hannibal-LaGrange University and Quincy University all have Ds.

These organizations are going to tell you We're going to survive, but they're not in large numbers, said Gary Stocker, a college administrator-turned-analyst.

Stocker worked at Lindenwood University and Westminster College before starting College Viability, a website aimed at tracking and presenting college financial data to worried college officials and curious parents.

And you see some really, really ugly numbers, he said.

Many of these colleges rely too much on endowment spending and alumni donations, rather than strong student bodies to pump in tuition dollars, Stocker said. They have little cash on hand and endowments too small to weather strong headwinds.

These small rural colleges are not profitable enough year in and year out to be able to have long-term viability, Stocker said.

Itll also be harder to promote the picturesque college experience if colleges have to remain locked down and there are no in-person classes or athletics another big recruitment tool for some small schools.

We feel we provide a unique experience, said Lofe, the head of Westminster. Many colleges are going to say that, but we've been able to demonstrate that with actions. For instance, athletics, the other experiences we have on campus.

COVID-19 also upended finances for colleges. Having to send students packing in March and issue refunds was a major expense. Federal aid programs enacted by Congress in the spring helped cover some of the losses.

I would just tell you this, we managed it well, Lofe said. Our college is very stabilized right now with respect to financial matters. But throughout the years, like many colleges, revenue streams have caused issues as well as the demographics that are changing, as you know, with respect to available students in the population to go to college.

Ryan Delaney

/

St. Louis Public Radio

Westminster College Board of Trustees Chair Jim Morton and Interim President Don Lofe on the campus in Fulton, Missouri, in July.

Fewer high school graduates and the growing sticker shock of a private college education will mean schools have to evolve or possibly die out.

I don't expect a mass extinction of small private colleges, but we may see several years' worth of closures in just a few weeks or months, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the small private colleges in the Midwest end up closing, said Robert Kelchen, a Missouri native and associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University.

While Westminster boasts being around since the Civil War, Culver-Stockton College can brag that it survived a tornado shortly after graduation in 2003.

Douglas Palmer is the new president of Culver-Stockton in Canton, Missouri. Any big aspirations he had when he accepted the job in February, before the pandemic, may need to wait.

I would not expect that many colleges and universities in the area or even in the country are going to be doing a whole lot of hiring or investment in capital projects until we're through this crisis, he said.

He first must focus on maintaining an enrollment of 1,100 students and paying the people who educate them. I think it's been harder here, and I think it will continue to be hard.

Recruiting traditional students to rural pockets of the Midwest, even with appealing tuition discounts and scholarships, is getting harder, said Westhues, the William Woods board member. And so we certainly have seen that over the years, but I think that's actually kind of a decent thing because what it's forced us to do is be creative, and it's forced us to evolve.

William Woods is investing in online programs and degree completion for older adults. Westminster is focused on expanding recruitment and supporting students. It also wants to find a new niche, such as cybersecurity, that "will be a strong selling point."

But going after nontraditional students will have to balance with the core product.

"The liberal arts education gives you the ability to think, think just not analytically, but creatively. And those are words but they're really, I believe in those very strongly," Lofe said. "And I believe this type of education, this type of institution provides that."

Stocker and other industry watchers advocate for mergers of small colleges to reduce costs. Health care provides an example. What were once dozens of small hospitals run by religious orders around the region are now operated by a single hospital system.

Still, the worst-case scenarios many predicted for colleges and universities this fall so far dont appear likely. Some estimates this spring suggested fall enrollments would be down by up to 20%, with students perhaps choosing to stay closer to home or take a gap year.

But as of now Westminster, William Woods and most other small colleges say students are planning to return when campuses reopen this fall, even if it won't be for a typical semester.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @rpatrickdelaney

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Small Midwestern Colleges Have Been Through It All. Can They Make It Through The Pandemic? - KBIA

August 7, 2020

Arizona State University graduate Kamra Sadia Hakim is an artist and entrepreneur with a vision to create inclusive spaces for marginalized communities throughActivation Residency, an artist residency and cooperative based in New York.

Hakim first became inspired to create change while earning a bachelors degree in global studies in 2015 from The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

My program at ASU was fantastic because I was all over the world by the age of 18, said Hakim, who uses they/them pronouns.

I pursued global studies because I knew that I wanted to make a global impact, but I didn't necessarily know how that would take shape. My service learning trip in Johannesburg (South Africa) and Zambia with theONE Campaignset me off to be a worldly person early on in life by expanding my capacity for human interaction, cultural adaptability and inclusion."

In their sophomore year, Hakim added a minor in social transformation and became exposed to issues on topics including feminism, the patriarchy and white supremacy.

