If youre taken aback by the question, youre not alone. Casual students of US history might recall the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, and figures like Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. Others might think about efforts to end human trafficking and forced labour that still afflicts some 40 million people. But for many, the term 'abolition' connotes the struggles of a bygone era.

Abolition, however, is not a relic of history. It is an ongoing movement to rethink the systems that produce inequity and build a society that values the lives of the most vulnerable. It permeates almost every issue that the World Economic Forum includes on its 2021 Agenda, from COVID-19 to tax policy.

Social innovators address the worlds most serious challenges ranging from inequality to girls education and disaster relief that affect all of us, but in particular vulnerable and excluded groups. To achieve maximum impact and start to address root causes, they need greater visibility, credibility, access to finance, favourable policy decisions, and in some cases a better understanding of global affairs and access to decision makers.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship is supporting more than 400 late-stage social innovators. By providing an unparalleled global platform, the Foundations goal is to highlight and expand proven and impactful models of social innovation. It helps strengthen and grow the field by showcasing best-in-class examples, models for replication and cutting-edge research on social innovation.

Meet the World-changers: Social Innovators of the Year 2020. Our global network of experts, partner institutions, and World Economic Forum constituents and business members are invited to nominate outstanding social innovators. Get in touch to become a member or partner of the World Economic Forum.

In his seminal 1935 work, Black Reconstruction in America, the black scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term abolition democracy. He used it to describe the post-slavery struggle for a society that offers each member the economic, political, and social capital to live as equal members. In other words, abolition democracy isnt just the fight to destroy oppressive institutions. Its the fight to build just ones in their place.

In that context, the need for abolition has never been more alive than it is today.

Worth saving or burn it all down?

We are in the midst of a global democracy recession. Representative governments have failed to address the existential crises of our time, including runaway economic inequality and climate change. Authoritarians around the world stand emboldened by those failures. Just weeks ago, in the US, a defeated president incited a white supremacist riot that temporarily brought the federal government to a halt.

Young people are asking whether the building blocks of society are meant as a common foundation or as a wall to keep them at bay. They are, fundamentally, thinking about abolition. They are asking whether what we have is worth saving, or if its time to burn it all down.

The people who annually find their way to Davos, myself included, need to ask these questions, too. Whether we come from the private sector or philanthropy, government or advocacy, we need to think about the ways in which our systems are set up to stratify and exclude. If we do not at least take seriously an abolitionist mindset, our solutions will be nothing more than Band-Aids on democracys sucking chest wound.

In my own work as the CEO and Co-Founder of the Center for Policing Equity, that means fundamentally reimagining public safety. It means removing police from enforcing laws meant to punish people without housing and investing in institutions that prevent housing insecurity. It must also mean preventing police from having to show up in the first place, not just improving practices when they do. It means measuring justice along with crime, and aligning our mechanisms of public safety with the values of the communities particularly communities that have historically faced discrimination and disinvestment.

Rebuilding systems with equity at their core

This year illustrated the consequences of our past failure to take abolition seriously. Our inability to redress racial inequities in our essential systems and protect the most vulnerable has fueled the spread of COVID-19, costing more than 420,000 lives in the US alone. In the wake of George Floyds murder, entire neighborhoods went up in flames because of the unpaid debt owed to black communities after generations of white supremacy and neglect.

Do you believe in democracy? If the answer is yes, the best way to revitalise it may be to embrace the work of abolition democracy, from whichever powerful perch you occupy.

Even before the pandemic, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has disrupted the ways we work, learn and live. That disruption is an opportunity to build equity into the base of our evolving systems, from internet access to public education to corporate governance. If we fail, we will have literally built them to burn.

So, ahead of this years forum, ask yourself a different question: Do you believe in democracy? If the answer is yes, the best way to revitalise it may be to embrace the work of abolition democracy, from whichever powerful perch you occupy.

Charity alone, kindness from those who have benefitted most from institutions that marginalise the vulnerable, cannot lead us to justice. Abolition democracy, the working of rebuilding our systems with equity at their core, just might be able to.

After all, in the long view of history, our choices are simple: build systems that empower the least of us, or prepare to watch them torn down until we do.

Read more from the original source:

'Abolition' isn't a relic of our past. It's the key to revitalising democracy - World Economic Forum

Through the heat of the Brazilian summer, Licinio Nunes de Miranda sweated in the cemetery.

For three years, the University of Florida doctoral student had been searching for the tomb of Francisco Jos do Nascimento, the revered Afro-Brazilian abolitionist known as the Sea Dragon. Nascimentos heroism helped end slavery in Brazil, but despite the Sea Dragons renown, no one knew where to pay their respects. His tomb had been lost for more than a century.

While working on his dissertation on abolition in the northeastern state of Cear, Mirandas admiration for Nascimento grew. He marveled thata fisherman and sailor from a poor family organized the 1881 strike where Cear dockworkers refused to board enslaved people onto ships to be sold throughout the country. Slavery, a cornerstone of Brazils economy for centuries, was outlawed in Cear in 1884 and nationwide in 1888.

It was the first major victory of Brazilians against slavery, said Miranda, who grew up in Brazil and studies history at UF. For someone from his background to have led that strike means a lot. It could have cost far more to him than if he had belonged to the elite.

Miranda became determined to find Nascimentos grave, visiting archives for clues and searching the labyrinthine So Joo Batista cemetery in Cears capital, Fortaleza.

Miranda felt certain So Joo Batista was the right place: It was the capitals only cemetery when Nacimento died there in 1914. Beginning in 2017, Miranda spent day after day exploring the necropolis, systematically scrutinizing the ornate statues and sepulchers of its 12,500 above-ground tombs. Day after day, he found nothing. Then on July 24, 2020, he spotted a three-tiered monument covered in mold, the cross on top broken, its stone crumbling.

DESCANO ETERNO do MAJOR FRANCISCO JOSE do NASCIMENTO.

The eternal resting place of the Sea Dragon.

It was very hot. I was sweating, but I was so happy, I didn't care, said Miranda, who took a selfie at the scene.

Since then, the tomb has been cleaned and restored, its rediscovery celebrated in news articles and events. Miranda, who had since returned to Gainesville, couldnt go back to Brazil for the ceremonies because of the pandemic. But hes gratified to see Nascimentos legacy preserved, not just a footnote to history but as a reminder that in Brazil, as in the United States, racial inequities persist.

We're still learning how to overcome those problems, he said. People can learn about tolerance, freedom and equality from these historical figures who did so much even though they had so little.

Miranda is continuing his work revealing the untold stories of Cears abolitionists, supported by UFs Research Abroad for Doctoral students program. He hopes other students realize that their research can have results beyond academia.

Current times have been so hard for everyone that I felt that we needed and deserved good news, especially concerning a man who had overcome hardships in times just as difficult as ours and all for the sake of the common good, he said. If he did it, so can we.

Alisson Clark January 29, 2021

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Lost and found: The tomb of the Sea Dragon, Brazil's famous abolitionist - University of Florida

During the 2019-20 school year,UChicagoschapter of Kappa Alpha Theta (better known as simply Theta) had more than 180 members.Now, inJanuary of 2021, it hasjust over30.

UChicago is one of many universities across the country to see a mass exodus from Greek life in recent months. Hundreds of students reportedlydisaffiliatedfrom Vanderbilt Greek life institutions in July, the University of Richmonds entire Panhellenic Councilresignedover the summer, and Abolish Greek life Instagram accountssprungup at campuses nationwide. The catalysts for these movements have varied from school to school, but one common thread runs through them all: the belief that Greek institutions are rooted in classism, racism, and exclusivity.

According to anop-edpenned by five former members of Thetas leadershipall of whom have since disaffiliated from the sororityUChicago Thetas most recent reckoning began with an incident in the fall 2019 recruitment cycle.

In the fall of 2019, during the tenure of previous leadership, women of color, and dark-skinned women specifically, were excluded from the process of meeting new members from day one and told explicitly to go home throughout the process, the op-ed read. This prevented several women of color, who had signed up to participate in recruitment, from interacting with new members.

These women looked around the room, and they were like, wait a minute, everyone who wasnt assigned was Black or Asian, said M., a former Theta member familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation or harassment. There were other people getting multiple assignments, whereas they were not [getting assigned to speak with prospective members].

Speaking to new members is the main way in which current sorority members participate in recruitment and, according to the op-ed, the selection of specific members over others sidelined many women of color in this process.

A heated argument ensued when they raised this concern with a member involved in planning the recruitment process. Subsequently,the Monday following recruitment, multiple members recounted a collective experience of exclusion and belittlement at the hands of fellow chaptermembers to our advisorsand present chapter leadership at a Membership Development Committee (MDC) meeting, but no action was taken,the op-ed read. MDC performs a disciplinary function within Theta, adjudicating disputes among members.

It is problematic to not recognize that exclusion from sororities, and feelings of exclusion among Black women, is an issue, M. said.

Members of Theta leadership during fall2019 did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But according to former Theta leadership, the failure was as much in the aftermath of the recruitment debacle as in the moment. Knowledge of what happened became public in the summer of 2020, amid the racial justice protest movement sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. The leadership posted a letter on Instagramwhich has since been deletedapologizing for the incident on behalf of the chapter, prompting widespread concern and interest in the issue from alumni andotherobservers.

So,in the summer of 2020, Theta's MDC embarked on a fact-finding investigation, holding near-daily interviews with alumni and current members in an attempt to pursue disciplinary measures against those responsible for the incident. We, as new leadership, had to go back through and figure out what happened, said Ella Parker, Thetas former Chief External Affairs Officer.

But they quickly found themselves restricted by certain aspects of Thetas standard disciplinary procedures, which are set by the national organization. The main one, they said, was the wealth of confidentiality policies within the organization, which prevent individual grievances from being shared with the group unless members do so without naming anyone involved. Rather than discuss specific instances of racism within the sorority, the group was only permitted to discuss racism broadly.

As the investigation hobbled along, the leaderships faith in the disciplinary system quickly eroded.

Its like a black hole.You just scream into it, B., a former Theta member,saidin an interview withThe Maroon.(Some former members of Theta leadership spoke toThe Maroon anonymously, as they received threats of legal action for pursuing disciplinary action against certain members.)We have this system thats supposed to adjudicate these different issues and disputes, but it doesnt actually do its job whatsoever. Nothing actually comes out of it in a productive way,in a way that is transparent or addressable, because the word confidentiality gets flung in your face every time.

The fact that the chapter even has a disciplinary committee, B.said, is primarily for show.

Parker said that the members who came forward with the allegations of racial bias and exclusion also lost faith in the disciplinary process.

When women come forward with allegations,"they are told, we will handle this; youve been heard; well take care of this,Parker said. And that was the problem,because then when nothing happened, the time had already passed, and the people who originally brought something up felt disrespected,and didnt want to have anything to do with it anymore.

At the conclusion of the investigation, the leadership singled out one member who had been involved in organizing recruitment and was deemed primarily responsible for the initial incident. The sorority initiated a membership termination vote in an attempt to kick the member out of the chapter. The vote passed almost unanimously.

Several weeks later, however, the leadership learned that this vote was overturned by the chapters panel ofadvisors, a volunteer group of Theta alumni appointed by the national organization to advise and oversee the chapter. As the basis for this decision, the advisors cited procedural shortcomingsthey told us we didnt take good enough notes, B. said. The advisors also claimed that bias against the wrongdoer,may have clouded voting members judgment, as the events from fall recruitment were at that point general knowledge within Theta.

This decision incensed many members of Theta, including Parker, who toldThe Maroonthat the advisors had never voiced these procedural concerns throughout the disciplinary process,andthatthe identity of the person under investigationwas kept confidential. But beyond this, Parker said that the advisors decision undermined the will of the group.

It just says a lot that we voted near-unanimously for this, and our advisors still chose to overturn it, Parker said. They dont think that we know whats best for our chapter.

Several weeks after this controversial decision, a rift formed within thegroupbetween those who wanted the chapter to dissolve entirely and those who wanted to remain in Theta. Per the chapters bylaws, dissolving would require a unanimous vote, which was clearly unattainable. The advisors decision was a pivotal moment, signaling to many members the national organizations opposition to real change.

