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Workers Fear Cyborgs Will Steal Their Jobs By 2035 – CBS Sacramento

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

(CNN) Workers worry that in the not-too-distant future they will be sidelined by humans implanted with performance-enhancing microchips.

Two-thirds of employees believe that in 2035, humans with chips implanted in their bodies will have an unfair advantage in the labor market, according to a Citrix survey of employees in the United States and Europe that was shared exclusively with CNN Business.

Althoughcyborgsmay sound like the stuff of science fiction, theycould be here before long.

Thousands of people in Sweden haveinserted microchips in their handsthat could one day replace keys and cards.Elon Musk recently showed off a working brain implant in pigsmade by Neuralink, his brain-computer interface company.

And Synchron, a San Francisco startupfunded in part by the US Defense Department,isalready testing an implantable wireless devicethat can stimulate the nervous system from the inside of a blood vessel. It has been implanted in patients with upper-limb paralysis.

There is a sharp divide between employees and C-Suite executives over the pros and cons of implanted chips. And that gap echoes a broader difference of opinion between workers and leaders over artificial intelligence and the future of technology and the role of workers at the nexus of the two.

Leaders are consistently more positive about the benefits that technology and AI will bring, while workers are more skeptical and concerned about their own role in the changing world of work, according to Citrix Work 2035, a research study done by the software company whoseWorkspace service helps employees to work from anywhere.

Seventy-seven percent of business leaders believe that under-the-skin chips and sensors will boost worker performance and productivity by 2035. By comparison, just 43% of workers share that positive view on chips.

I look at it much less as a Hollywood-version of cyborgs, Citrix CEO David Henshall told CNN Business. I see it more concentrated in wearables. You can imagine someone at a job site with augmented reality who can overlay a schematic diagram.

Although employees seem more fearful of implanted devices, they may also be more likely to embrace them perhaps if only in an effort to protect their livelihoods.

Fifty-seven percent of workers would be willing to have chips implanted in their own bodies if they felt it was safe and would boost their performance, the Citrix survey found. By contrast, only 31% of business leaders were open to implants themselves.

Broadly, CEOs and employees agree that technology, especially artificial intelligence, will play a critical role in the future.

In fact, 72% of professionals (workers and business leaders combined) polled by Citrix believe that by 2030 AI will replace humans as their organizations top revenue generator.

And by 2035, AI technology investment will be the biggest driver of growth for their organization, according to 90% of business leaders.

But what do these trends portend for humans?

We are already in the midst of the greatest winner-take-all economy in the history of the world. AI will drive those inequities up, not down, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang told CNN Business.

Yang, whose signature issue is a $1,000-a-month universal basic income for all adults, said that if CEOs see more value coming from AI, they will devote fewer resources to humans.

Workers are getting replaced and automated in everything from meatpacking factories to accounting firms. Over time, you will have fewer workers, said Yang, who is a CNN political commentator. We need to be more clear-eyed and realistic about what this means for our society,

Workers share those concerns.

Sixty percent of employees surveyed by Citrix think that by 2035, permanent employees will be a rarity.

The good news is that C-Suite executives, presumably the ones making the decisions, are much more bullish on the role of humans in the future. Most leaders (81%) think permanent employees will still have a place by 2035.

Moreover, 70% of business leaders polled by Citrix said the pandemic made them believe human workers are more important to their business relative to technology.

And its easy to see how technology will continue to make employees better at their jobs, just as PCs, smartphones and the internet have.

By 2035, technology such as AI personal assistants and augmented reality glasses will make workers at least twice as productive, according to 51% of professionals in the Citrix survey.

Robots are not going to replace humans, Henshall, the Citrix CEO, said. Technology will make people better and smarter. Its an enabler, not a replacer.

Yet it seems likely that technology, especially AI, will shift the role that humans play in companies in the future.

Eighty-three percent of professionals say that by 2035, technology will automate low-value tasks. In theory, that would free up workers to focus on more meaningful work.

Technology over the last 100 years has done nothing but help people become more productive and efficient, said Henshall. The types of tasks will have to evolve over time.

But there is no guarantee that the humans being freed from mundane tasks will be the sameones hired for the more exciting work. Countless workers, especially those without the right skills training, could be left behind in the disruption.

The workers that will suffer the most will be the majority whose work can be automated away, said Yang. There will be a handful of executives and investors who end up profiting at unprecedented levels.

Yang pointed out that Google recently launched an AI call center that will enable companies topush some of their customer service callsto Google instead of their own workers. He noted more than2 million Americans work in call centers and predicted that most companies will not shift those workers to other positions.

Thats not how organizations function, said Yang, whose devoted following during the presidential campaign was known as the Yang Gang. They will say, You are no longer needed, thank you for your service. Heres a weeks severance.'

Management may not be immune to the coming wave of disruption, either.

The Citrix survey found that most professionals believe that in the future, organizations will have a central AI department that oversees all areas of business. Even CEOs will work in a human-machine tandem with an office of chief artificial intelligence.

Not just that, but more than half (57%) of all professionals believe that by 2035, there will be no traditional leadership team at all just AI making most business decisions.

Perhaps that will boost the CEO ranks in the Yang Gang.

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Workers Fear Cyborgs Will Steal Their Jobs By 2035 - CBS Sacramento

Your thoughts can be displayed on this cyborg garment – ZDNet

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Sarah Breinbauer

A new project that forms a data visualization of brain signals in clothing has recently been showcased at thevirtual Ars Electronica festival.

The robotic dress is coupled to 1,024 channels of a BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) and has 64 outputs for light and movement. The Pangolin Scales' dress components function like animatronic elements that move and light up based on the recordings of the brain waves.

The project originated at the Institute for integrated circuits at JKU (Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria), in collaboration with the Austrian Neurotechnology company G.tec.

Christoph Guger at the Neuroscience/Neurotechnology department at G.tec explained how these BCI's measure brain activity, using sensors placed on the head, which control devices in real-time depending on your thoughts;

"If someone imagines a hand movement, then that movement can be understood using sensors on the upper region of the brain. The technology then produces a control signal that allows you for example to control a prosthetic arm or to control any (human-like) avatar.

By using your thoughts you can move the avatar forward (left right - forward etc.) or use your prosthetic arm after you made the mental decision that you wanted to pick up a cup of coffee."

G.tec's neurotechnology developers designed the hardware components and assemble the electrodes directly on to the head. The shape and size of the components mean that 1,024 channels can be placed on to the head to give far greater resolution than previous versions.

Guger continues:

"In hospitals or research centers, people can wear 64 of these channels so the distance between the sensors is pretty big. This allows us to figure out if the person is lifting their left or right arm, but that's it.

With 1024 channels we can discriminate single fingers from each other. So the technology can recognize if the person moves their pinkie finger or the index finger. This is something you cannot do with a standard EEG system which is nowadays used in research and in hospitals."

The dress was designed by Dutch designer and innovatorAnouk Wipprecht, who works in the emerging field of FashionTech. This combines fashion design with engineering, robotics, science, and interaction/user experience design to make fashion an experience that transcends appearances.

The dress that has 64 actuators (scales) that move and light up. The BCI output can modulate the movement and the rotation of the scales and how they light and interact. So whatever is calibrated into the brain-computer interface can be recognized afterward.

So, in understanding how the EEG of every single action works, the BCI can be calibrated to produce real-time activity of what the brain is doing and control the actions in the dress.

There are 64 PCBs on the head each with 16 sensors (to reach 1,024 channels). These 64 outputs translate the received signals from the brain and visualize this data through light and movement provided by 32 LEDs and 32 small servo motors, making 64 actuators within the dress.