To wake up to all of that information at a young 21 I was taken aback. Having access to queer and feminist studies really started to change the way in which I moved through the world. It also gave me access and more permission to my own personal queer and trans identity. From a fundamental level, ASU definitely equipped me with the confidence that I needed to be able to do this work.

Kamra Sadia Hakim

After ASU, Hakim earned a masters degree in global affairs from New York University and pursued several internships and roles, including as an arts professional development coordinator at Columbia University.

In 2018, Hakim created Activation after being moved by the experiences they had at music festivals and creative retreats, and seeing the lack of creative opportunities available for Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC) as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) individuals.

By frequenting these festivals and retreats, I was really inspired by the level of community involved and the feeling of coming together around the arts, Hakim said. I found that a lot of healing experiences happen when folks come together for something that they really care about to share wisdom, knowledge, talents, expertise and gifts.

Initially, Activation was promoted as a weekend-long residency for working class and underserved artists. The original group of 20 artists gathered at the Outlier Inn, located in Woodridge, New York, sharing meals together and leading workshops based on their practice.

After what Hakim said was an overwhelmingly collaborative, heartwarming, emotional and transformative experience, they wanted to expand the programs reach. In the second year of the program, Hakim served over 60 artists through the residency program, this time partnering with community organizers to incorporate programming and conversations around race, class, gender and sexuality.

Geodesic dome at the Outlier Inn. Courtesy of Activation Residency.

People got to grapple with white supremacy and internalized homophobia while being in a community space that felt safe enough to have those difficult conversations, Hakim said. We had a conflict around race come up in real time and we had to come together as a community to create solutions for those problems, which is something that you don't really see in this work.

Over the years, Activations mission has remained the same but has grown exponentially with the help of successful online fundraising and community support. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and an increased awareness of the injustices BIPOC and LGBTQ individuals face, Hakim has received a recent influx of support. Since the end of May, Hakim has raised over $150,000 to support Activation projects through social media fundraising.

Hakim also launched aco-op fundthis year that has raised over $10,000 since the end of April. Funds from the monthly-contribution program are redistributed to community members in need.

Folks really love Activation and the work were doing. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had around 1,800 followers on Instagram and now we have more than 9,000, Hakim said. I think the conversation around funding and redistributing wealth has rapidly changed.

When protests against the killing of George Floyd began, Hakim collected funds for necessary supplies like water and hand sanitizer and passed them out to protesters in New York. After experiencing an influx of new followers and an increase in monetary support, Hakim seized that momentum and created online workshops and other digital programming to expand Activation's impact.

The big thing has been figuring out ways to keep the Activation magic alive online, Hakim said. We've had some really beautiful Instagram live and Zoom programming, which was kind of unexpected for me. Online programming can be tedious and the Zoom fatigue is real. I just didn't think it was going to work, but we ended up recreating that soft and healing but challenging and rigorous atmosphere that Activation has in real life in our online programming. It has been so touching to see the human to human connections we've been able to achieve in the virtual sphere.

The funds raised over the past few months will be used to hostRespite as Resistance, a care and healing program for BIPOC, LGBTQ, disabled and immigrant activists, organizers and artists. The fall program will incorporate COVID-19 health and safety precautions including physical distancing, required mask wearing, gathering in outdoor spaces and small cohorts of eight to 10 people.

NK and Asha Grant lead a Praise the Lorde Sunday in the dome at the Outlier Inn. Courtesy of Activation Residency.

I think folks are being galvanized to go hard and fight for the struggle without realizing that part of moving through oppression is caring for ourselves, Hakim said. I feel like my job in the revolution is to center care and provide folks with the opportunity to care for themselves and be cared for by other community members.

Hakim hopes to continue to increase Activations reach, and is fundraising for a variety of ongoing projects, includingFarming Futurity, a permaculture farm and healing space on 15 acres of land in upstate New York that will provide short-term residencies for artists and community members who want to explore transformative justice healing arts.

As a Black person who grew up poor and is also trans, this is the kind of liberation that people like me have fought for forever and ever, Hakim said. So in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm living my dream and that is a motivation enough for me to continue to do the work.

Top photo:A group of artists sit on the ground in anticipation of a Family Constellation at Activation Residency. Courtesy of Activation Residency and Tonje Thilesen.

Communications Specialist and Lead Writer , The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

eballi@asu.edu

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Transformation through healing justice, community and art | ASU Now: Access, Excellence, Impact - ASU Now

As a candidate and then as president, Donald Trump has criticized and complained about U.S. alliesand especially about the amount of money that they pay toward their own defenses. And it hasnt all been talk: His administration recently announced a major reduction in the number of U.S. forces in Germany. (We dont want to be the suckers anymore, he said.) Reports claim that South Korea may be next.