We realized that any change that we would want to make would be met with the same resistance by, quite frankly, old white women who dont understand why racism is that big of a problem in its manifestations here on this campus, said Allie Salazar, a former Class Representative for Thetas MDC.That was, I think, the moment at which leadership realized anythingwe do is going to be in vain.

Theta is not the only sorority whose efforts at reform have been stymied by an intransigent national organization: anearlyidenticalincident played out atNorthwesterns chapter ofZeta Tau Alpha.

The thing that was really damning was the systems inability to deal with [the initial incident], Salazar said. Being members who were on the administrative side of it, we found that the system was unable to rectify the wrongs that had happened, insofar as it wasnt as explicit as a hate crime.

For former Theta member A., who identifies as a woman of color (and asked to remain anonymous for fear of harassment), it was the response from Thetas national leadership and one ofitschapteradvisorsin particular that erased her faith in the sororitys ability to change.

There were a lot of girls who came toNationalsexpressing their concerns, A. said. It was very obvious to not only the girls [whomThetas advisor] talked to but[to]pretty much everyone in the chapter that she did not care about our chapters women of color,and she did not care how they felt about it. Shefar more caredabout protecting the people who were responsible for the incident rather than the people who were affected themselves.

That was when A. and the majority of Thetas members started disaffiliating in droves. In August of 2020,fewer than 30 members remained.

Thepublic disintegrationof UChicagos chapter ofKappa Alpha Thetawas far from an isolated incident. Following the summers mass mobilization against structural racism, sororities and fraternities on campuses nationwide found their checkered pasts andpresentdiscriminatorypracticessuddenly subjectedto the harsh spotlight of mediascrutiny.

Several past presidents of UChicagos Panhellenic Council(Panhel)havecome outin favor of abolition, and student-led movements to abolish Greek life emerged at collegesacross the country, decimating many chapters membership in a matter of months,just as onedid forTheta.

Social media has played a large role in this wave of activism.There are over 50 Instagram accounts advocating Greek life abolition at different universities, many with hundreds or even thousands of followers.

Months later, however, the question remains whether that movement will keep its initial momentum. Whats more, not everyone who sees a need for change to the Greek system agrees on what form it should take.

In June2020, Hannah Pittock, a former member of the sorority Alpha Omicron Pi (AOII), penned anopen letterto AOII headquarters,arguing that Greek life should be abolished,rather than reformed. While her article received support from many like-minded activists,itwasalso met withvalid resistancefrom women of color who, she said, had been working towards reform for years.

One of the inherent problems with the letter, and with my participation in this piece, is that it engages in the same problematic dynamic Im trying to dismantle, ofwhite women speaking over or for women of color on issues of racial justice,Pittockwrotein a statement toThe Maroon.The reform ideas outlined are not new,nor did I come up with them,theyre reforms women in Greek life,and especially women of color,have been working tirelessly toward for years.This letter failed miserably in acknowledging that,it spoke over them and for them in a really problematic way, and it didnt give credit where it was due.

UChicago Theta did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, and AOII representatives declined to be interviewed.

While the momentum to reform or abolish Greek life is currently driven by the internal pressure of members disaffiliating en masse, observers outside the system have longexertedpressureon Greek organizations to dissolve or reform, especially in the wake ofracist incidentsand in conversations surroundingsexual assaults.UChicagosPhoenix Survivors Alliance (PSA) has been critical of the role Greek life has played in campus sexual assault for years, and the close ties between fraternity social life and sexual assault took center stage in a publicart installationthe group put on last spring.

Since the racial justice protests reachedapeak inthesummerof2020, sororities atUChicago have begun attempting toaddressracial injustice in their pasts. In astatementissued in November, UChicago AOII said that it had created two new leadership positions responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion within the chapter.Itisalso implementing regular educational chapter meetings on racial justice and allyship, including curriculum aimed specifically at recruitment, andit hasannounced a zerotolerance policy for discrimination and harassment.

Similarly, UChicago Thetaannouncedin October that it was eliminating preferential treatment for applicants who are related to Theta alumnae, known as legacies, among other reforms. Delta Gamma (DG) said in astatementon Instagram thatit isalso abolishing legacy admissions and implementing regular workshops on diversity and inclusion foritsmembers.

In spite of sororities problems, the women who do join their ranks say that they play an important role, serving as a social network, a support system,and more. But the feasibility of a community that preserves the benefits of Greek life without its baggage remains an open question for many.

Parker, for one, is optimistic about the possibilities of a non-Greek space for female-identifying students.I firmly dont believe that the only way to mobilize a group of women is through Greek life, Parker said. I dont think it has to be this problematic to get a group of women together and get them to do really amazing things.

Although she chose to disaffiliate, A. still appreciates some aspects of her time in Theta and wishes that more marginalized students would be able to experience the sense of community she found there.

I wish there were other people coming from backgrounds like me that could have experienced thatthat could have gotten to know so many different kinds of people, from so many places all over the world,and have fun with them and feel like they belonged, she said.

Parker, too, noted that there were aspects of belonging to Theta that she still found appealing, particularly the opportunity to work on philanthropic projects and build a close working relationship with Thetas philanthropic partner, CASA of Cook County.

We dont just do philanthropy because we have to.We actually have an insane[lypositive] relationship with the organization that we do philanthropy for, Parker said. I understand the reason why Greek life philanthropy is problematic, Ive read the abolish Greek life posts on it, but I do think joining Theta that was a really cool thing that I was excited to be a part of.

One former sorority member, who spoke withThe Maroonanonymously for fear of harassment, now runs theInstagram account@abolishgreeklifeuchicago. She said that even on a campus without Greek life, there may still be a need for sorority-like organizations. While several RSOs do cater specifically to women on campus, they are generally oriented toward students interested in particular fields of study, career paths, or political concerns rather than the general interestsocial structure that sororities provide.

I think it would be great to have environments on campus for female-identifying students.Thats one of the main reasons I joined Greek life in the first place, she said. A lot of the same infrastructure could be transferred over to some sort of all-female space on campus thats more inclusive, that doesnt turn people away based on their personality,based on how they look,orif they can pay their dues.

But under these circumstances, such an organization may not be recognizable as Greek life, another moderator of the Instagram account said.

Greek life was founded to exclude, she said. When you start to make a list of all the things that would need to happen for Greek life to be reformedhow do we include people who dont identify within the gender binary? Or people who cant afford to pay dues? How can we make this place more accessible?it starts to unravel all of the things that make Greek life what it is.

This conversation has already begun playing out onUChicagoscampus since the wave of disaffiliations this summer. Some former sorority members have formed a new group for female-identifying students, referred to as the Oak Society, which held recruitment information sessions during the first week of winter quarter and quicklycame under fireon social media for its resemblance to thesororitymany of its members had just left.

Still, some see Greek lifes problems as symptomatic of a deeper issue. A. said she believed that despite the efforts of those running recruitment to bring in primarily rich, straight white women, many of the members of Greek organizations do want to see more students from different backgrounds join. The problem, A. said, was an environment that has long permitted racism to go unquestioneda problem that isnt unique to Greek life.

I think it happens at a lot of RSOs and other organizations on campus, but because its more characteristic of the stereotype of Greek life,were willing to point the finger and say well Im not racist;Im atXXXgroup organization'instead of Kappa Alpha Theta or instead of Sig[ma]Chi, A. said. I think solving this problem doesnt necessarily lie in abolishing Greek life.Itlies in abolishing an environment that allows these things to happen, which is harder work.

A. said she thinks that increased representation from people of color within Greek organizations could lead to a culture shift that makes sororities and fraternities more welcoming places for marginalized students.

I think on aPanhel-wide level there needs to be some checks and balances that place an emphasis on diversity and inclusion across all leadership positions, she said.

During the monthswhenThetas public reckoning played out, members ofUChicagosororities openlydiscussedthe viability and varied historical legacies of Greek life on social media.One AOII Instagram postclaimed that Greek life institutions elitist practices serve to preserve white supremacy within the Greek system.

But UChicagos fraternities largely escaped censure, despite the fact that conversations about University oversight of the Greek system have long centered on fraternities, fueled by a long list of incidents that drew public outcry.

Included in those incidents were examples of overtracism, allegations ofhazing, andsexual assaultat fraternity parties. The University of Chicago, however, refuses to engage questions of regulating Greek organizations because of a long-standing policy of not recognizing Greek organizations.As such, former Theta leadership said that the responsibility for checking fraternity misconduct has commonly fallen toUChicagos Panhellenic Council, to which the sororitiesKappa Alpha Theta, Alpha OmicronPi, Delta Gamma, and Pi Beta Phi all belong. Just as a lack of real self-governing power withheld by the national organization prevented the women of Theta from enacting reforms in their own chapter, sororities lack of power over fraternities can restrict their ability to reform the practices of campus Greek life more broadly.

This arrangement puts sorority women in the position of policing the behavior of fraternity men, with little leverage other than the ability to issue public statements and refuse to participate in social events with fraternities, asthe Panhellenic Councildid with the fraternity Sigma Chi followingallegationsthat it had failed to prevent date-rape drugs from being given to female students at a number of its O-Week parties. This dynamic becomes especially fraught in cases of sexual misconduct, sometimes involving members of thesame sororitieswho are called upon to discipline fraternities for their negligence.

Theres a history at UChicago of [sexual misconduct] not being addressed adequately by fraternities, and I think Panhel has fallen into this role and feels a responsibility, Parker said. Panhel knows better than anyone because its so often women in sororities who are the victims of these types of thingsbecausethey spend the most time atfratsand at parties where sexual assault instances occur.

While declining to say whether this was an accurate characterization of the dynamics between sororities and fraternities on campus, Panhel wrote in a comment toThe Maroonthat our chapters want to provide safe spaces for women to support and empower one another. Members of Fraternities Committed to Safety (FCS) declined to comment.

Looking back on her time in Thetas leadership, Salazar said that she was bothered by how much of sorority social life depended on the cooperation of fraternities, particularly given that UChicago sororities have no houses andare technically prohibited fromserving alcohol.

Because we werent supposed to do anything related to alcohol at all and college kids, for better or for worse, bond over alcohol, we became socially dependent on fraternities for that bonding,for this experience of going out, this experience of partying, Salazar said. They became the holders of the social capital.

That dependence, B. added, limited the ability of sorority leadership to sanction fraternities for bad behavior and to a certain extent ensure the safety of theirown sisters.

The fact that we have to use parties as a bargaining chip to say hey, youve done something wrong is absurd, she said. Its all-around bad that women are being put in this weird position where we have to interact with them, but also police them, but also ask them for money for the philanthropy event.

The situation is made worse, A. said, by the fact that fraternities have no governing body equivalent tothesororities Panhellenic Council empowered to issue regulations across campus. While10campus fraternities (oneof which, Sigma Phi Epsilon,isnow defunct),signed a pledge in2016,formingFCSand agreeing to abide by certain sexual assault prevention and response protocols, the pact contained no real enforcement mechanism forviolators, and FCSs website was inactive as of January 2021.

If one fraternity says something [about reform], another fraternity can say fuck off, Im doing this instead, A.said. Its definitely a lower level of accountability for fraternities.

The durability of Greek institutions is a result ofnot onlythe ready-made social scene they provide to members, butalsoof thefinancial, social, and culturalcapital invested in the institutions. Those seeking to topple the centuries-old institution face significant obstacles in the deep pockets and broad alumni networks that fraternities and sororities command.

On the national level, sororities and fraternities cycle through many millions of dollars yearly. For the 2017-18 fiscal year, Kappa Alpha Thetas national organization reported $58 million in revenue,and spent close to that amount. The funds are channeled into a number of areas: chapter programming, philanthropic fundraising, scholarships, and costs of housing, along with maintaining the national leadership apparatus.

The incentivesforjoining Greek life also render abolition an uphill battle. At UChicago, fraternity housing is one potentially significant perk of joining Greek life, and housing corporations control a flow of cash through both membership dues and alumni donations. The Chi Upsilon Alumni Association, which manages housing forUChicagoschapter of Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji),reported revenue in the hundreds of thousands in 2017, as did the Midway Educational Foundation, a separate organization that funded improvements to Fijis house.