This results in a dress with a mechanism that functions like animatronic elements, based on pangolin scales, which move and light up based on the recordings of the brain waves.

Thomas Faseth of JKU (Johannes Kepler University Linz), where the project originated, said:

"Future applications of the project allow full wireless operation made possible by know-how of the Institute for Integrated Circuits at JKU Linz."

Guger added:

"The brain decodes information in very specific places. Faces, color, shapes, are decoded in certain areas, and art is activating a lot of them.

BCI technology allows us to explore unconsciousness things of the brain in real-time and this leads to astonishing results. Fascinating about the brain is that so many regions are unexplored and with newest high-resolution technology we can find new interesting functions."

This is only a prototype of course, but this technology has many more functions as the relationship between the body and technology grows closer than ever.

Designers, artists, scientists, and engineers started to combine their practices at the beginning of this century, and electronics are being tightly woven into the fabric of our physical world.

As Wipprecht said:

"Electronic systems can now be layered seamlessly onto a material or substrate such as plastic or polyester. Embedded processors and sensors for transmitting and receiving information create a vision of cultural transformation that is both exciting and disturbing."

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Your thoughts can be displayed on this cyborg garment - ZDNet

Mind over Matter: The man who turned himself into a cyborg to overcome ALS – CTech

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

One evening four years ago Dr. Peter Scott Morgan got out of his bathtub and pulled out a towel. While drying his foot, he noticed he was having difficulty moving it. The scary and worrying notion sent him straight to the doctors. After a year of tests, the diagnosis arrived and it was a horrible one: Scott Morgan has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a cruel and incurable ailment in which people affected suffer from the gradual decline of muscle control and which slowly paralyzes them, organ by organ, apart from the brain, which continues to function normally trapped in the body until death. The doctors determined he had two years left to live.

A reasonable person might have accepted the terrible outcome as fate, but not Peter Scott-Morgan a genius mathematician and a world-class expert on robotics and advanced systems analysis, who taught at some of the leading universities in the world and consulted government and major corporations. As an expert in robotics, Scott-Morgan decided to cope with the new circumstances forced upon him and keep himself alive, by turning himself into a robot. Actually the more accurate term would be a cyborg half man, half machine. Or as he put it in an interview with the Daily Telegraph: I intend to become a human guinea pig to see just how far we can turn science fiction into a reality.

Based on cold scientific observation, Scott-Morgan realizes that his living organs are slowly losing any ability to benefit him, and he is producing substitutes for them. In a series of complex surgeries, combining technology from the fields of medicine and computing, he is gradually replacing his dying organs with artificial ones. Peter1.0 the fully human version of Scott-Morgan began the process of extraction from his bodily limitations in 2018, two months after the initial diagnosis. He underwent a complicated procedure, in which he inserted three tubes into his body: one that transfers food into his stomach and two to drain urine and feces out of it. It was a procedure rarely attempted in medical history and required special permits from the U.K. health authorities.

Scott-Morgans saga calls to mind that of the worlds most famous ALS victim, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who like Scott-Morgan was a scientist and a Brit. Hawking used his status in the scientific community to raise awareness of the disease and promote technological solutions to improve the lives of those who suffer from it, allowing them greater levels of independence. Scott-Morgan cites him as an inspiration, drawing strength and motivation from his famous quote concentrate on things your disability doesn't prevent you doing well, and don't regret the things it interferes with.

Hawking managed to survive for 50 years with ALS. Scott-Morgan has already lived 50% longer than doctors predicted.

While recovering from the remarkable surgery, Scott-Morgan put his mind to the more technical aspects of his journey. A special Scottish sound laboratory teamed up with him to ensure he could continue to use his own voice even after he loses his ability to speak. For several weeks, he visited their recording studio and read out full texts and individual words, varying his intonations. The goal was to produce a broad databank of voice recordings, with multiple inflections to reflect as best as possible the various tones of voice he uses and synthesize them into an artificial voice that is as close as possible to the source and not as robotic-sounding as Hawkings famously was.

As he gradually lost all ability to move his lower body, Scott-Morgan was provided with a special motorized wheelchair, that enabled him to stand up and turn around. The chair is the foundation of some of the unique features of Scott-Morgans self-designed exoskeleton: a mechanical, computer-guided device that will be installed on his arms, decipher electrical pulses sent from the brain and translate them into near-full motion of his upper limbs. Combined with the chairs ability to move freely and shift from sitting to standing positions, the full system was supposed to provide him with near-complete mobility. Unfortunately, Scott-Morgans health took a turn for the worse faster than expected and the exoskeleton was scrapped before it could be completed.

The most complicated and daring stage in the entire process was Scott-Morgans attempt to find a solution for brain atrophy and developing the ability to transfer the most important organ of all into the amassing cyborg. It required a powerful computation network that could enable him to relay his thoughts and express them freely even in the final stages of the disease, when he is completely trapped in his paralysed body.

It was Intels Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT) that was selected to carry out the complex task. It is the same system that Hawking had attached to his wheelchair and controlled via a proximity sensor in his glasses. One of the last muscles Hawking could still move was in his cheek. The sensor would detect its movement and allowed him to browse the internet, write books and journal articles, teach students, play chess and, of course, produce his distinctive metallic voice.

He wanted complete control over every little detail, every word and every letter, Lama Nachman, the director of Intels Anticipatory Computing Lab, who designed Hawkings system and worked closely with him during his final years, said in an interview to Calcalist. It is something that the technology at the time, and even today, doesnt allow for and we had many discussions surrounding his frustration about it.

Nachman is also the person who designed the system that Scot-Morgan uses. In recent years the field of machine learning, considered the forefront of artificial intelligence, experienced major progress. It has allowed Lachman and the team of engineers at Intel to make improvements on ACAT and bring Scott-Morgan closer to his cyborg vision, in which man and machine function as one, without the machine hampering his humanity and without the human holding back the machine.

The system enables people who suffer from ALS to conduct a conversation with the help of an eye-operated virtual mouse, with the eye motions replacing the paralysed hand. A sensor connected to a computer links the pupils motion to an icon on the screen, allowing the user to select words. An AI based system offers the user automatic word completion, similar to the autocomplete function that exists in smartphones. The result may not be completely accurate, but it enables them to conduct an almost normal conversation.

If Peter wants to write a book, hell have all the time in the world to write each word by himself and be in complete control, said Nachman. But when you hold a conversation, the social connection and the ability to spontaneously engage are far more important. That is an ability people with ALS lack. The system may be less precise in reflecting Peters meaning, but it allows him to hold a conversation like anybody else.

When you limit a persons vocabulary, you warp their will

The moment speed requires you to choose from several existing options, the system will gradually warp in directions you dont want it to. Thats why we are now working on an interface that will allow Peter to rank his choices. If, because of speed considerations, he choses a less than optimal word, he will be able to immediately mark it. That note will be recorded and after the conversation is over, he will be able to do some damage control and provide feedback on the way the system conducted the interaction, thereby offering it an opportunity to learn him better for next time. He can also write I wouldn't answer in that way and offer an alternative. With time the system will get to know him and his preferences better and better reflect his personality.

Will the day ever arrive when the system can completely reflect the person who operates it?

It depends how open you are to probing. Our system is based on going into the skull and monitoring brain activity. But there is a lot of innovation in the field of brain imaging, like encoding the electric activity in the brain using a fMRI device to decipher what the user is really thinking at any given moment: they are shown a picture of a cat, for example, and map the part of the brain that lights up. Then theyre shown a picture of a goat and map that reaction. In this way artificial intelligence will one day be able to be combined with imaging systems. There is a lot of work being done, but we are still far from mind-reading, said Nachman.