As has so often been the case with the Trump administration, the presidents words and deeds force us to go back to basicsto understand and make the case for norms and practices that he has ignored or rejected. So lets try to answer a simple question: What are allies and what do we need them for?

First, some background. For most of history, alliances were situational and short-term, like the two Grand Alliances formed to halt the expansionism of France under Louis XIV, or the series of coalitions formed to defeat Napoleon. Outside of wartime, alliances tended to be unbalanced, and they were not necessarily friendly and consensual: There was the exploiter and there was the exploited. Participation in regionaland later globalhegemonic orders used to be more forcible than voluntary, and usually the hegemon benefited in a mercantile sense while the subjects received protection. Only in the nineteenth century did a world powerthe United Kingdomfor the first time use its hegemony to liberalize trade to benefit all participants. In time, the United States would take on that responsibility, and expand upon it.

One indicator of how historically anomalous the U.S.-led world order since 1945 has been is the fact that some U.S. allies ask, or even beg, the United States to house its troops in their countries. The United States has only reluctantly accepted this responsibilityand that reluctance is itself part of what has made U.S. global leadership appealing to much of the world. As Robert Kagan notes in his 2012 book The World America Made, never in history have small powers been so desirous of having a great power station troops within their borders, never in history has a great power been so reluctant to accept this invitation, never in history has a great power been so forceful in asking smaller powers to spend more on military capabilities, and never in history have smaller powers been so resistant to such a request.

Podcast August 07 2020

On today's Bulwark Podcast, Bill Kristol joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the President's new religious case against Joe B...

Now on to the question of what allies are good for. First, there is the obvious answer: They increase the aggregate military power of their bloc. This is what Trump has been complaining about for yearsthat some of our allies dont pay as much as they ought to for their own defenses, and so dont do enough to increase the alliances aggregate military power. On this point, he is not factually wrong. (There often are, though, good reasons to think twice before asking allies to pay more.) Nor is he the first president to push NATO allies to spend more; his two predecessors did as well.

But increasing aggregate military power is not an alliances only benefitnor necessarily the most important one. Allies also provide each other with geographic access and knowledge. The United States is unlikely to have to fight a land war in its home territory. But if the United States ever needs to fight another war in Europe, the current presence of U.S. troops allows the United States not to have to worry about having to lead another Normandy invasion. Additionally, this presence helps to acquaint the U.S. military with Europes terrain, geography, and climate. And forward deployments of troops to Europe and Asia have created buffer zones between the United States and Russia and the United States and Chinain Americas favor. The Russians and the Chinese are not at our doorsteps, but we are at theirs.

Alliances can also legitimize the collective actions of their participants. Americans remember the Iraq War as a unilateral move due to Frances and Germanys objections. The truth, however, is that a half-dozen other nations participated militarily alongside the United States, and dozens of others joined in other ways. Russians unilateral actions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine starting in 2014 resulted in punitive action against it. But American actions in the Balkans in the 1990s, Iraq starting in 2003, Libya in 2011, Pakistan for the past two decades, Yemen in the 2000s, Somalia in the 1990s, and so on, never resulted in any international punitive backlashsanctions, for instancein part because those actions were taken alongside allies.

Alliances also share intelligence. Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing coalition of five English-speaking countriesthe United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In Asia, Americans benefit from South Korean intelligence services spying on North Korea. Israel has been a useful intelligence provider to the United States, and not only about Iran and potential threats in the Middle East: In 2015, for instance, it was Israel that informed the National Security Agency about the Russians access to the agencys hacking tool.

By providing our allies with security guarantees, the United States prevents them fromor at least reduces their likelihood ofaccommodating our enemies against our interests. Indeed, because of our security guarantees, our allies often go out of their way to accommodate our interests, sometimes even against their own, so they can stay on our good side.

Last but not least, by allowing the forward deployment of the U.S. military, Americas allies make it possible for the United States to resolve what Peter Feaver calls the civil-military relations problematique: that Americans needed a large standing army but feared that it would be used to undermine liberalism in the United States. The resolution was forward deployment. Americans got to keep their large Army but far away in somebody elses country.

Among the anomalies of the U.S. liberal world order is how relatively little the United States, compared with previous hegemonic powers, spends on its military, despite its large responsibilities around the world. From 1960 until the demise of the USSR, the Soviet Union never spent less than 10 percent of its GDP on military expenditures, while occasionally getting close to 20 percent of it. By contrast, the United States never spent more than about 9 percent of its GDPwhich would have been impossible without Americas liberal alliance system.

The United States is lucky to have its many great allies, and they are lucky to have us. Only a fool would choose to endanger the current system.

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What Are Allies Good For, Anyway? - The Bulwark