Fraternities and sororities loyal alumni networks are powerful incentives for a prospective member, posing an additional challenge to Greek life abolitionists. The names of UChicago Greek lifes most prominent donors are familiar to any student from the names of houses and University programs: billionaire trustee Byron Trott (Fiji), wealth manager BernardDelGiorno (Fiji),Jeff Metcalfof the Metcalf Internship Program (Fiji), trustee Gregory Wendt (Alpha Delta Phi),andhedge fund manager John Thaler (Psi Upsilon). Greeklifealumni are expected to leverage their career success in order to give students and recent graduates from their fraternity a leg upPsi Upsilons 2013 Member Education Guide, for example, encourages alumni to offer mentorship and summer internships to current brothers.

The national network of Greek life also has a political arm. The Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, also known as FratPAC, funds election campaigns of Greek life alumni and lobbies members of Congress to support the interests of Greek life (including, notably, theiroppositionto a 2013 anti-hazing bill).

FratPACdonates to candidates across the political spectrum, ranging fromVice President Kamala Harris to SenateMinorityLeader Mitch McConnell. While most ofFratPACsdonors are individuals or individual fraternity and sorority chapters, some subsidiaries of national Greek organizations contribute as well, such asthePi Beta Phi(Pi Phi)sorority and Delta Gammas Fraternity Housing Corporation. While the legal restrictions and cash flows are complicatedPi BetaPhi, for instance,stateson its website that it draws its donations from alumnae dues rather than collegiate ones and doesnt contribute directly to campaignsthe financial links between Greek organizations andFratPACslobbying activities on Capitol Hill have raised a chorus ofobjectionsfrom studentsto the political uses of their dues. These political commitments of Greek organizations havegalvanizedcampus activists calling for abolition.

In addition to economic and political influence, however, Greek organizations rely on a particular kind of cultural power for their enduring place in campus life.According toTulane University professor Lisa Wade,who studies sexual culture on college campuses andhascalledfor the abolition of fraternities and sororities, the centralityof Greek lifeto narratives of the college experience in itself helps perpetuate the Greek system.

You have these two prongs of power,[one being]economic power,which is the resources that many of these historically white fraternities and sororities have to make themselves seem indispensable to a college, Wade said. But they also have this cultural power, where this state of affairs that advantages this particular group seems normal. It just seems normal and right.

According to Wade, the concentration of social power in fraternities originally founded as exclusively white, wealthy, and male organizations is somewhat paradoxically responsible for the expansion of the Greek system to women and students of color. Given that history, Wade questions whether the boundaries of that system can be further expanded and made truly inclusive without overhauling Greek lifes defining features.

The fraternities became the model for what it looks like to organize around an identity and lift eachother up. It was because fraternities had so much power that we saw women forming their own fraternities, that we see students of color forming their own fraternities and sororities, that we see Jewish fraternities and sororities, Wade said. Its not because theres anything special about this word or these organizations.The copycatting was because of the power that these white men held.

According to Wade, dismantling Greek institutions starts with acknowledging that maintaining them is a choice,rather than an inevitable outcome oranecessary part of college life.

We need to start asking:Fraternities offer us a lot, they bring in money and other things, but what is the cost? Wade said. Part of the way we do that is[by]exposing this cultural lie weve been told [about the necessity of fraternities].

The groundswell of student activism that rippled across college campuses in recent months encouraged Wade, who saw both abolitionist activists outsideand students inside Greek life working to reform their organizations or leaving them as signs of the potential for change.

I think students are deciding for themselves whether or not they want these institutions, and I see a lot of potential there for what might happen, Wade said. People in Greek life responding by disaffiliating is such an incredibly powerful thing to do. It gives other people a permission structure, the permission to say, Hey, actually, I dont love this either.

Despite the frustrations Salazar encountered and herownchoice to leave Theta, she said that many women who chose to remain sorority members are working to accomplish the changes she found impossibleto make.

There are a lot of women,and women of color especially,who really want to make change and feel some level of institutional support for that.Whether thats support for pureP.R.purposes or [if] thats genuine support,I dont know, Salazar said. Theres this belief that we can make the change;the question is whether or not they can. Will this work? I dont know.

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Founded to Exclude: Greek Life, UChicago Theta, and the Push for Abolition - The Chicago Maroon

Joe Biden is the first president in U.S. history to openly campaign on abolishing the death penalty and win. Now that hes in the White House, pressure is already mounting from activists and lawmakers for him to fulfill that promise.

Pointing to the more than 160 Americans whove been exonerated from death sentences since 1973, Biden pledged on the campaign trail to work to pass legislation eliminating the federal death penalty and incentivize states to follow. Former President Trumps Department of Justice had been run with a polar opposite view: In the last seven months of his presidency, the Trump administration oversaw the most federal civilian executions since 1896, putting to death 13 death row prisoners amid a raging pandemic and despite a litany of legal challenges. Six of the deaths came after Bidens win in the 2020 election, the most executions during a presidential transition period in U.S. history. The last threethose of Lisa Montgomery, Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgstook place mere days before Biden took his oath of office.

The unprecedented spree of executions brought increased focus to the issue right as Biden assumed the presidency. On Jan. 22, U.S. Representatives Cori Bush and Ayanna Pressley, along with 35 other Democratic House members, sent a letter to Biden urging him to commute the death sentences of all 49 people remaining on federal death row.

We appreciate your vocal opposition to the death penalty and urge you to take swift, decisive action, the letter reads, arguing that while President Obama suspended federal executions and commuted the sentences of two federal death row prisons while in office, his administrations reticence to commute more death sentences has allowed the Trump administration to reverse course and pursue a horrifying killing spree.

Read more: The Death of the Death Penalty

Commuting the death sentences of those on death row and ensuring that each person is provided with an adequate and unique re-sentencing process is a crucial first step in remedying this grave injustice, the letter goes on.

Biden did not address the issue during his very first days in office, but a Jan. 19 memo from then-incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said that, between Jan. 25 and Feb. 1, the President would sign several execution orders including action to begin fulfilling campaign promises related to reforming our criminal justice system.

Its unclear what exact orders Biden might issue; asked by TIME for more details, the Biden administration declined to comment. But Robert Dunham, the executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, says there are a range of things that [Biden] can do that would have the effect of clearing death row and stopping federal prosecutions.

Heres what to know about what could happen to the federal death penalty in a Biden administration.

My working assumption is that the Biden White House and the judiciary committees will want to incorporate the elimination of the death penalty in a larger criminal justice and sentencing reform measure, writes Steven S. Smith, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis, in an email to TIME. That bill will take time to construct, although the Biden campaign had [a] long itemized list that can serve as the framework.

At any time during his presidency, Biden has the power to issue a blanket executive order commuting the sentences of all 49 people on federal death row to life without parole. He could also declare a moratorium on all federal executions via an executive order, similar to the one issued by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 that halted executions in his state. The move would mostly be symbolicas it wouldnt extend past Bidens termbut like Californias moratorium, the order could serve as an admission about how broken the system is, says Dunham. Like Newsom, Biden could also withdraw the governments execution protocol and dismantle the execution chamber where prisoners are killed.

In a Dec. 15 letter, Pressley and 44 other lawmakers had urged Biden to issue such a moratorium his first day in office, as well as to direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to stop seeking the death penalty. (There have been several periods in history where the U.S. government hasnt sought capital punishment in sentencing, but never due to an executive order from the president.) Biden could also withdraw any notices of intent to seek the death penalty that the Trump administration had already filed in ongoing cases, effectively de-capitalizing them, says Dunham.

Only Congress can officially end the federal death penalty with an act of legislation. Several prominent Democrats have already introduced bills to do just that: in early January, Rep. Pressley and Rep. Adriano Espaillat each introduced their own bill into the House of Representatives to eliminate the federal death penalty; Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the incoming Senate Judiciary Chair, has announced plans to introduce a companion bill to Pressleys into the Senate. The legislation would end the death sentence at the federal level and require the re-sentencing of federal prisoners currently on death row.

A June 2020 Gallup poll found that 54% of Americans believe the death penalty is morally acceptable, a record low since Gallup began polling on the issue in 2001. And while opposition to the death penalty has become more bipartisan at the state level, it still tends to fall along party lines in national politics.

With Democrats now also in control of the U.S. Senatedue to a 50-50 split and Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaking votethe legislations chances of becoming law have risen, but still remain in flux.

I dont think a federal definitely abolition bill is going to get through the Senate of the United States, says Austin Sarat, a professor of law and politics at Amherst College. It seems unlikely, he explains, that the current makeup of Congress will provide the 60 votes needed to override the Senate filibuster and get the bill onto Bidens desk. But these bills are still important, he continues, because they further signify increasing doubts about the death penalty in the United States.

Lawmakers could separately amend the federal death penalty statue to eliminate several of the federal crimes currently punishable by death. They could also change the appellate process for federal capital cases, which has fewer constitutional protections than those appealed at the state level, argues Dunham. And along similar lines, Congress could also past legislation requiring stays of executions be granted if there are issues of disputed law or fact in the case, so that the United States Supreme Court cannot allow an execution to go forward when there are doubts about its legality.

During the 13 federal executions in the last months of the Trump administration, several high profile casesincluding those of Lisa Montgomery and Brandon Bernardwere granted stays by lower courts to allow time for legal hearings, only for those stays to be overruled by the Supreme Court.

Theres a sense [that] the current U.S. Supreme Court pretty much acted as a rubber stamp, Dunham adds. It didnt matter what the legal issues were, they were always decided in favor of executing prisoners.

Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of the anti-death penalty advocacy group Death Penalty Action, says his organization wants to see movement to abolish federal capital punishment within the first 100 days of the Biden administration. And while issuing an executive order would be an important step, it wouldnt be enough, Bonowitz says.

Abolition fits squarely into the racial reckoning that has to happen, and just basic recognition of the unfairness of the system, he continues. The Biden administration should do what they said theyre going to do.

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Write to Madeleine Carlisle at madeleine.carlisle@time.com.

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What Happens to the Federal Death Penalty in a Biden Administration? - TIME

Until yesterday, Joe Bidens agenda was stalled in the Senate by a primal conflict over power.

The context was negotiations over how the two parties would navigate their 50-50 split. While, as majority leader, Chuck Schumer would control the legislative calendar, he offered to divide committee membership equally under Democratic chairsreplicating the arrangement in 2001 when there was an evenly divided Senate with a Republican vice president. Incredibly, the newly demoted Mitch McConnell responded by demanding that Democrats agree not to abolish the filibuster.

The requirement of a 60-vote supermajority had enabled McConnell to stonewall Barack Obamas legislative agenda. Yet he blithely repackaged it as a lubricant for bipartisanship while striving to re-empower his party, once more, with a legislative stranglehold on another Democratic presidenteffectively requesting that Schumer and his caucus become senatorial castrati.

Unsurprisingly, Schumer declined. Knowing that Schumer could use an arcane maneuver to pass the organizing resolution by a bare majority, McConnell ultimately yielded. But by then he had achieved his goal: moving moderate Democrats from red statesJoe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Jon Testerto expressly oppose abolishing the filibuster, underscoring the partys divisions and the vulnerability of Bidens agenda.

The unanimous support of Schumers caucus is the mathematical prerequisite for changing the Senates rules and, therefore, abolition. Still, he at least retained the threat should the GOP prove obstructive, and the moderates backed his refusal to cave.

This suggests the possibility, however dim, that scorched-earth opposition could affect their thinkingespecially if it scotches proposals popular with crucial constituencies. As Tester told the New York Times: If all that happens is filibuster after filibuster, roadblock after roadblock, then my opinion may change. This augurs the three-dimensional chess ahead, and the prospects of two different Biden presidencies: consequential or ineffectual.

To be sure, Biden can enact much of his COVID-19 stimulus package through budget reconciliation, a means of passing fiscal measures with a simple majority. But reconciliation has real limitations: It does not apply to most legislation, and on spending measures can be used only once a year. Moreover, turning Bidens stimulus plan into a meaningful package with majority support will prove more than challenging enough.