Most of the developments in the field are based on the P300 transfer learning algorithm, which is already helping ALS patients in worse condition than Scott-Morgan, who cant even move their pupils. A monitor placed in front of their eyes presents a chart of letters that flash, one line or column at a time. When the letter that the user choses flashes, their brain reacts within a 300th of a second (thus the name). The algorithm detects the data using an EEG electrode attached to the users head and translates the signal to the stroke of a keyboard. In this way, even someone whos lost all mobility can still communicate with the outside world.

Over the years this technology developed into the recording of Motor Imagination-- tracing the brains activity when the user imagines moving a limb or a muscle, like their tongue, for example-- and Mental Imaging, tracing their brain activity when thinking about pronouncing a certain syllable. Thats the closest weve gotten to mindreading, but the technology is still far from enabling people who suffer from ALS to move their limbs or utter sounds freely. Brain researchers and computer scientists around the world are hard at work developing these capabilities into applicable technology. One of the teams that is working on it is active here in Israel, led by Dr. Oren Shriki who heads the Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in collaboration with scientists from most of Israels universities.

How do you decipher feelings from two simple parameters?

Innovation is a way of life for Peter Scott-Morgan. His PhD from the Royal Imperial College was the first ever granted in Britain for the field of robotics. In 1984, when he was only 26, he published his first book The Robotics Revolution which was one of the leading English language books in the field. He came out as gay when he was a teenager in the conservative U.K. of the seventies, and is currently in a relationship with Francis, his partner of 40 years. The two were married in 2005, on the first day that the law permitted same-sex marriage. Today they manage a public fund promoting technological entrepreneurship to help people overcome a range of disabilities in addition to ALS. Weve always had the mantra of turning liabilities into assets, and motor neurone disease is no exception, he said in an interview to U.K. Channel 4.

Roughly a year ago, Scott-Morgan underwent his last procedure, for now, on his journey to become Peter 2.0 as he calls it. The reason for it was a deterioration in his condition his upper body began atrophying rapidly, robbing him of the little motion he had. In October 2019, the month when doctors had initially predicted his death, he entered the operating room where his windpipe and esophagus were separated and an additional, fourth, tube was inserted into his body, through a hole in his throat that helps him breathe with the aid of a respirator. The procedure forced him into a period of temporary muteness, which ended after several months with the installation of the artificial speech system designed by Nachman.

The main update to the system since Hawkings time is that while the older version could only speak for Hawking, Scott-Morgans system also detects what is being said to him. Using artificial intelligence it can analyze the other persons speech to better fine tune the algorithm and the answers he gives, speeding up the conversation. The next stage in the systems development, which is being worked on at Intels labs now, is expanding its use from individual words to add the wider context of the conversation. In other words, expressing emotion. While Scott-Morgan can speak and express himself relatively freely, his emotional world still has difficulty breaking out of the walls erected by the disease.

As a quick solution, we enabled Peter to tag parts of his texts under specific emotions, map them out and include them in his voice and the expressions of the avatar thats on the monitor connected to his chair, Nachman explained. If you simply want to say Im angry now and use that emotional status for the entirety of the conversation, its relatively easy. The problems arise when you try to provide higher emotional resolution. Its a significant step that were not yet sure about.

How do you even measure emotions?

Frankly, it is pretty easy to measure feelings. Emotions revolve around intensity and positive or negative values. By cross-referencing both, you can well determine the emotion. The signals you usually use are tone, facial expressions, and physiological measurements, such as, heart-rate, ECG, or skin conductivity. The first two signals are irrelevant for ALS patients, but the other indicators are very useful in determining intensity of emotion, while value can be expressed in words. Conducting analysis on the combination of all the signals, provides a result that can let you understand a persons emotional state.

The problem in this case is a philosophical one, not a technological one: we dont always want to express the emotion were actually feeling. "Sometimes, we want to hide our real emotion and replace it with another, Nachman said, for example, feeling anger, but showing only equanimity. If in the future, we will be able to analyze the physiological signals together with the text produced by the AI, we will be prevented from choosing the emotions we want to display. This is a moral problem that we still need to solve.

It has been nearly a year since Scott-Morgans latest dramatic surgery and if his feelings are any indication, it was a success. Statistically I should be dead, and according to the relentlessly depressing story of MND that everyone insists on pedalling, I should at the very least be feeling close to suicidal. But instead, I feel alive, excited, Im really looking forward to the future. Im having fun! He said in the interview to Channel 4, attributing his bearing to his partner, his family, his medical crew, technology and good fortune.

Contrary to the torturous scare stories about how it feels to be trapped in the straightjacket of your own living corpse, the brain moves on. It grieves a bit, and then, if you give it the chance, most of the time it forgets. Days may pass when I never once remember that in the past I could walk, or move, or (absurdly) even that I could talk. My brain has its own new normal, he concluded.

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Mind over Matter: The man who turned himself into a cyborg to overcome ALS - CTech

Superman: Top 10 Villains Who Have Yet To Appear On The Big Screen – CBR – Comic Book Resources

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

There are so many amazing supervillain enemies of Superman to choose from. It's truly a wonder that these haven't found their way onto the big screen.

Supermanhas had plenty of on-screen interpretations over the past several decades. Given that, fans of the superhero hope to see him get many, many more in the near future. Although we have seen several great interpretations of Superman's arch-nemesis -- Lex Luthor -- fans have yet to see the majority of the rest of the hero's infamous rogues gallery.

RELATED:Top 10 Alternate Versions Of Superman

There are so many amazing supervillain enemies of Superman to choose from. It is truly a wonder that more of them have not found their way onto the big screen. With superhero movies continuing to dominate box office records, it is a sure thing that more Superman movies are on the way in the near future. Many of these villains will likely be included with their very own, first-ever, big-screen interpretations.

One of Superman's most intelligent foes, the Ultra Humanite would bring some much-needed diversity to the DCEU's roster of villains. Given the fact that Gorilla Grodd has yet to make his debut, the universe has yet to see its first ape villain.

Ultra-Humanite is not one of Superman's most well-known villains -- and that is exactly whatwould make him great for a movie. Although, given hislower status on the totem pole of bad guys, he likely wouldn't be the primary villainin a Superman movie.

A crazy lunatic who makes deadly weapons and robots out of toys, Toyman is certainly one of Supermans more interesting villains. With the lighter tone that DC movies have taken in recent years, a villain like Toyman may just fit right in.

Even if the Toyman was played in a more serious way, it could certainly work. He could perhaps be portrayed as a dangerous, psychotic serial killer with an obsession for childrens toys. Now that would be scary. Sounds more like a Batman villain than a Superman villain, but maybe a change like that is just what the live-action Superman films need at this point.

Mongul and his massive ship Warworld are two of the most deadly forces in the entire DC Universe. Mongul himself is indestructible. In some incarnations, he is even more powerful than Superman himself.

RELATED:Suicide Squad: 5 Ways They Can Defeat Superman (& 5 Ways They Can't)

Monguls Warworld, however, is what would truly make a movie with Mongul as the antagonist a truly exciting experience. An entire planet-sized weapon that can destroy entire worlds -- now that sounds like a fantastic Superman-level threat.

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Superman: Top 10 Villains Who Have Yet To Appear On The Big Screen - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Sleepy Cyborg Galley kicks off semester with virtual exhibit, Quaranzine – The Rice Thresher

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

By Jacob Duff 9/15/20 10:46pm

In a world becoming increasingly dependent on dual-delivery, one has to ask how visual art, a mode of communication previously relegated mostly to the physical, is adapting to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. An example of this dual-delivery form of visual art can be found at the newly renamed, student-run Sleepy Cyborg Gallery in their first exhibition of the year called quaranzine.