Beyond that, the GOP can use the filibuster to block major Democratic initiatives. Heres a representative sample: a $15 an hour minimum wage; comprehensive immigration reform; repairing the Voting Rights Act; strengthening the right to join a union; granting statehood to Washington, D.C. and, perhaps, Puerto Rico; enacting ethics and campaign finance reform; curbing gerrymanders; and passing initiatives to combat racial inequities in law enforcement.

Among most Democrats, particularly progressives, these proposals are popular. But query whether their death by filibuster would move red-state moderates to sign on for abolition. It seems equally likely that the artful threat of filibusters could divide the Democratic caucusnot just over the filibuster itself but over what legislative compromises with Republicans, if any, are acceptable.

This prescription could doom much of Bidens agenda, and make McConnell the most powerful minority leader in memory. To reinforce his leverage, yesterday McConnell threatened that Democratic efforts to eliminate the filibuster would destroy any hope of comity and create a legislative wasteland:

But suppose that Republican obstreperousness created a critical mass among Democrats. If they could abolish the filibuster, should they?

As Jonathan V. Last spelled out on Mondayits complicated.

First, the equities. Even without the filibuster, the structure of the Senate itself frustrates popular democracy by giving each state two votes. Due to demographic sorting, the 50 Republican senators represent nearly 42 million fewer people than the 50 Democrats; the 41 Republicans necessary to sustain a filibuster reflect a relative fraction of our populace.

This is a prescription for quashing popular legislation and imposing legislative stasisMcConnells specialty. Given that restructuring the Senate would require a constitutional amendment supported by the very states it overrepresents, the only way of making the Senate less undemocratic is eliminating the filibuster. Those who laud the filibuster as a safeguard against the tyranny of the majority enshrine the tyranny of a minority.

So why should Democrats keep it? First, because legislation which survives the filibuster is more apt to endure. Second, given the advantages which may create a Republican majority two years hence, Democrats could constrain it through the filibuster.

But consider history and human nature. When Democrats tried to filibuster Neil Gorsuch, McConnell and his caucus simply killed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. Can anyone seriously argue that McConnell wouldnt once again invoke this nuclear option whenever it suited him?

Moreover, during Trumps presidency Senate Democrats could not use the filibuster to frustrate the GOPs major goals. Republicans tax cuts passed through reconciliation; the slew of judges they confirmed were no longer subject to the filibuster. Given the GOPs general lack of enthusiasm for governance, the filibuster affects them less than Democrats.

In this moment, there is an urgent need for Joe Biden to reinvigorate democracy by making government work for the greater good. If the Democrats dont succeedor at least do their damnedestwhere would that leave us? In the hands of a party which will do its worstor nothingperhaps despoiling Americas last, best chance to do better.

If Democrats garner the votes to kill the filibuster, they should.

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Can Democrats Abolish the Filibusterand Should They? - The Bulwark

Submitted by DLC

Outspoken political leader and renowned author Angela Davis is scheduled to deliver the Distinguished Lectures Committee's first lecture of 2021 on Tuesday, February 16 at 7:00 p.m.

Outspoken political leader and renowned author Angela Davis is scheduled to deliver the Distinguished Lectures Committee's first lecture of 2021 at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb.16. The lecture will be virtual and a link will be accessible on the Distinguished Lectures Committee's website prior to the event.

For over 50 years, Angela Davis has been recognized as a committed torchbearer in the struggle for economic, racialand gender justice. A professor, activist, and cultural icon, Davis' voice has been and continues to be instrumental to social reform. She is the author of 10 books, including recent works Are Prisons Obsolete? and a collection of essays, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement.

"I am not only excited to bring a voice as influential and didactic as Angela Davis to our campus, but to see how her ideas and personal experiences can be applied to our daily lives and our university," saidMichael Fuhrman, vice chair of the Distinguished Lectures Committee.

Davis has taught at a number of American colleges and universities including San Francisco State University, Mills College, and UC Berkeley. She currently serves as the Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and of Feminist Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. In addition to teaching in the classroom, Davis has shared her expertise and scholarship in lectures throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and South America. Central to her work as an educator are her own experiences as a leading activist of the seventies. Davis' recent activism is dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex. She founded the prison system abolition organization Critical Resistance in 1997, and she works closely with the abolitionist group Sisters Inside in Queensland, Australia.

This lecture will be moderated by Yvette Murphy-Irby, vice chancellor of diversity and inclusion and professor of social work at the University of Arkansas. Additionally, Murphy-Erby has held former appointments at the University of Arkansas as the director of the School of Social Work in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, director of the Bachelor of Social Work Program, associate director of the School of Social Work, associate dean of social sciences in Fulbright Colleges and interim director for the African and African American Studies Program.

This Distinguished Lecture will be presented as part of "Envisioning Justice: The Current Faces of Social Justice in America,"a virtual conference featuring a series of lectures from experts in racial, religious, and institutional discrimination. The event will be held Feb.16-17 and is co-sponsored by Volunteer Action Center, Associated Student Government, Distinguished Lectures Committee, and Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education. Registration and more information can be found at https://givepul.se/y5ek8d.

The Distinguished Lectures Committee decides which dynamic and pertinent speakers to bring to the University of Arkansas campus. These speaking engagements are completely free to all students. Some of the speakers brought over the past few years have included President George H.W. Bush, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, soccer star Abby Wambach, author Malcolm Gladwell, scientist Jane Goodall, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiesel, Bill Nyeand John Legend.

This event is sponsored by Distinguished Lectures Committee through the Office of Student Activities and is supported by the Student Activities Fee. For questions or for accommodations due to disability please contact the Office of Student Activities, osa@uark.edu or call 479-575-5255. Distinguished Lectures Committee is a program in the Division of Student Affairs.

About the Division of Student Affairs: The Division of Student Affairs supports students in pursuing knowledge, earning a degree, finding meaningful careers, exploring diversity, and connecting with the global community. We provide students housing, dining, health care resources, and create innovative programs that educate and inspire. We enhance the University of Arkansas experience and help students succeed, one student at a time.

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University Welcomes Activist and Author Angela Davis for First Distinguished Lecture of 2021 - University of Arkansas Newswire

Many things, large and small, have changed over the last four years. World leaders have come and gone. Important books have been written. Our planet has experienced a pandemic. We have both retired.

But some things dont change. The opening of the Iowa legislative session sees the introduction of a bill by Senator Brad Zaun proposing the abolition of tenure at our states public universities. To date, this years version has advanced from the House education sub-committee to the full committee. Chapters of the American Association of University Professors at all three of Iowas state universities oppose the bill. AAUPs reasons for opposing it remain much as they were four years ago. Here they are as published in February 2017, the top ten ways tenure benefits students and all Iowans:

10. Tenure promotes stability. It enables the development of communities of scholars who devote themselves to the long-term pursuit of new knowledge and ongoing mentoring of students and beginning scholars.

9. Tenure routinizes intensive evaluation of faculty members work. In the American academic community, tenure is a sign that a scholar has completed scholarly work at the highest level. To gain it, emerging scholars willingly undergo a series of grueling reviews of their scholarship, teaching, and service. If successful in earning tenure, they can expect ongoing annual evaluations and intensive periodic post-tenure reviews in order to maintain it.

8. Tenure permits independent inquiry. It ensures an environment in which scholars pursue research and innovation, and arrive at reliable, evidence-based conclusions free from commercial or political pressure.

7. Tenure encourages first-rate teaching. It permits scholars to bring their findings and research methods directly into the classroom, informing and inspiring Iowas future scholars and community leaders.

6. Tenure promotes effective faculty recruitment and retention. Were tenure to be prohibited, Iowa public universities would have a difficult time attracting and retaining the most promising teachers and scholars to work in our state and teach our students.

5. Tenure helps the economy. It is not, as some claim, a job for life. A tenured professor may be discharged for malfeasance or, sometimes, for financial exigency. Yet the security tenure provides is valuable and induces many highly credentialed scholars and professionals to forgo more highly paid employment elsewhere in industry or the private sector to work here in Iowa, teaching our future community leaders.

4. Tenure fosters students creativity and analytical skills. In classrooms led by faculty insulated from commercial and political pressures, students may examine important issues from a variety of perspectives and arrive at conclusions based on information and their own values.

3. Tenure advantages Iowa communities. It encourages scholars to contribute their expertise to the communities in which they live when issues related to their work arise, because they may do so without political or commercial pressures. An example of this could be seen in Flint, Michigan as issues with polluted water arose.

2. Tenure increases the value of Iowa degrees. It enhances the academic standing and economic value of degrees from Iowas public universities in national and international markets. Currently, Iowas universities are of such stature that they attract international attention from leaders of industry and the professions as well as academics. If Iowa were to prohibit tenure and be hampered in its efforts to hire and retain the most promising professors, regard for graduates of Iowas public universities would decline accordingly.

And the Number 1 reason tenure benefits students and all Iowans: Tenure is indispensable to academic freedom. It allows professors the independence to do the best work they are capable of doing without fear that they will be fired for their opinions or conclusions.

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Letter to the editor: Top 10 ways tenure benefits students and all Iowans - Little Village

MICHIGAN Tuesday afternoon, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring the Department of Justice not to renew contracts with private prisons and facilities. Biden said he did it an effort to address and fix systemic racism in America.

Activist Ed Genesis of Kalamazoo was excited to see it.

I feel hopeful just seeing this, Genesis said during a Zoom interview on Wednesday afternoon. Private prisons was just wrong, period; just for somebody to be able to invest or build something for the pure gain of capitalism.

Years ago, Genesis served an eight-month jail sentence and also did several stints at various halfway homes. Now, hes currently the lead organizer for criminal justice reform on the west side of the state for Michigan United, a nonprofit dedicated to economic and racial justice.

When I first got into the work I would always downplay and say, Well Ive only been to jail, Genesis recalled. The guy that did 35 years, he told me he said, Man, they took your freedom the way they took mine. They just had us in different facilities.

That conversation always stuck with Genesis, he said. He believes that private prisons and other facilities were created for the sole purpose of making money, and it unfairly targeted poor people and communities of color. Those communities then became the face of mass incarceration.

RELATED: Biden outlines plan to promote racial equity, signs EOs aimed at police reform

America makes up just 5 percent of the world population but makes up an alarming close to 26 percent of incarcerated people, he said. The numbers are just ridiculous. Everybody can go to jail.

University of Michigan Ann Arbor Law Professor Margo Schlanger agreed that the number of people in prison is extreme. She said in the 1970s, the overall prison population spiked but has plateaued over the last decade.

Theres now a really broad agreement that that number is too high. You dont have to believe in abolishing prisons to think that some people are doing too much time for crimes that occurred a long time ago, Schlanger said during an interview with FOX 17 Wednesday morning over Zoom. I think the thing that is next is considering whos in prison and whether they really need to be there and trying to be smart about the use of what is a very damaging set of institutions.

While Schlanger applauded President Biden for fulfilling his promise to act on racial equity and criminal justice reform, she stated that the order only impacts private prisons on the federal level.

That level is more privatized than most systems, she said, and its only 10 percent. She added that the order does not cover ICE detainees.

The Bureau of Prisons has really found that its private prisons are less humane, and they provide less appropriate conditions of confinement than the public ones. And so I think its really important that theyre acting on that finding, Schlanger said. This is not the end of mass incarceration. This is not closing the prisons. This is not prison abolition. Its an incremental reform that is carrying out a promise that the administration made during the campaign.

Genesis said hes grateful that Biden signed the order. It motivates him to continue to do his best work. Currently, he and Michigan United are working on ending the school-to-prison pipeline. However, for now, Bidens decision to end contracts with private prisons he sees as a positive step forward.

Just to hear somebody, especially President Joe Biden, who spoke very candidly on the crime bill in the 90s, for him to make this step, it does make me feel hopeful, Genesis said. This is like, OK, yeah, youre making a step in the right direction,' and this is a huge step in the right direction.

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President ending contracts with federal private prisons a step in the right direction - Fox17

Viewpoint by Soka Gakkai President Minoru Harada

Following is the text of a press release President Harada welcoming the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on January 22, 2021.

TOKYO (IDN) Together with the members of the Soka Gakkai worldwide, I wholeheartedly welcome the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on January 22, 2021. The entry into force of the TPNW heralds the start of the end of the nuclear era and marks a significant step forward toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

I would like to express my deepest respect and appreciation to all those who have struggled for years toward the shared objective of ridding this world of nuclear weapons, including the worlds hibakusha, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and others in the international NGO community.

The Soka Gakkai has long been committed to the prohibition and abolition of nuclear weapons as its social mission and responsibility. Our efforts have been inspired by second Soka Gakkai president Josei Todas declaration, issued on September 8, 1957, calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and harshly condemning them as a threat to the right of the worlds people to live.

Toda shared the resolve of the first president of the Soka Gakkai, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who died in prison having fought for the sake of peace and human rights, never succumbing to pressure from the Japanese military government during World War II.

The spirit of Todas declaration was then inherited by Daisaku Ikeda, third president of the organization, who has denounced nuclear weapons as an absolute evil and dedicated his life to building the foundations for lasting peace. We are determined to continue to work to realize our founding presidents resolve to realize a world free from nuclear weapons.

Under President Ikedas leadership, members of the Soka Gakkai and Soka Gakkai International (SGI) have devoted ourselves to grassroots initiatives to eliminate nuclear weapons, efforts driven by the passion and energy of youthful future leaders.

These efforts, with their consistent focus on one-to-one dialogue, include the organizing of antinuclear exhibitions and symposia, campaigns to collect signatures and the publication of the testimonies of atomic bomb survivors. The SGI has actively collaborated with other NGOs, civil society actors and faith-based organizations (FBOs) around the world toward this common goal. The TPNWs entry into force is the culmination of the long, persistent struggle of citizens from around the world coming together in solidarity. It is our hope and conviction that it will become a significant milestone on the path to nuclear abolition.

Threats to global peace and security are multifaceted and complex. As SGI President Ikeda has repeatedly argued in his annual peace proposals, the world must shift from a traditional state-centred understanding of national security to a more fundamental and authentic approach to security-focused on protecting peoples lives and dignity. From that perspective, it is clear that prohibiting and abolishing nuclear weapons from this world is the surest and most realistic path to lasting security for humankind.

The Soka Gakkai has always placed foremost importance on standing with the people. Japan is the only country to have suffered the wartime use of nuclear weapons. We, therefore, express our strong desire that Japan participate as an observer in the first meeting of States Parties of the TPNW with the goal of creating the conditions that will make its ratification of the treaty possible. Japan should assume a leading role in advancing the prohibition and abolition of nuclear weapons by bridging the deep divisions that now exist between the nuclear-weapon states, nuclear-dependent states and the non-nuclear-weapon states.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons represents a pragmatic vision for achieving a world free from nuclear weapons. Along with the legal and institutional establishment of the treaty, it is crucial that its animating spirit and vision be widely disseminated and received. This is a challenging undertaking that must be driven and sustained by hope and faith in the power of the people.

The TPNWs entry into force is the occasion for redoubling our efforts to build global solidarity among people who seek a world without nuclear weapons. As heirs to the spiritual legacy to which our organizations three founding presidents dedicated their lives, the members of the Soka Gakkai will continue to take action and engage in dialogue toward the goal of constructing the defences of peace in the hearts of individuals everywhere. [IDN-InDepthNews 24 January 2021]

Photo: ICAN campaigners protest in Sydney, Australia on 22 January. Credit: Michelle Haywood. Photo (in the text): Minoru Harada | Credit: Keikyo Shimbun

IDN is flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate.

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Global Buddhist Network Heralds Entry into Force of Nuclear Ban Treaty - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

This is the second installment of a two-part digital series. You can read the first story here.

URBANA On a Friday night in late October of last year, University of Illinois police Officer Kyle Krickovich began his shift at 10 p.m. it would last until 8 a.m. patrolling the east side of the University of Illinois Urbana campus. During the four hours I spent with him, he spotted two students whose car ran out of gas, and helped them push the vehicle into a parking spot. He offered to give them a ride to the gas station, but they declined. Later, he extinguished a large dumpster fire roaring next to an apartment building in Urbana. Around 2 a.m., he pulled over a group of teenagers whose car drove straight through a turn only lane. He wrote the driver a ticket because it was the second time he had been cited for the same offense.

Listen to Illinois Newsroom Reporter Lee Gaines interview experts in alternative forms of justice:

It was an admittedly slow night, Krickovich said. But not all nights are like this. Krickovich recounts a situation in which he was called to assist a victim in a shooting incident near campus.

I put a tourniquet on his leg to, you know, hopefully stop the bleeding and, you know, kind of keep him with us until the ambulance or EMF personnel could get there to take over and get him to the hospital. So thats one of the ones thats like, definitely your hearts pumping and racing, he said.

Krickovich, who is in his mid 20s, has been a UIPD officer for about three years. But some students and community activists at the U of I campus want his job eliminated, and the roughly $8.2 million the department receives annually diverted to other services for students, like mental healthcare and alternative forms of justice. Its a part of a growing national movement to defund campus cops, which has taken root at other institutions in Illinois, Connecticut, California and Michigan. At the U of I, students say campus cops over police students of color, and they dont feel protected or served by the agency. Data obtained via a Freedom of Information Act Request shows that more than half of the people physically taken to jail by UIPD officers between 2016 and 2019 were Black.

Krickovich said this kind of activism isnt new, but he said a lot more people became involved after George Floyd was killed. Floyd, a Black man, was killed by police in Minneapolis last May, sparking global protests and invigorating a police abolition movement on university campuses. When I interviewed him last fall, Krickovich said he hadnt seen the entire cell phone video that a bystander took of a police officer kneeling on Floyds neck until he died. But he said the incident changed the way he thought about his job.

Im just constantly reminding myself that, you know, I got hired, essentially, to work for the people of this community. You know, theyve entrusted me with a very interesting and powerful position, he said.

Krickovich received his basic training for the job at the University of Illinois Police Training Institute (PTI), which serves not only U of I police officers but also recruits from law enforcement agencies around the state. The institute claims to be unique among police training organizations nationwide.

We consider ourselves very progressive, said Michael Schlosser, the director of PTI and a former police officer himself. Weve created a lot of new courses and done things that I think have always been kind of in line with police reform.

Once hired, police recruits including university police officers are mandated to complete 14 weeks of training and pass a final exam at one of seven police academies in Illinois. That training includes a 650-hour curriculum created by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board with an extensive list of subjects, ranging from community and social media relations to crisis intervention, investigations, defensive tactics, officer wellness and 40 hours of scenario based training that includes role playing police-related incidents, among many other topics. And the training doesnt stop there. Once theyve completed basic training, recruits are sent back to their departments where on-the-job training continues, which includes a probation period typically lasting between a year and a half to two years, Schlosser said.

He said the curriculum was updated several years ago to include mandated de-escalation training, which most academies already teach in some form. But Schlosser said theres now an increased focus on training for mental health crises, implicit bias awareness and cultural competency.

He said most police officers are good people who also want reform. Schlosser said most were also infuriated by the killing of George Floyd.

I cant think of any officers in this area that would not have only said, get off their neck, they would have shoved him off his neck, because that benefits both the arrestee and the officers. Its just the right thing to do, he said.

The reforms required are systemic, and run the gamut from being able to fire an officer who has committed harm without intervention from police unions, making sure theyre unable to get a job as a cop elsewhere, to additional training, Schlosser said.

I think its obvious in our society, in America, that we have to own and be aware that every person has certain assumptions, biases and stereotypes, he said. Tackling those implicit biases involves getting to know people from different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds when youre not pulling them over or arresting them. And, of course, through training.

But Schlosser draws the line at abolition. He said he can completely understand and respect peoples views that police should be eliminated, or disarmed or prevented from responding to certain types of incidents. But he said without police, crime will increase.

I just dont understand how you cant have police. But we can do a better job of what that looks like, Schlosser said.

Work with us

UIPD Officer Krickovich said he realized his decision to become a university police officer was the right one while a recruit in training at PTI. Krickovich is in his mid 20s. He grew up in the area going to U of I sporting events with family, and he attended Parkland Community College in Champaign. Krickovich said he completed his bachelors degree at the U of I while working as a civilian for the campus police department part-time. After he decided engineering wasnt the career for him, he said he was inspired by his uncle, a retired deputy with the county sheriffs department, to become a police officer.

While at PTI, Krickovich met other recruits from departments across the state, and it solidified my choice in working for the university, you know, we do things different than maybe a city or like a county would.

Like Schlosser, Krickovich said change is necessary. While he cant support abolition, Krickovich said police, including campus officers, are asked to address too many things, from homelessness to mental health.

You know, we do so much. I dont think the right message is defund us, its work with us. Lets find other money to enact that change.

Krickovich said if police werent responsible for addressing so many of societys and the university communitys problems, then, maybe, you wont need as many officers like him.

No one gets into this job to not help people or to hurt people, you know, thats not what any of us are here to do, Krickovich said. We want to see everyone succeed. And I was a student here, I know what it was like to be a student here. Ive lived in the community for such a long time. This is home.

Foundationally violent

As the movement to abolish campus police gains momentum at campuses across the country, Dylan Rodrguez hopes it doesnt get watered down. Rodrguez is a professor of media and culture studies at the University of California Riverside, and hes also a member of a faculty-led group advocating for the elimination of university police across all UC campuses by this coming fall.

What is interesting to me about the moment were in now is how much traction the term and concept, abolition, actually has with people, he said.

Rodrguez said hes been an abolitionist for the last 25 years. He traces the roots of his activism back to the late 1990s, when he met the author and civil rights activist Angela Davis, who served as one of his graduate school instructors at UC Berkeley. He said she became a mentor. Rodrguez said he began to understand the prison industrial complex as an instrument of genocide against Black and brown communities.

They talked about it in terms of how that structure, how the prison industrial complex and policing, were eliminating entire sectors of their communities. They were destroying families. They were inhibiting, if not exterminating, the capacity to socially reproduce, he recounts.

At its core, Rodrguez said policing is foundationally violent, foundationally anti-Black, foundationally colonialist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic.

In order to address that foundational violence, what you actually need to do is destroy the existing system and recreate the world so its a creative project, he explains.

Collective safety and justice through the lens of abolition looks like a world in which historically marginalized and vulnerable people i.e. Black, indigenous and transgender individuals are prioritized rather than victimized, Rodrguez said.

Rodrguez said college campuses are an excellent place to experiment with new and inclusive forms of justice that attempt to address the conditions that result in crime before it actually happens.

We dont want better reactions to this stuff [from police], we actually want a form of security and community and accountability that addresses the problems at their root, at their cause were talking about institutionalizing that kind of structure

Targeting this kind of activism at the elimination of campus policing is strategically important in the mission to abolish police and the prison industrial complex altogether; colleges and universities are places where the creative side of abolitionist work could actually take root sooner rather than later, Rodrguez said.

Theres an opportunity at these sites to do that work, and to do it in the absence of an armed police force. I think thats at the best of it. Thats what I see happening right now, Rodriguez said.

Repairing harm

I struggled to find any colleges or universities that had actually defunded and disbanded their police forces. However, I found at least two campuses that have changed the way they approach crime and punishment.

The University of Colorado Boulder has used restorative justice since about 2000, although the program has grown significantly in size and scope in recent years. Last year, more than 1,000 students at the campus went through some form of a restorative justice process, according to Tyler Keyworth, the campus director for restorative justice and conflict resolution. Keyworth said the program tackles a range of offenses everything from the use of a fake ID to felony burglary and assault cases. The campus partners with the municipal court system and campus police department, which refer certain cases to the program, along with the campus office of student conduct and conflict resolution.

Keyworth defines restorative justice as a process that engages the people most directly involved with an incident that caused harm, and helping them to talk through what happened in the incident, what harm or impact was caused, and what they can do to make things right to the greatest extent possible.