A zine is a self-produced and published publication that pulls from a DIY idea of what it means to make a booklet of images and words, Isabel Samperio, director of Sleepy Cyborg Gallery, said.

Normally, zines are a very physical form of art. Theyre meant to be opened and touched and looked at, interactions that are now impossible given the current COVID-19 restrictions.

Quaranzine is located in the small, white room on the bottom floor of Sewall Hall where past iterations of Sleepy Cyborg Gallery Inferno Gallery and Matchbox have also been housed.

The exhibit consists of approximately 15 student-made booklets displayed on the walls with string and clips. The zines vary from small collections of poems written on copy paper to colorful images of plants and animals on construction paper. One piece is supposed to be a paper fortune teller, the kind one would make in elementary school, covered in intricate black drawings and small, handwritten fortunes. Each piece has a printed QR code taped underneath that, when scanned, shows a video of a hand on the concrete floor of the space flipping through the booklets to reveal all the sides and pages of the students piece.

Samperio explained that she thought the flexibility of being online was actually a benefit for the gallery.

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The amount of people that we would be engaged with would be crazy, Samperio said. Theres just so much convenience there and accessibility.

According to Samperio and Gabrielle Feuillet, the exhibit was intended in part as a statement on the current politicization of the United States Postal Service, as all of the art had been sent through the mail. In fact, in the show there was a small pile of envelopes and stamps encouraging those who viewed the show to send a letter themselves. Feuillet said that even though the zines started as a way of connecting with friends that felt much more meaningful than other digital forms of communication.

Quaranzine uses the circumstances of social distancing and virtual interaction as an opportunity to juxtapose physical art forms with our new, highly digitized reality while simultaneously making art more remotely accessible.

You can visit Sleepy Cyborgs new show Quaranzine in person by emailing the director to set up a viewing appointment at sleepycyborggallery@gmail.com, or view their online gallery at matchbox.rice.edu.

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Sleepy Cyborg Galley kicks off semester with virtual exhibit, Quaranzine - The Rice Thresher

How will we live together? The Middlebury Campus – Middlebury Campus

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Two years ago, Middlebury announced a community study titled How Will We Live Together. The study examined community building efforts at Middlebury, focusing particularly on the commons system and ResLife. The How Will We Live Together committee recommended dissolving the commons system, a recommendation that is only going into full effect this semester. With additional Covid-19 guidelines, this semester more than ever we should be asking ourselves: How will we live together?

The commons system was designed 22 years ago as a framework for intentionally creating community. In an ideal form, a commons would act like a college family: a place to find support and encouragement from peers, staff and faculty; it would be a source of pride and belonging for a student.

In my experience, Atwater commons was particularly successful in building community. Many of the freshmen for whom I was an FYC, for example, are still close friends as juniors. In my past conversations with former Atwater Dean Scott Barnicle, Ive understood that this closeness wasnt unusual for Atwater students, perhaps due to the centrality of the Allen common room to the Atwater Freshman community.

This echoes the How We Will Live Together Executive Summary, which states, spaces for socializing, [including] informal ones such as residence hall lounges . . . are extremely limited and in some cases and buildings, nonexistent. Put simply, there needs to be adequate spaces available for communities to form. In Allen, there is such a space.

As an innovator at heart, I am thrilled by some of the improvements that How We Live Together suggested. Lets create better common areas. Lets allocate resources, including deans and faculty heads, more equitably across campus. Lets improve our faculty-student connections. Lets create communities that seniors and first years alike can hold dear.

All the same, Ive been wearing my Atwater sweatshirt more in the last few weeks than I have in a long time.

Is it silly to cling so hard to an arbitrary housing allocation named after a long-dead college president? Perhaps. But symbols of a well-built community become identical to a set of important memories and relationships. Atwater is my FebYC celebrating my entry to ResLife. Its late night Ben & Jerrys with my hallmates during my first year. Its my three-person Quidditch team at the Commons Cup. Its dinners at the commons house and long talks with my dean. Its my fellow Atwater Febs and my former residents from when I was an FYC (whom I missed as much as anyone while I was abroad). Community provides a lasting sense of belonging, and Atwater was, for me, a true community.

With the loss of the commons, weve traded previously existing communities for the opportunity to ask: How could we live together? How can we build communities that we can be proud of? How can we connect students across ages, majors, student organizations and extracurricular interests? How can we connect students, faculty and staff outside of the classroom?

Covid-19 complicates these questions and our answers. Many of our community-building strategies concerts, parties, hall activities are more complicated this year, if theyre possible in the first place. At the same time, were depending on one another to stay healthy for the sake of our in-person classes and our physical health.

Ill only note in passing the obvious: life on campus in times of Covid-19 is more difficult and more stressful than in years past. In the understatement of the year, the CDCs website tells us that The coronavirus disease . . . may be stressful for people. CNN suggested that we look out for feelings of helplessness and a lack of interest in pleasurable activities as early warning signs of severe anxiety, but this year many pleasurable activities are cancelled and out of our control. If there were a time to have a strong community support system, this would be it.

This is simultaneously the year to recreate our community support system and to rely on that system more than any of us have before. It is a time that demands community solutions while those communities are being fundamentally recreated. Once again we must ask: How will we live together?

An important presumption Im making is this: community ought to be built intentionally. Theres nothing about the end of the commons, or even Covid-19, that requires us to create community frameworks to replace (or improve upon) the commons. Many of us will be fine without intentional community; we have our friends, our clubs, our classes in short, our communities already formed for us. But for those who fall through the cracks, there will be a world of difference. I have no interest in my community being one in which a first year (or sophomore, junior or senior) can get lost in the crowd. When I ask how we will live together, I mean to ask how we will intentionally ensure that everyone has the opportunity to find community here if they look for it.

I dont have a good answer to that question. Taking care of our mental health will be paramount; our ability to take care of one another in stressful times depends on having spare mental and emotional capacity. Reaching out to others, especially first years, is importantas is smiling more and bringing extra patience, care and love to everything we do. Every little thing we do in service of our community is a way of saying, Wont you be my neighbor?

This is no easy task, but it will make a difference. Do we want to remember our Covid-19 year as one characterized by ill will, paranoia, frustration and worry? Or will it be the year in which we took care of one another and created a new culture of community that lasts for the years to come?

Ben Beese is a member of the class of 2021.5.

Editors note: Editor in chief Bochu Ding 21 was a member of the How Will We Live Together steering committee.

Closing Thoughts: Being Intentional About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – All Together – Society of Women Engineers

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Recent events in the United States have confirmed that systemic racism continues to exist and that tragedies such as the current COVID-19 pandemic take a greater toll on communities of color. If we are to stamp out these racial inequities permanently, it follows that we all need to come together to demand change from our civic leaders. And, individually, regardless of the color of our skin, each of us has an important role in this systemic change.

In 2018, the Society of Women Engineers added Diversity and Inclusion as a fourth goal to our Society strategic plan. We stated that SWE will champion diversity in the engineering and technology professions and will promote an inclusive environment. There are several objectives under that goal, including having our membership match the diversity of the engineering profession and fostering an inclusive culture to increase the diversity of the Societys leadership. We recognized that as a diversity organization, we needed to practice what we preached to employers and university partners. In short, we needed to do more. A good start, but I will be the first to admit we have fallen short.

Following the killing of George Floyd, the Society issued a statement condemning his murder, and we discussed collectively turning our pain into purpose. While many members were proud to see SWE take a stand in support of the Black community, many members also pointed out that we needed to start by looking within SWE. Examples such as the lack of diversity on the board of directors or exclusionary behavior at local section events were brought to our attention. FY21 President Heather Doty vowed to lead our efforts to be much more intentional about our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, beginning immediately.

We started by making a commitment to add at least one woman of color to the FY21 board of directors. A call for nominations was opened and, despite the short window, more than 50 nominations were received. Last month, the board of directors unanimously approved the appointment of two special directors: Rose-Margaret Ekeng-Itua, Ph.D., and Maisha Gray-Diggs, Ph.D. We are excited to have them join the board, and we welcome their much-needed insight and expertise.

We heard members tell us in no uncertain terms that this is for the Societys leadership to rectify and not a problem for the women of color to fix.

We also recognized that we needed to listen more and that we needed more diverse voices providing feedback to our board of directors. So, on July 22, we conducted two Listening Town Halls to hear directly from our members of color on their experiences in SWE and what we needed to do to improve the SWE experience for women of color, both locally and at the Society level. More than 180 members joined us that day to share and provide feedback. I will admit that much of the feedback was hard to hear. But we need to know where we are if we are to eliminate the inequities within the Society.

We heard members tell us in no uncertain terms that this is for the Societys leadership to rectify and not a problem for the women of color to fix. We agree 100%, but we want you at the table sharing your voice and keeping us accountable. Both SWEs board and staff will be using the feedback we received to develop our action plan. Though the sessions were recorded, we will report out on the discussions only in the aggregate, and the recordings will not be made public because we wanted to create a safe space so members could feel comfortable sharing.

We want to make sure that every member feels welcome and included, whether at a local Section event, on a committee, or at Society-level events. Nothing less is acceptable.

One outcome is clear: At all levels of the Society, training is needed for our leaders on intentional inclusion. We took a first step by hosting a Facebook live discussion on July 9 titled Lets Talk: Allyship for Black Engineers and Technologists (https://bit.ly/3gGzs2W). This is just a first step. The Society is currently meeting with several subject matter experts to help us develop training and a dissemination plan for leadership at all levels within the organization. We want to make sure that every member feels welcome and included, whether at a local section event, on a committee, or at Society-level events. Nothing less is acceptable.

The Society will also be looking at our leadership pipeline and the diversity of our committees, abstract reviewers, and awards and scholarship judges. We want to make sure that speakers, award recipients, and scholarship recipients reflect the diversity of our membership and the profession. This will include making sure that the mentorship and sponsorship of diverse members is intentional. Having diverse voices engaged across the Society will help us avoid our blind spots and be a truly inclusive organization.

We all have a role to play in eliminating systemic racism. I ask all of our members to join in helping SWE be a place where ALL women in engineering, regardless of skin color, feel part of our community.

In the words of Maya Angelou, in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. Lets make our SWE community strong!

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Closing Thoughts: Being Intentional About Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - All Together - Society of Women Engineers

Governor Cuomo Announces Insurance Fraud Action Against Johnson & Johnson for Leading Role in the Opioid Crisis – ny.gov

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Governor Cuomo Announces Insurance Fraud Action Against Johnson & Johnson for Leading Role in the Opioid Crisis | Governor Andrew M. Cuomo Skip to main content September 17, 2020

Albany, NY

Part of DFS Action to Recover $2 Billion in Insurance Premium Overcharges for Defrauded New Yorkers

DFS Claim Alleges Johnson & Johnson Fraudulently Mischaracterized theSafety and Efficacyof Opioid Drugs to Expand the Opioid Market, Serving to Promote Both Its Own Opioid Drugs and Opioid Raw Material Business, Spread the Opioid Crisis, and Cause Dramatically Increased Health Insurance Costs for NY Consumers

Read the DFS Statement of Charges for Johnson & Johnson and Related CompaniesHere

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the Department of Financial Services has filed charges and initiated administrative proceedings againstJohnson & Johnsonand its subsidiariesJanssen Pharmaceutica, Inc., Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. - collectively, "Johnson & Johnson."These charges are the fourth set to be filed against opioid manufacturers arising from theongoing DFS investigationinto the creators and perpetrators of the opioid crisis.

"The opioid crisis has taken too many lives and New York State will continue to take action against thosewho helped fuel this public health catastrophe and bring a measure of justice to families who havelost loved ones,"Governor Cuomo said. "Misrepresentation ofopioidsto consumers for profit is inexcusable and we will use every tool necessary to help ensure those responsible are held fully accountable."

Superintendent of Financial Services Linda A. Lacewell said, "The opioid crisis has had a devastating impact on individuals, families, and communities across the nation. DFS remains committed to protecting New York consumers and ensuring the integrity of the insurance industry."

Johnson & Johnson manufactured a number of opioid products in New York State, most notablySchedule II drugs Duragesic, a fentanyl patch, and Nucynta, a tapentadol drug. In addition, Johnson & Johnson controlled a large portion of the raw opioid supply chain through its patented "Norman Poppy," which at one point was responsible for up to 80% of the global supply for oxycodone raw materials.

The DFS Statement of Charges alleges that the Johnson & Johnson Respondents have had a long-standing and multi-faceted leading role in originating, supplying, facilitating, and actively creating a dangerous market foropioidsfor chronic pain treatment. Their efforts not only supported sales of their own brandedopioidsbut also established under false and fraudulent pretenses an environment that amplified the medical community's acceptance of opioid prescribing, thereby increasing demand for its opioid-related raw materials.

DFS's allegations against the Johnson & Johnson Respondents include the following:

According to the DFS Statement of Charges, the Johnson & Johnson Respondents violated two New YorkInsurance Laws. Section 403 of the New YorkInsurance Law prohibits fraudulentinsurance acts and carries with it penalties of up to $5,000 plus the amount of the fraudulent claim for each violation; DFS alleges that each fraudulent prescription constitutes a separate violation. Section 408 of the Financial Services Law prohibitsintentional fraud or intentional misrepresentation of a material fact with respect to a financial product or service, which includes healthinsurance and carries with it penalties of up to $5,000 per violation; once again,DFS alleges that each fraudulent prescription constitutes a separate violation.

The hearing will be held at the office of the New York State Department of Financial Services, One State Street, New York, New York, beginning on January 25, 2021.

Read a copy of the DFS Statement of Charges for Johnson & Johnson and related companies on the DFSwebsite.

The State of New York does not imply approval of the listed destinations, warrant the accuracy of any information set out in those destinations, or endorse any opinions expressed therein. External web sites operate at the direction of their respective owners who should be contacted directly with questions regarding the content of these sites.

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Governor Cuomo Announces Insurance Fraud Action Against Johnson & Johnson for Leading Role in the Opioid Crisis - ny.gov

He speaks their language: UW medical student trained in Brewster this summer – wenatcheeworld.com

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

BREWSTER Second-year University of Washington School of Medicine student Antonio Guadamuz spent part of his summer serving the largely Latinx population of Brewster.

Born in Nicaragua and raised in Miami, Guadamuz knows exactly what racism looks and feels like.

It's the open stares in grocery stores. It's the awareness of being followed by store employees while doing your shopping. And unfortunately, it can lead to difficulty in getting a correct diagnosis when you're sick. That's what drew the 33-year-old to medical school.

"Five years ago, I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, but it was a circuitous, complicated process because as a person of color, they assumed I had Type 2 diabetes," said Guadamuz, who explained current medical algorithms indicate Hispanics are at greater risk of developing the Type 2 form of the disease.

The frustration he experienced as a patient propelled him toward a career as a physician.