In order to participate, students have to own up to and take responsibility for whatever it is theyve been accused of, Keyworth said. If someone was impacted by the students actions, theyre invited to participate in the process. Otherwise, the process is staffed by volunteers, who could be students, staff, alumni or residents of Boulder, Keyworth explains.

And then in that process, people are addressing three main things: what happened, what harm or impact was caused, and what can be done to make things right, he said.

Restorative justice is not a replacement for campus police, said Devin Cramer, assistant dean of students at CU Boulder. But the concept has changed the way the community addresses harm for the better, he said.

We have the police, we have the university, we have the city attorneys office and the municipal courts all bought into this concept of repairing harm as opposed to punitive measures like locking people up or excluding them from educational settings. And I think that changes the mindset of everyone whos working in the system, Cramer said.

He said its not a cure-all for the mistrust that may exist between students and their respective campuses, but its proved successful at CU Boulder, and something hed like to see expanded to other institutions.

I think that the more people we can get into a mindset of harm repair instead of punishment, I hope that that would result in systems, you know, improving.

Scholars and activists say a similar but different type of work is needed to fix systemic problems. Its called transformative justice, and students at U of I calling for the abolishment of campus police want to establish the practice on their campus.

Dara Kwayera ImaniBayer is the transformative justice program coordinator at Brown University.

This particular position doesnt exist really anywhere else. It was created by student organizingthe position is very new, even in concept, she said.

Transformative justice is defined by Bayer as a set of practices and principles created by communities that have been impacted by state-sanctioned violence, like LGBTQ, disabled, migrant, indigenous, Black and sex worker communities, as a means to address violence and create positive change in society without perpetuating violence. Transformative justice as a framework also recognizes that institutions, including police, have themselves caused harm, she explains.

Bayer said the program at Brown which began less than 2 years ago includes training a small cohort of students to practice transformative justice in their own communities. It also addresses interpersonal harm on campus through community accountability processes.

Its really about not just addressing an interpersonal dynamic around harm, but seeing how thats connected to the conditions and structures and violence that may have facilitated harm, Bayer said. She said the practice allows communities to solve problems on their terms in ways that arent punitive but constructive.

Bayer acknowledges that transformative justice typically takes place outside the confines of an institution, and its tricky to practice it within the context of a university. But she said its possible, though it requires what she calls radical imagination.

Because weve been told over and over again in our schooling, and just in our dominant society, that this is the way things have to be or this is the only way to address harm or to intervene or keep people safe, quote unquote and obviously thats not the case. We know these systems dont do that.

Radical imagination

Leojae Bleu Steward, a student at the U of I advocating for abolition, said it will take enormous creativity to enact change on this campus.

I mean, the society that were hoping for is one that we havent seen before. So that radical imagination is definitely going to have to come into play when we think of ways that we can include everyone, he said.

UIPD Police Chief Alice Cary said shes open to both approaches particularly the restorative justice model implemented at CU Boulder.

Traditional law enforcement is lagging, and we need something like this thats innovative, and it gives alternatives to offenders. And I think itd be a great idea and a great program to implement here, she said.

Cary said shes also committed to having hard conversation and transparent conversation with students, even those who dont think her job should exist on campus. She said theyve created an outreach program that Cary said is forging those relationships, its providing resources, its, you know, giving presentations and giving the tools that individuals need to protect themselves. Cary said the department is also reevaluating its policies with the help of an advisory committee made up of more than 40 people from the campus community.

In the meantime, Steward and his friend and fellow U of I senior, Latrel Crawford, say they havent changed their minds; they still want campus police abolished.

Policing in itself is rooted in a system of white supremacy, Crawford said. As an African American man who is 21, a law abiding citizen and taxpayer of this nation, in order for me to feel safe and most comfortable, I dont want them around. Period.

Both Steward and Crawford are realists; they know the U of I is years away perhaps even decades from abolishing its police force, and they know defunding the cops wont solve all societys ills.

However, Steward said. We do think that that is an important step towards making this society one for everyone like its supposed to be.

Lee Gaines is a reporter at Illinois Public Media.

Follow Lee on Twitter: @LeeVGaines

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Finding Common Ground Between Abolitionists And U Of I Campus Police - Illinois Newsroom

THE SECRET LIFE OF DOROTHY SOAMES: A Memoir, by Justine Cowan. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) I didnt love my mother, Cowan declares. But this investigation into her mothers life is equal parts memoir and love letter to the difficult, occasionally cruel woman who was not the person she claimed to be: Far from growing up in the wealthy, fox-hunting circles she had always suggested, her mother had in fact been raised in a foundling hospital for the children of unwed women. Cowan is a public interest lawyer accustomed, when taking on a new case, to plunging into a heap of documents and piecing together a narrative, Ellen Barry writes in her review. The propulsive parts of the book come as Cowan uncovers the past that her mother was so intent on hiding.

THE CROOKED PATH TO ABOLITION: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, by James Oakes. (Norton, $26.95.) In this carefully and rigorously argued book, Oakes describes how the antislavery movement used the federal Constitution to buttress its cause, emphasizing every provision and every clause that could be used on behalf of abolition. Gradually the antislavery advocates accumulated a variety of textual protections for freedom and limitations on slavery, Gordon S. Wood writes in his review. Then they began moving beyond the text of the Constitution to invoke its spirit. In his final and perhaps most original chapter Oakes traces the winding route Lincoln followed in order to get to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States once and for all.

TROUBLED: The Failed Promise of Americas Behavioral Treatment Programs, by Kenneth R. Rosen. (Little A, $24.95.) Rosen experienced a few of the tough-love institutes that he writes about in this searing expos: wilderness camps and therapeutic programs that treat young substance abusers and troublemakers, largely unregulated. Often, he claims, the programs do more harm than good. Rosen approached dozens of former participants before finding people who were willing to open up, and he spent a number of years with each of them to understand them better, Robert Kolker says in his review. This alone turns Troubled into not just a work of extended empathy but a public service; these life stories, taken together, shine a light on an industry that has been able to thrive in darkness.

AMERICA AND IRAN: A History, 1720 to the Present, by John Ghazvinian. (Knopf, $37.50.) This book presents the long, troubled relationship between the United States and Iran in a breezy and supple narrative, replete with poignant anecdotes, to posit convincingly that antagonism between Iran and America is wholly unnecessary. Abbas Milani, reviewing it, applauds Ghazvinian for detailing how there is in the United States a powerful chorus that wants nothing to do with Iran, along with elements in Israel and Saudi Arabia working against normalized relations between the two countries. Milani adds: The book is commendably exhaustive in its effort to expose the machinations of these forces. Even when we disagree with Ghazvinian, the story he offers is delightfully readable, genuinely informative and impressively literate.

CRAFT: An American History, by Glenn Adamson. (Bloomsbury, $30.) Adamson, the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, has assembled a startlingly original history by examining the mostly unsung artisans who built the country literally by hand from Indigenous and enslaved populations to todays maker movement. That no one has ever previously attempted this may be because when we bother to think about craft at all, it is usually through a gauzy haze, Deborah Needleman writes in her review. Yet Adamson manages to discover making in every aspect of our history, framing it as integral to Americas idea of itself as a nation of self-sufficient individualists. There may be no one better suited to this task.

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10 New Books We Recommend This Week - The New York Times

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In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge have left deep and lasting scars on the land, the people, and the culture. The ultra-communist government killed nearly 2 million people between 1975 and 1979, including most of the countrys intellectuals and artists. As a result, those who initially documented these lasting effects were foreign photographers, but this has slowly begun to change, with Cambodian photographers producing increasingly singular work, often in spite of the lack of access to resources and formal education. How has this change come about? And why is it significant?

The Early Years: Cambodia Through a Foreign Lens

For all its impact on Cambodia and its people, the Khmer Rouge regime has overwhelmingly been framed by images taken by international photojournalists. Seminal work, such as Roland Neveus The Fall of Phnom Penh, captured the entrance of the Khmer Rouges black-clad soldiers into the capital Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. And there was John Burgess, who found himself on assignment in 1980 with the Washington Post. His images show the rebirth of Phnom Penh, offering a snapshot of the countrys resilience after four years of hell.

Nic Dunlops book The Lost Executioner stands out in its evolution beyond the image. The book chronicles the rise and fall of Comrade Duch, the notorious head of the Khmer Rouge prison S-21. Dunlop weaves a historical account with his own journey to find Duch, who melted back into the Cambodian countryside after the fall of the regime in January 1979. His search for Duch was aided by a photograph of the elusive official, which he showed to individuals as a prompt to conversation. As an image maker, Dunlops use of this portrait as a catalyst to his investigation, rather than a narrow focus on the frame, offers a poignant example of the limitations of photography to convey complex historical narratives.

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In 1989, about 10 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, John Vink entered the country on his first assignment for the French newspaper Liberation. Vink would end up dedicating 16 years to living and working in Cambodia. Vinks work, rooted in an unfaltering drive, has seen him publish a range of books, such as A Question for Land, which covers his in-depth reportage on land rights issues. Indeed, much of his work has been about the question of land, which can be traced back to the Khmer Rouge abolition of land titles and now related to Cambodias politics. I think every aspect I covered after that in Cambodia can somehow be related to those issues, Vink says.

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The Rise of the Cambodian Photographer

Vink is also well-known for the support he has given to the development of young Cambodian photographers like Vandy Rattana, whose work Bomb Ponds show the scars of the land resulting from the illegal bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Rattana is one of the new generation of Cambodian photographers, some of whom have banded together in emerging collectives, such as the multidisciplinary Sa Sa Arts, which offers photography courses alongside more established institutions such as the international Angkor Photo Festival. Despite not receiving the benefits of formal training in photography, this young generation has found alternative ways to address through their work the complex issues facing contemporary Cambodia.

One major contrast with foreign photojournalists is that their work is not centered in documentary. Instead, it skips with ease across and beyond photography. Unbound by genre or codes of production, their work feels more immediate.

For example, Lim Sokchanlina responds to a range of questions in both his practice and teaching of photography. His deep interest in how people live and work, and how political decisions change their environment, have fed into the production of his recent work National Road Number 5, an extended series of photographs of houses which have been cut in half to clear the way for a road-widening project. Lina is acutely aware of what has been lost and notes the impact of the Khmer Rouge on Cambodian image making. Its still important to talk about the Khmer Rouge through photography, he says. Its part of who we are and where we come from. I say it through my work but not directly, its far behind the stories but not disconnected.

The Limitations of Education

Education is a significant part of the development of photography in Cambodia. In 2019, when I launched Buried, a collaboration with a Cambodian-American family and their archive of photos taken before and after the Khmer Rouge period, Lina spoke to me about the legacies of the regimes deleterious effect on education. Our arts education was killed, he says today. We have a fine art school in Phnom Penh, but its very formal and traditional. They use photography as a reference to paint from; photography is not taught as a medium itself.

Cambodia offers several opportunities to study photography, including the Angkor Photo Festival, which started in 2005. Festival director Jessica Lim sees the significance of education being driven by participants in the workshops:

Our evolution has been undoubtedly strongly influenced by the demand of the people we serve and this is through an emphasis on storytelling, but without the formal structures of documentary. When I first joined in 2010, 70 percent of the work being made at the festivals workshops was quite heavily focused on reportage, but now its shifted. We support the photographers through rigorous advice and questioning about themselves, their approach, what they want to express. We give them the space to experiment with storytelling, and a lot of it is about the process. We work with the philosophy of not being consumers of photography but meaningful creators and embrace the idea of individuals being the artists they want to be.

Angkors workshops are clearly working, with photographers such as Kim Hak, whose ongoing series Alive has received both national and international recognition, as well as Neak Sophal, who attracted attention through his compelling and collaborative approach to portraiture.

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And then there is the aforementioned Sa Sa Arts, which was founded in 2008. The collective runs three education programs, including one in photography. Lina teaches the majority, with additional contributions from both Cambodian and international photographers.

Its important that we share knowledge, I teach you what I learn and we all learn from each other, he says. I ask people from a range of artists and makers, so we see how those who are interested in Cambodia and how they reflect on Cambodia.