"I see the potential to address the inadequacies in society," he said. "Medicine meshes with my worldview and ideals about what I want to do with my life."

At the end of his first year at UWSOM in Seattle, Guadamuz had the opportunity to participate in a summer training program known by the acronym RUOP: Rural Underserved Opportunities Program; its open to all medical students between years one and two of medical school.

During the four-week summer program, students live in rural underserved communities, working alongside local physicians in hospitals, clinics and private practices.

"Our students develop a profound appreciation of what life is like for physicians practicing rural medicine," said John McCarthy, MD, assistant dean for Rural Programs at UWSOM.

Guadamuz served in Brewster, population 2,300, working with Dr. James Wallace at Family Health Centers.

"We serve all of Okanogan County and part of North Douglas County," said Dr. Wallace. "Brewster's population doubles in size during harvest season. We have a huge influx of migrant workers from Mexico, Central America and even Jamaica. It adds a unique flavor to the cultural melting pot of the town."

Wallace, a North Carolina native, was drawn to underserved communities while in medical school at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

"My medical school class voted me, 'Most Likely to Practice Rural Medicine in North Carolina,'" he laughed.

Okanogan County is a long way from North Carolina, but it meshed with Wallace's goals.

"I was drawn to the needs of rural areas," he said. "And serving in a community health center fits my vision of how I want to practice."

He was delighted to work with Guadamuz.

"Antonio is one of the best students I've had," said Wallace. "He was thirsty for experience and very intentional in the clinical skills he wanted to learn."

While Wallace learned Spanish during his residency, he said watching Guadamuz converse easily with patients was eye-opening.

"Seventy-five percent of my patients speak Spanish. They really appreciate someone who speaks their language," he said. "Because Spanish is his first language, Antonio could convey empathy, humor and a depth of cultural understanding that I can't. Seeing him work with our Spanish-speaking patients was an experience that drove that home for me."

McCarthy understands how vital that kind of doctor/patient interaction is.

"It's incredibly important to have providers with whom patients can identify. Much of what we do is based on trust and relationships," he said. "This is easier when we have shared experiences."

Guadamuz was glad to be of service while he was learning about rural medicine.

"I really enjoyed my time and training in Brewster. It's a beautiful area." he said. "I received a great clinical education, and I was able to use Spanish frequently to help patients feel more comfortable."

But because of earlier small-town experiences, Guadamuz had some reservations.

"I was apprehensive about being in a rural, conservative area," he said. "I'd already experienced stares and being followed in stores in my travels to smaller communities throughout the state. Rural areas often feel like unsafe, unwelcoming places for people of color."

It's a conundrum McCarthy is well aware of.

"Our goal is to develop students into physicians who appreciate and respect diversity," said McCarthy. "At the same time, it's important to cultivate a workforce which mirrors the populace of the communities we serve. I've seen patients light up when they see a provider who mirrors their culture and experiences."

However, attracting minority physicians to places they may feel unwelcome can be difficult. Wallace says conversations with medical students like Guadamuz are an important place to start.

"Antonio helped me to recognize my own deficiencies and to explore ways to make up for them," Wallace said. "Traditionally, the best health care wasn't available to people of color which led to worsening health outcomes. We're trying to hire health workers who are part of these communities to provide feedback about how to better serve our patient population."

To be clear, Guadamuz didn't feel unwelcome everywhere he went. Patients felt at ease with him, and the medical staff was very open to important dialog.

"Racism is an uncomfortable topic," he said. "But it's an uncomfortable experience too, and it's important to keep talking about it."

He valued observing how Family Health Centers is actively meeting the needs of the communities it serves.

"When you are among only a handful of doctors in a small town, its important to build long-term relationships with patients," Guadamuz said. "That was a key takeaway from my RUOP experience."

His hope is that conversations about discrimination will become part of a larger dialog that centers on the voices of the people most marginalized.

Wallace agreed, citing the dire need for physicians that fit their cultural population.

"Antonio gives me hope that there are students out there who are endeavoring to explore rural areas despite the expectation that they might experience racism," he said. I appreciate that through RUOP and other rural programs, UWSOM is addressing two of the most vexing problems facing our societyracism and improving the physician workforce in underserved areas of our state.

Guadamuz feels it's way to early in his medical education to know what kind of medicine he will one day practice, or where he and his family will settle, but he does know this: "Wherever I practice I hope to have real conversations about how to address inequities in health care, and how physicians can better meet the needs of the entire community."

Cindy Hval is a freelance writer who writes for the University of Washington School of Medicine.

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He speaks their language: UW medical student trained in Brewster this summer - wenatcheeworld.com

Philanthropy, Race and Overcoming Lack of Access to Networks – Triple Pundit

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

As discussed yesterday, the world of philanthropy wields powerful influence, but that generosity often leaves out people of color. Two of the biggest factors holding back philanthropys quest for social change are rooted in race, according to recent research from Echoing Green and The Bridgespan Group. One is understanding the role of race in the problems that philanthropists are trying to solve. The second is the significance of race when it comes to how philanthropists identify leaders and find solutions.

We found a clear barrier is getting connectedthat leaders of color need equitable access to social networks that enable these vital connections to the philanthropic community, said Echoing Green President Cheryl Dorsey in a recent interview with TriplePundit.

This came up time and time again in our conversations with leaders. A leader of color is invited to a conference, for exampleIve experienced this myselfand at the end of the conference, you find out there was a meeting within the meeting, Dorsey added. A small group of funders invited a small group of nonprofit leaders to meet at the hotel bar or to go out to dinner, and the leader of color just didn't have access to that invitation or that conversation, which was directly correlated with their inability to build these relationships that lead to funding.

Another barrier people of color face in the philanthropy community is the difficulty in building rapport with funders. Even if you can get connected to these funders, there are all sorts of ways that interpersonal bias can show up and inhibit the ability to build trusting relationships between a funder and a leader of color, Dorsey said.

Yet another barrier is the getting across the finish line and getting that funder to write the check. Funders will often lack understanding of culturally relevant approaches that proximate leaders of color bring to the table, continued Dorsey. Leaders of color will often hear, I would really like to fund solutions generated by communities of color, but there's just not enough evidence of effectiveness, or it's just not clear they have the capacity to execute on the work. And it's a vicious cycle of disadvantage. Because quite often, leaders of color don't have organizational capacity because funders don't invest in them.

As Dorsey noted, Evidence-based philanthropy can be weaponized to exclude leaders of color who are often nearest to the issues that their communities face and are really rolling up their sleeves to do deep, complicated, complex social change work that doesn't necessarily lend itself to easily measurable variables. How do you dismantle 350 years of structural racism around wealth and credit? There's not going to be one metric that you can easily use to measure that organization against. Its much more complicated and nuanced and sophisticated than that.

The research by Echoing Green and Bridgespan recommended three steps, or three gets, for donors to remedy these barriers:

Get proximate: Actively build knowledge of, connection to, and mutual trust with communities most impacted by the social change issues you seek to address, through intentional learning and investment.

Get reflective: Collect, analyzeand reflect on data disaggregated by race for your portfolio in order to unearth and assess assumptions and biases that are limiting your philanthropy. Then make necessary shifts to your organizational culture, process, and investment norms.

Get accountable: Set racial equity goals to build power among community members and leaders proximate to the problems you seek to address. Share these goals with others who can hold you accountable.

When we look at social innovators, they are a powerful agent of change for a whole host of reasons. They have that entrepreneurial and disruptive mindset that allows them to leapfrog and fundamentally re-imagine how things are done in a particular field, Dorsey said.

Echoing Greens Fellows are illustrative of what can happen when people of color break through the barriers. Gina Clayton-Johnson, for example, founded Essie Justice Group, the mission of which is to build a women-led movement to end mass incarceration by uniting, supportingand empowering women with incarcerated loved ones.

T. Morgan Dixon and Vanessa GarrisonlaunchedGirlTrek, which seeks to pioneer a health movement for black women and girls grounded in civil rights history and principles through walking campaigns, community leadership and health advocacy.

And Colette Pichon Battle started the Gulf Coast Center for Law & Policy (GCCLP) to promote equity in Gulf Coast communities of color that are most affected by climate change by providing community stabilizing legal services and ecological equity training and support for civic participation.

That Echoing Greens new fund is focused on engaging the corporate community in a big way is quite intentional, Dorsey explained. They are such profoundly important institutions in our global economy that if they are ignored and are marginalized, we do not get anywhere. At its core, movement building is about changing hearts and minds at scale. So to me, it would be malpractice not to include the millions and millions of business leaders who sit on top so many resources. They provide the opportunities to scale the work of these incredible social change agents.

She added: And its a nice win-win for these companies, as being part of social impact has become a really important part of employee engagement and retention. The reason weve focused on engaging 10,000 employees is that were trying to be ambitious and audacious and to what we can to reach a tipping point. To get that many people engaged could be really powerful for shifting the way that these business leaders think about their personal role as civic leaders, but also the role of their companies and the civic footprint that they are responsible for in economies across the globe.

Dorsey rounded out her interview with 3p by saying she hopes that Echoing Green has been successful in holding up a mirror to the world of philanthropy and saying, To get the results, you have to do the work. And it starts with investing in black and brown leaders. If you care about social impact, that is your shortest path to impact on all of these deeply entrenched issues.

Image credit: Essie Justice Group/Facebook

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Philanthropy, Race and Overcoming Lack of Access to Networks - Triple Pundit

Biden campaign grows more diverse with people of color making up nearly half of staff – CNN

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Forty-six percent of Biden's full-time staff are people of color, up from 35% percent when the campaign first reported its diversity data in June, according to new figures provided to CNN by a Biden campaign official. Forty percent of senior staffers are people of color, up from 36% ten weeks ago.

The number of women on the campaign also grew with 59% of full-time staff identifying as female, up from 53% in June. Fifty-six percent of senior staff are female, a slight decrease from the 58% of women who comprised senior staff in June.

Five percent of staff chose not to specify race. The campaign did not provide a full staffing breakdown based on race and ethnicity. The new figures are reflective of 622 full-time Biden campaign staff, a campaign official said.

"The Vice President is committed to building a campaign team that reflects America. The growth in our diversity numbers reflects that commitment and is another great example of the Vice President demonstrating his values through his actions," said Michael Leach, chief people diversity and inclusion officer for the Biden campaign. "As our campaign continues to grow and as we round out the final months of the general election, diversity, equity, and inclusion will continue to be at the forefront of our inclusive growth philosophy and strategy."

Alida Garcia, founder of Inclusv, a diversity in politics group that has worked with the Biden campaign to bring in more diverse staff, said the new figures reflect a "real committed focus" by the campaign to diversify its staffing, including in its battleground states' operations.

"It shows how intentional they've been in building out their state teams to ensure that the state operations in these critical battleground states are reflective of the communities that are going to make up the Biden-Harris victory," Garcia said.

"When we think about those communities and we think about communities of color, they are the hardest hit by the pandemic right now," Garcia added. "As it relates to building campaign apparatuses that respect and understand what communities of color are facing, the fact that the campaign has been intentional about who is at the top in doing this work with them to me speaks volumes and also is going to provide them with the opportunity to build systems that engage these voters."

Biden has pledged, if elected, to build an administration that reflects the diversity of the country, including in his staff, cabinet and other government officials.

"My administration's going to look like America, not just my staff, the administration from the vice president straight down through Cabinet members to major players within the White House, and the court," Biden said during a June townhall focusing on issues tied to the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. "It's going to be a reflection of who we are as a nation."

The Trump campaign last released its diversity data in June when a spokesperson said 52% of full-time staff were women and senior staff was comprised of 56% women and 25% people of color. At the time, the campaign did not provide a breakdown of people of color on the full-time staff.

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No Justice, No Peace: On The Role of Violence – The Phoenix – Swarthmore College The Phoenix Online

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

In recent months, we have seen calls for peace and civility aimed at the Black Lives Matter movement. The argument made is that violence and riots are not the proper way to achieve change. At its core, this argument asserts that true protest is not only nonviolent, but borderline passive. Such a claim could not be further from the historical truth.

Every major liberation movement, from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s to the Palestinian struggle to attempts to free colonized lands around the world, has had both violent and nonviolent elements. From King to the Black Panthers, from Mandela to the Jacobins, great figures and inspiring messages of struggle and triumph have echoed and resonated centuries after their movements ended. Many of these movements have been whitewashed over the decades and centuries, painted as simple requests for change without any violence or force involved, which the powers that be were kind and wise enough to grant.

As a non-Black ally of the Black Lives Matter movement, I hope to use this piece to reach my readers who are also non-Black allies. My goal is to help provide context to the violence/nonviolence debate, and to illustrate that it is not our position to define the means by which the Black community fights for justice and liberation, for, as Dr. King said, the greatest threat to Black liberation comes not from the Klansmen, but from the White Moderate, who would ask Black Americans to wait for a more convenient season..

Violence and nonviolence do not have the moral distinction that we typically associate with them, a fact well reflected by the work of Malcom X, Frantz Fanon, Dr. King, and other great thinkers, activists, and heroes of change. Social movements have always contained both violent and nonviolent elements, both of which were necessary to achieve change. Our understanding of violence is often very one-sided.

With this in mind, we must first understand what violence and nonviolence are. The World Health Organization defines violence as the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation. From this definition, we can gather that violence is not restricted to physical harm, but can extend to psychological and emotional harm as well. There are two key takeaways here: first, not all violence is equal, and power dynamics play greatly into the severity and degree of violent acts; and second, violence can and does include everything from individual assaults to economic sanctions that cause starvation to mass incarceration. Violence is not limited to individual interactions it can be perpetrated against entire communities.

With this in mind, we must now ask the question; what is nonviolence? I would like to distinguish nonviolent resistance from passivity, as the two are often conflated. Passivity implies that oppression goes without response or resistance, and that individuals will simply ignore or accept acts of violence and terror that come against them. Nonviolence, on the other hand, is a response to terror, violence, and oppression that relies on tactics that do not result in physical harm, be it direct or indirect. These tactics include general strikes, mass protests, boycotts, and sit-ins, to name a few. Often, the violence that occurs at such events is from the oppressive group itself, usually through the military or police. The hope is that people will see the brutality of those in power and begin to consider joining the fight.

Now that we have at least a baseline understanding of these two ideas, let us turn to the issue of morality and effectiveness. Often, nonviolence is painted as the good or moral form of resistance, and violence is painted as evil and immoral. Additionally, nonviolence is often held up as the effective and correct way of protest, and violent resistance is made out to be doomed to fail. Dr. Kings explanation for a nonviolent campaign was, We are outnumbered; we do not have access to the instruments of violence. Even more than that, not only is violence impractical, but it is immoral; for it is my firm conviction that to seek to retaliate with violence does nothing but intensify the existence of evil and hate in the universe.