Trapped Within Ideas

Lina notes that there here has been a recent decline in the number of international photographers coming to Cambodia. He also mentions a great similarity among Cambodia-based foreign photographers and their views of the country. For example, many get trapped in depicting the reality of poverty. But this is not all there is to Cambodia. I dont see this reality of poverty as Cambodia, he says. You need to look at the range of work to gain context on Cambodia.

Linas argument is compelling, but theres no level playing field between Cambodian and foreign photographers. Maybe in part this is what makes the work of Cambodian photographers so intriguing.

While Vinks and Dunlops works stand as examples of an evolving practice, these approaches are lacking in the prevailing tropes of most international image makers in Cambodia.

Its more difficult in the current atmosphere for Cambodians to publicize work which could be critical, the expat photographers fill in the slot and run away with the few assignments that are available, Vink says. Many of the expat photographers I know do give back to the Cambodian photographers. But still, I feel the expat and Cambodian photographers are functioning in two parallel bubbles.

The situation is further complicated by the repetition of visual tropes, as Lina notes.

The discussion of the Khmer Rouge is still important, but the approaches to the subject have been limited. An example of this is Slawek Pliszkas self-published S21, a book of grainy black and white photographs of the Tuol Sleng prison museum, the killing fields of Choeung Ek, portraits of Khmer Rouge victims, and piles of clothes from the mass graves. To some, it perpetuates the victimhood of the portraits, which were taken by Khmer Rouge photographer Nhem En.

There has been much debate on the use and recontextualization of the S21 portraits, such as the Killing Fields book by Chris Riley and Douglas Niven, which published Ens images and has received much criticism. Pliszkas work appears to lack the contextual knowledge of what has come before him, and current debates in photography, specifically about the representation of the Khmer Rouge era.

Nic Dunlop reinforces this point. Time and again, Western photographers fell back on the same visual tropes; the mug shots from Tuol Sleng, the stacks of skulls from Choeung Ek, and portraits of survivors. This was understandable for parachute photographers on deadlines. But this approach didnt invite new ways of thinking about the Khmer Rouge period, he says.

Cambodias Complexities

Making work in and about Cambodia is a complex process which often places a photographer on the fringes, feeling their way through space, history, and memory. Stepping outside Cambodia has always been important for the evolution of my work, as is long-term dialogue, which can occur in any space. But being defined by genre and purely commercial activity does not add to the debate. The current state of representation from international photographers residing in Cambodia is lacking, and an imbalance of possibilities for education, together with the increased ability of international photographers to easily move in and out of the country (at least before COVID-19), has placed local photographers at a disadvantage.

That being said, the ability to speak beyond and around the subject has meant that work like Linas is visually more engaging and a more intelligent representation of what is taking place beneath the surface of a country that, for all its problems, has come a long way since the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge. It also offers a wake-up call, one which could evolve through asking the most basic of questions for Western photographers working in Cambodia, and, indeed, other foreign countries: what is the function of my practice?

Charles Fox is a photographer whose practice centers on Southeast Asia. He currently lectures in Photography at Nottingham Trent University.

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Framing the Khmer Rouge The Diplomat - The Diplomat

Listen here to our interview with Brandon on WBAI.

You might also like: Meet New York Citys Newest Neighborhood: Abolition Park.

Abolitionist Mariame Kaba famously stated, Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair. Following her words, I can only comprehend what we have endured in 2020 as a calling to radicalize, to rethink ineffective public safety policy and to revitalize our communities by defunding the police.

2020 was a year that felt like a decade, a time of deep stress and distress, challenges beyond measure, and enormous personal tragedy. I saw my home, New York City, fall into a series of crises, I lost friends and relatives to the pandemic, and I, along with millions of Americans, watched black men murdered on video.

West says it would be pretty easy for City Council to cut the NYPDs annual budget by $2 billion per year.

Beginning in June, after months of lockdown, I was in the streets fighting for Black lives and for the end of the carceral state. I organized with the Free Black Radicals and members of VOCAL-NY at the Occupy City Hall encampment to defund the NYPD. Months later, and only days after a white supremacist insurrection in the capitol, the NYPD brutalized peaceful protestors on MLK Day in that exact same location.

But when I feel despair, as I did during almost the entirety of 2020 and already many times since the start of 2021, I know it is time to turn to action. Whenever asked why Im running for City Council, I speak about my experiences fighting against over-policing and the carceral state. I tell voters that Im running to defund, and to abolish, the NYPD. Having the experiences of an organizer on the streets and as an analyst in the NYC Office of Management and Budget and City Council Finance means that I know it is possible to do these things and to radically re-envision public safety.

So how do we do it? Defunding the NYPD requires being bold and standing up in the budget process and also, critically, to articulate a vision of community safety that is not carceral. We have to do both, and the latter is harder than most people think. We are so used to treating the police and policing as the solutions that they most clearly are not. Even conversations with progressives and leftists, its hard to shake the language and framework around incarceration. But I know we can do it if we are intentional and clear about how we want to do this work.

First, there is a lot we can cut in the next budget. Its pretty easy to make reasonable cuts and hit $2 billion. There is no reason we couldnt hit at least $1 billion last year. Its a shame the outgoing council didnt. Communities United for Police Reform put out a well-researched report last summer showing just how easy it is to slash NYPDs budget by over $1 billion. This includes over $200 million in a hiring freeze and cutting the cadet class, $100 million in removing NYPD from schools and social service-related roles, almost $300 million in for police misconduct settlements/judgments and not firing abusive officers, at least $219 million by reducing the NYPD uniform headcount to FY2014 level, and almost $400 million in cutting bloat like surveillance technology and overtime. Not to mention that if you include all the fringe benefits associated with these positions, it adds up considerably. Critically, it doesnt mean we abandon workers like school safety officers or traffic officers, who are often BIPOC folks. We can and will engage in a just transition as we decarcerate jobs that should never have fallen under NYPDs purview. Police do not keep people safe, but community services and economic stability does.

The other part of this work is creating the vision for the alternative. Many people I talk to cite victims of violence as a rationale for the brutal incarceration of those who engage in forms of violence. But deterrence is just punishment, our basest instinct, and it doesnt work. Incarcerating peopledestroying peoples livesresults in only devastated communities, not safe communities.

No single person can design a perfect system to eliminate violence in all aspects of life in New York tomorrow. But many have done this work for years and we must empower them to begin to build this alternative. In December 2020, Brownsville engaged in a pilot program where the community removed beat cops and instead had community members present in the streets, including non-profits and city agencies setting up booths to offer city resources for folks. There wasnt a single 911 call during that stretch of time. This pilot was just that: a pilot; it was a bubble within the world of a carceral state, with the normal over-policed stretch of the city a few blocks away. But it was a start, and seemingly a success, and we need to engage and fund programs like these and see to it that they are successful.

If we are not laser-focused on Defund and making it the goal of the next class of councilmembers and the next budget, we will not get there. We absolutely can to build on the work that was already done to get to this vision. I have often remarked that if 2020 didnt radicalize you, then you cannot be radicalized. It is for my fellow radicals that I run for City Council in District 39 and why I run to defund the police.

Brandon West is running for City Council in District 39 which encompasses Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and parts of Sunset Park. He is a member of the 6-candidate DSA for the City slate.

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We Can Defund The PoliceHere's How - The Indypendent

The student-led Black Coalition Against Policing hosted a virtual town hall on policing and policy enforcement with Duke representatives Wednesday night.

In a brief introduction, Dean of Students John Blackshear and Mary Pat McMahon, vice provost and vice president for student affairs, said that university officials had been meeting with BCAP since July, when the group initially released their demands to disclose, divest and disband.

We are appreciative of the work of [the students], McMahon said. We have a lot of work to do to make the student experience meaningfully inclusive and equitable, and were eager to do that work.

The panel was moderated by Young Trustee Trey Walk, Trinity 19, and featured John Dailey, chief of the Duke University Police Department; Deb LoBiondo, interim dean for residence life; Jeanna McCullers, senior associate dean of students and director of the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards; and Stelfanie Williams, vice president for Durham and community affairs.

DUPD is in the business of student support, Dailey said.

Dailey said that he was disgusted by the police brutality he observed during summer 2020 and that the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others have been discussed internally. He admitted to being surprised that some students felt unsafe around DUPD officers and that his goal for the department is to identify what safety and security look like for different people.

He added that there should be an easy way for people to have their concerns addressed and said that generally, he believes the University is very open to hearing complaints about systems that arent working. Additionally, he said that sharing information with DUPD, even anonymously, would help the department identify trends. The department receives about 44,000 calls each year, he said.

Dailey asserted that DUPD plays an important role on campus and that being armed is necessary, citing a variety of incidents that have occurred near campus or Duke University Hospital such as robberies and armed individuals. It would certainly be great to be in a place where officers would not need to be armed, he said.

When asked about his stance on police abolitionone of BCAPs goals laid out in its initial statementDailey said that it is not his goal and that he is against police abolition. While he acknowledged that there needs to be changes and that people have been treated unfairly, he underscored the need for policing.

Until society is such that people arent harming each other and that we dont need people to try to resolve difficult situations ... there is work to be done by people like me, Dailey said. Theres certainly other people that can do different types of work. I know violence interrupters were looking at for different things in Durham. Absolutely, we should do that too, and we should all come to the table.

Dailey said many people feel students are safer dealing with the DUPD than the city police. He said that he would hope its better for students to end up in the Office of Student Conduct as opposed to being criminally charged.

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He also said DUPDs relationship with the Durham Police Department is very good and that there is a strong partnership between them.

Dailey also told the panel that DUPDs use-of-force policy was consistent with the reform policies set forth by #8CantWait, a campaign to reduce police killings. The eight policies are de-escalation, creating clear policies on weapon use, banning the use of chokeholds and strongholds, requiring a verbal warning before shooting, not shooting at moving vehicles, intervening in excessive force situations, exhausting all alternatives and comprehensive reporting.

Dailey told The Chronicle in a December email that there have been seven uses of force during an arrest by DUPD officers within the last five years, with most being a push or a grab. During one arrest, he wrote, an officer used pepper spray after being bitten by the person under arrest.

In the end, we are here to support this institution and this institutions mission, he said at the town hall. Duke does not exist to have a police department. It exists for education, research and healthcare.

He said the department has been working to increase data collection to build trust. The department currently has 160 employees, with 46% being people of color and 30% being women, Dailey said. In 2019, DUPD stopped 82 people in traffic stops, of which 50% were white and 32% were Black. Dailey asserted that within those stops, the department does not disproportionately stop Black people for minor reasons and that he is comfortable with those numbers.

There were no arrests involving use of force in 2020, Dailey wrote in December. Additionally, the department has used dashcams since 2005 and body cameras since 2015, Dailey wrote.

Dailey acknowledged at the town hall that there were certain situations where armed officers did not need to respond, such as EMS calls, noise complaints and student disputes.

My transition into [being director of OSC] was very much framed by issues of race, identity and equity, McCullers said. She adopted her current role June 1, and her goals are to increase consistency in adjudicating cases, revisit how campus partners engage with students and be more proactive.

McCullers said that one shortcoming of OSC is boxing ourselves into what we think student conduct is, and that it should first and foremost be a source of student support. She pointed to the fact that out of 2,000 student conduct cases in the previous academic year, under five went through the formal conduct process.

Instead, most students go through adaptable conflict resolutions, which involve reflection and conversation. Most commonly, students referred to OSC go through faculty-student resolutions. In the case that a resolution fails or conduct is more severe, the student will go through the formal conduct process.

In comparison, the most recent statistics from 2017-18 published by OSC state that 71% of cases of alleged misconduct were handled via these informal means. Before this process even begins, the office attempts to identify interim interventions, such as providing support or taking reactive measures like suspension or no-contact orders.

McCullers added that students of color are not disproportionately represented in OSCs aggregate data, making up around 10% of overall reports. She said that every year, the office partners with an outside organization that sends a survey to students to help the office revamp its policies and practices. However, McCullers acknowledged that OSC doesnt have data on whether there is disproportionality in how students are affected by disciplinary measures.

McCullers emphasized that OSC is always looking for where there is discretion in the process and establishing checks and balances to that discretion. For example, she said that OSC is thinking about bringing more diversity of voices and thought into the Student Conduct Board selection process, as well as increasing data sharing and transparency with campus partners.

Wherever theres discretion, theres potential for bias, she said.

McCullers touched on the process of responding to hate and bias, which is the same as other violations but with additional measures. When a hate incident is reported to OSC, campus entities including the Office of Institutional Equity, DUPD and HRL are notified.

One area where students can weigh in, she said, is determining how to deal with systemic community harm.

I dont have to have seen the incident or been present to experience it in the same way that someone else may have, she said.

McCullers also addressed Dukes pickets, protests and demonstrations policy, which a student, in a question to the panel, claimed criminalized student activists who wish to better the University. She said that OSC has not held any student accountable under the policy under her tenure or even probably before then.

Were fully aware of the tension between what the university policy is in our book versus what students may want to do and how they express themselves to national events, she said. What they should know is that were right there with them.

Dailey added that there is a balance to be struck between allowing protesters and allowing others to have the opportunities provided by the University.

When something interrupts that, something has to happen, he said. What we hope happens is different levels of control, starting with self control, next might be peer control, administrative control and the last thing we want is police having to be involved.

Dailey cited the example of police intervention during students protesting Palantir Technologies at the 2019 TechConnect career fair. He said that neither self nor peer control worked, and when administrative response by Student Affairs also didnt work, police had to get involved to allow university operations to continue.

McCullers added that this semester, OSC is putting together a policy review committee composed of students, staff and faculty for the Duke Community Standard to look and revisit our policies and practices. Students who want to weigh in about the pickets, protests and demonstrations policy should reach out to her, McCullers said.

Dailey said that he hopes the policy review process may allow for a more satisfying response next time.

LoBiondo said that one of her goals upon arriving at Duke in 1996 was to enhance the diversity of the housing team, and this remains one of her goals today. Increasing diversity among graduate residents, resident assistants and residence coordinators is one area that LoBiondo believed could be improved.

HRL also relies on a cultural fluency committee, created after a 2015 incident in which a noose was hung on the Bryan Center Plaza.

This is in addition to incorporating core values of intersectionality and equity into the housing experience, which includes the introduction of the Foundations of Equity training for first-year students and improvement of the RA training model.

RAs undergo exercises during initial training and throughout the semester to ensure theyre properly equipped to handle a variety of issues, LoBiondo said. This includes being aware of social justice issues, white privilege and microaggressions.

Students raised concerns about RAs being in a position to police other students, and LoBiondo said that RAs are taught to engage with students in an authentic way but to avoid putting themselves in danger. She stated that RAs only contact police if there are health and safety concerns.

We dont want our undergraduate RAs put in harms way, she said. The police is an important partner for us particularly as it relates to health and safety and higher-risk things.

The Next Generation 2.0 Living and Learning Committee is also a vehicle for equity in housing, LoBiondo said, as it aims to decrease the footprint of Interfraternity Council and National Panhellenic Conference housing on Abele Quad and create greater inclusivity in housing.

Weve never had gathering spaces for our [National Pan-Hellenic Council] or [Multicultural Greek Council] groups, she stated. The National Pan-Hellenic Council is the umbrella organization for historically Black fraternities and sororities.

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. had a living space previously, LoBiondo said, but lost it after being unable to fill beds. In contrast, IFC and Panhel organizations have consistently had more space.

She also briefly commented on the random roommate policy for first-years, saying that the policy was wonderful but that housing hadfallen short in ensuring students were prepared to have authentic conversations with people of different backgrounds.

Williams said its so important that during a students tenure at Duke, that they have to be involved and a part of Durham so they get to experience it for themselves. She emphasized the importance of getting to know Durham for ourselves and to contribute positively to Durham.

We are residents of the Durham community and we can join together with the members of the broader community who have lived experience and expertise to share as well, she said. The skills and understanding that you will gain from being involved in Durham will serve you for the rest of your lives.

She added that many of the contemporary leaders in Durham are affiliated with Duke, demonstrating the connectivity and the opportunity that students have to contribute.

Addressing Dukes complex relationship with Durham, Williams emphasized that Durham and Community Affairs works through neighborhood partnerships to support the interests of residents in particularly the twelve neighborhoods that surround the University. The goal is to recognize issues that residents see as a priority and to identify resources or other ways Duke can convene the right folks around the table to solve issues, she said.

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Finding 'the right folks around the table': BCAP town hall discusses future of Duke policing, housing, student conduct - Duke Chronicle

In the endless catalogue of British imperial atrocities, the unprovoked invasion of Tibet in 1903 was a minor but fairly typical episode. Tibetans, explained the expeditions cultural expert, were savages, more like hideous gnomes than human beings. Thousands of them were massacred defending their homeland, knocked over like skittles by the invaders state-of-the-art machine guns. I got so sick of the slaughter that I ceased fire, wrote a British lieutenant, though the Generals order was to make as big a bag as possible. As big a bag as possible killing inferior people was a kind of blood sport.

And then the looting started. More than 400 mule-loads of precious manuscripts, jewels, religious treasures and artworks were plundered from Tibetan monasteries to enrich the British Museum and the Bodleian Library. Countless others were stolen by marauding troops. Sitting at home watching the BBC antiques show Flog It one quiet afternoon in the early 21st century, Sathnam Sanghera saw the delighted descendant of one of those soldiers make another killing 140,000 for selling off the artefacts his grandfather had come across in the Himalayas.

Its a characteristically instructive vignette in Empireland, Sangheras impassioned and deeply personal journey through Britains imperial past and present. The empire, he argues, still shapes British society its delusions of exceptionalism, its immense private and public wealth, the fabric of its cities, the dominance of the City of London, even the entitled and drunken behaviour of British expats and holidaymakers abroad. Yet the British choose not to see this: wilful amnesia about the darker sides of imperialism may be its most pernicious legacy.

Among other things, it allows the British to deny their modern, multicultural identity. Moving effortlessly back and forth between history and journalism, Sanghera connects the racial violence and discrimination of his childhood in 1970s and 80s Wolverhampton with the attitudes and methods previously used to impose empire and white supremacy across the world and still perpetuated in British fantasies of global leadership.

Along the way, he tackles the racist myopia that allows present-day Britons to fantasise that black and brown people are aliens who arrived without permission, and with no link to Britain, to abuse British hospitality. On the contrary, imperial citizens have been enriching British life for centuries. The pioneering author and entrepreneur, Sake Dean Mahomed (1759-1851), invented the curry house. William Cuffay, the child of a freed West Indian slave and a white woman, helped lead Londons Chartist movement for greater democracy then, after being transported, became a political organiser in Australia.

Millions of others fought for Britain in the second world war alone, 200,000 Indian soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured while serving in allied campaigns. More than 10% of the UKs current population (including a staggering 44% of the NHSs medical staff) is non-white. All this is because for centuries white Britons colonised nations all over the world proclaiming their intimate, familial allegiance while invading, occupying, plundering, humiliating and killing their peoples on a massive scale to benefit British wealth and self-esteem. We are here because you were there.

Without getting bogged down in definitions, calculations or complicated comparisons, Empireland also manages to convey something of the sheer variety of imperial experiences over four centuries, and the limits of broad-brush explanations. Most of Britains wealth probably came from non-imperial trade. Imperial control was made possible by the collaboration of indigenous rulers and groups. Other nations have similarly problematic histories. And theres a long history of Britons themselves criticising, not celebrating, the full, gut-wrenching horror of imperial violence and racism.

But to make too much of such qualifications would be to miss the essential point. Both deliberately and unconsciously, the empire was one of the biggest white supremacist enterprises in the history of humanity, and it still corrupts British society in countless ways. Sangheras unflinching attempt to understand this process, and to counter the cognitive dissonance and denial of Britains modern imperial amnesia, makes for a moving and stimulating book that deserves to be widely read.

So does Padraic Scanlans engrossing and powerful Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain, a detailed exposition of how Britain profited from slavery for 200 years, and then used its abolition to justify another century or more of imperial violence and capitalist exploitation.

Its a different kind of book: straight history, no memoir, a scholarly rather than a journalistic argument. Yet its propelled by a similar, urgent frustration with the amnesiac myths of Britains supposedly glorious imperial heritage.

In the popular imagination, Britains abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and of slavery itself after 1833, was a great victory of good over evil, a national sacrifice that wiped out the stain of its slaveholding past. By voluntarily casting off the sin of slavery, the empire was transformed into a beacon of righteousness, and flourished thereafter as a global leader of antislavery and free trade, not bondage.

In the age of Brexit, thats the proud, inspiring history that many Britons love to rehearse. As Scanlan shows, its not a recent invention: its rooted in the vision of the antislavery movement itself. But its deeply misleading. Inspired by the classic West Indian critiques of CLR James and Eric Williams, and synthesising a mass of recent scholarship, Slave Empire presents a series of much more uncomfortable truths.

For one thing, the mass enslavement and exploitation of Africans by Europeans was never incidental or separable from the rise of global trade and empire: it was one of the central mechanisms through which these things were achieved. Slavery itself was an ancient practice. But there had never been anything like the vast slave plantations created in the Americas, especially on the islands of the Caribbean. By the late 18th century, these enormous, brutal, ecologically destructive enterprises had become the hub of a huge, profitable, interdependent web of money, commerce, power and territory, stretching both eastwards across the Atlantic, to Europe and West Africa, and north and south, into the mainland colonies of America.

From the forced labour of the millions of enslaved people who were worked to death on such factory-farms, white Britons and other Europeans created not just a booming international market in sugar, tobacco and rice, but a heavily capitalised imperial economy of shipping, banking, insurance, manufacturing, commodity trading and military expenditure. Even the fine white sugar that Jamaican planters themselves consumed was the product of raw materials grown and processed in the Caribbean, shipped to London, refined by sugar bakers in England, and then transported all the way back across the ocean to be retailed in the West Indies.

Nor did slavery die just because enlightened Britons turned against it. The abolitionist vision was deeply hierarchical, racist and paternalist freedom was something to be gradually earned by blacks and benevolently bestowed by whites. Enslaved people themselves had very different ideas. Long before white Britons took up their cause, they fought fiercely and unremittingly against their bondage.

All over the West Indies, throughout the later 17th and 18th centuries, large numbers of escaped and rebelling slaves waged continual guerrilla warfare on white settlers. In the early 19th century, three major insurrections in Barbados in 1816, British Guyana in 1823, and Jamaica in 1831-32 helped force the hands of the British. Abolition was partly an attempt to prevent black people from emancipating themselves and capturing valuable British territories by force as the rebel slaves of Frances main colony had done when they established the free republic of Haiti in 1804.

Whats more, ending slavery didnt stop the gigantic system of trade and exploitation it had spawned. On the contrary, it was meant to enhance it. The British government paid out colossal sums to compensate slaveowners but nothing to enslaved people themselves. Instead, the law abolishing slavery forced them to continue to labour for years on their existing plantations, as unpaid apprentices.

Abolitionists presumed that freed slaves would work harder, making plantations more profitable. When the price of Caribbean sugar fell, it was their laziness that was blamed. When they had the temerity to demand better wages, thousands of other dark-skinned workers were shipped in as indentured labourers from China, India, and Africa, to take their place as they were to countless other new British plantations around the world. Free labour and free trade were incompatible with slavery, but not with the continued exploitation and global trafficking of low-paid workers.

As Scanlan points out towards the end of this rich and thought-provoking book, 19th-century British capitalists continued to invest heavily in slaveholding enterprises overseas. They funded and insured many of the banks, railroads, steamships, and plantations of the American south. Britains cotton industry grew into its largest and most valuable industrial sector by processing much of the raw material produced by Americas slaves. At one point, the livelihood of nearly one in five Britons depended on it. In almost every respect, the free trade empire was less a repudiation than a continuation of the empire of slavery. Its time to embrace a more honest understanding of its manifold legacies.

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain by Satnam Sanghera is published by Viking (18.99); Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain by Padraic X Scanlan is published by Robinson (25). To order copies go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera and Slave Empire by Padraic X Scanlan review - The Guardian