King argues that violent resistance would not be possible, because the masses do not have access to the same tools as the military and police. Second, he argues that violence of any kind is immoral, for it creates more evil in the world. Kings accessibility argument is an interesting one. It is worth noting here that the NRA, which is commonly associated with strong anti-regulation efforts for guns, took a stronger pro-gun-restriction stance during the era of the Black Panthers, in an effort to get firearms out of the hands of Black Americans. This not only demonstrates the inherent white supremacist nature of the organization, but it also shows that there was considerable fear around Black Americans being able to actually arm themselves and orchestrate an armed resistance against the systems and mechanisms of oppression.

A counter to this accessibility argument comes from Frantz Fanon, who argued in his work, The Wretched of the Earth, that:

Another thing is that they are convinced violent methods are ineffective. For them, there can be no doubt, any attempt to smash colonial oppression by force is an act of despair, a suicidal act. Because the colonizers tanks and fighter planes are constantly on their minds. When they are told we must act, they imagine bombs being dropped, armored cars rumbling through the streets, a hail of bullets, the policeand they stay put. They are losers from the start.

Essentially, Fanon argues that violent resistance is viewed as not possible because of fear, and because of the fact that for many, the idea of being able to overcome military force seems impossible. The last line, especially, illustrates Fanons belief that many act as though they have already accepted defeat. He argues that this mindset is what makes violent revolution unlikely, when in reality, he believes, it is necessary.

On the morality claim, the argument that violence spreads evil is disputed by Fanon and others, including the 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Violence, Fanon argues, is a cleansing force, as long as the targets of the violence are well-chosen. For example, a military base or a police department (as was the case during the liberation of Algeria from the French) would be an institutionally powerful target for violent action. In this way, it is possible for violence to serve as a tool to overcome power imbalances. Targeting buildings, or other symbols of institutional power, serve not only as symbols of reclamation of power and control to the movement and the world, but also demonstrate to the oppressive group that the movement knows where the power lies and is not afraid to strike it directly.

In the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers were pivotal in securing the right to self-defense in the Black community, and in pushing back against the violence of the police. In every major movement and uprising, violence has been a necessary element for liberation and freedom. Sartre argues that a strictly nonviolent uprising will not be capable of succeeding, as it concedes the right to use force to the oppressor, which, he argues, is a way of justifying the power of the oppressive group. I would argue that oppression is inherently evil, and as a result, violent revolution, if necessary, can and should be considered a moral means to achieve change. I would like to point out that even Dr. King did not have the whitewashed philosophy that many attribute to him today. While he preferred to avoid violence as his strategy, he was not a complete pacifist. As early as the 1950s, records show that he owned several firearms for the defense of himself and his family, and after the bombing of his house in the mid-1950s, he applied for a concealed carry permit. Additionally, he argued in a 1967 speech that rioting served a purpose:

The riots are not simply a reign of terror or a splurge of crime, though both elements are partially present. They are also a wildly emotional protest and a desperate attempt to display the utter desperation that has engulfed many Negroes. The vast majority who actively participated were remarkably discriminating in avoiding harm to persons, venting their anger by appropriating or destroying property. There is an ironic purpose in this choice; to attack a society that appears to cherish property above people, the worst wounds to inflict on it are those to property.

That violence does not necessarily need to be shunned as a tactic, and those riots could never match the violence levelled against Black Americans:

There is probably no way, even eliminating violence, for Negroes to obtain their rights without upsetting the equanimity of white folks. All too many of them demand tranquility when they mean inequality Nonviolent action in the South was effective because any form of social movement by Negroes upset the status quo. When Negroes merely marched in Southern streets it was close to rebellion. In the urban communities marches are less disquieting because they are not considered rebellions and secondly, because the normal turbulence of cities absorbs them as merely transitory drama which is ordinary in city lifeLet us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

We come now to the argument that if protestors simply acted more nonviolent, they would have more supporters. I would like to propose a counter-argument. When Colin Kaepernick took the knee to protest police brutality, he was viewed as a traitor, blacklisted from the NFL, and told to protest the right way. When Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted in the military during the Vietnam War, he was called a traitor, had his titles and boxing license revoked, and told to stay in his lane. When Martin Luther King Jr. called for a nonviolent revolution against the forces of racism, war, and wealth, he was assassinated. When Malcolm X called for justice by any means necessary, he was assassinated. When Fred Hampton argued that Black Americans had the same right to arm themselves under the 2nd Amendment as White Americans, he was assassinated. The pattern here is the same: regardless of the means, or how nicely packaged the message of resistance is, the message is met with similar anger, hatred, and violence.

If nonviolent action is not the correct way, and protesting in the street is not the correct way, then what is? It is clear to me that the issue is not, and has never been, the means of revolution. The issue has almost always been the revolution itself. I have not found that any of the critics of violence in movements today would argue that the American Revolutionary War should have been nonviolent. Those in power wish to keep their wealth, their status, and their control. Movements never achieve what they want by simply asking. The path to a just society, and an equal world, will not be won by asking. As non-Black supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, it is key for us to understand that regardless of how oppressed groups fight for justice and liberation, they will always be told by some that they are doing it the wrong way. Protests and uprisings against systems of power and oppression always come from within marginalized groups, and we must work to uplift and support the work of freedom fighters today. This means donating to bail funds, providing protection in numbers on the streets, and uplifting the messages that are already out there. It means educating yourself, your family, and your friends. It means standing up and pushing back when it is most uncomfortable, for that is when it is most important.

Instead of asking why people wont stop rioting, we should be asking why they have to in the first place. Violence is not inherently evil, and nonviolence is not inherently good. We must start asking ourselves how much of our beliefs reinforce the power of those at the top, which of our ingrained beliefs merely serve to prevent us from creating a world that is just, kind, and fair. It is time for us to stop asking for peace, and start asking for justice.

Excerpt from:

No Justice, No Peace: On The Role of Violence - The Phoenix - Swarthmore College The Phoenix Online

Keys to addressing diversity, equity and inclusion in real estate – Inman

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

As the world continues to grapple with the realities of racism and injustice brought most recently to the national spotlight by the murder of George Floyd, many in the real estate industry are looking inward and acknowledging that there is work to be done to heal and support our communities, while best representing our industry.

Jessica Edgerton

The real estate industry is a key vertical in the fight against racial injustice, said Leading Real Estate Companies of the World EVP of Operations and Corporate Counsel Jessica Edgerton. Our nations housing landscape carries with it a painful history of redlining, racial covenants, and both de jure and de facto segregation. By the same token, we are uniquely positioned to take a lead in breaking down the enduring binds of institutional racism and inequity that continue to inflict damage on our communities, our families, and our colleagues.

Edgerton notes that, as an industry, we have the power to face this issue on multiple fronts. From the consumer-facing standpoint, we must ensure that we provide services that meet and exceed Fair Housing standards. And as leadersbusiness owners, agents, association executives, relocation directors, all of uswe must be deeply intentional about making this an inclusive profession. Without inclusivity and diversity, we are unable to effectively serve any community.

LeadingRE is taking this charge seriously, both for its own staff and for its network of 550 member firms. LeadingRE is expanding its library of Fair Housing resources, building alliances with inclusivity-based organizations, developing new plans to support members in their diversity recruitment efforts, and creating an information co-op with resources and insights from membersmembers like Chicagos Baird & Warner and Bostons Jack Conway & Company.

Baird & Warner builds on its history

Jennifer Alter Warden

As an early advocate of Fair Housing in the 1960s, Baird & Warner has a legacy of opening housing opportunities for all, and the company is now doubling down on its efforts. Housing inequities continue to happen on our watch, and we are intent on being part of the solution, said COO Jennifer Alter Warden.

The company hired a consultant who conducted an internal assessment on diversity, equity, and inclusion. While these conversations can be difficult, what we are learning is vital in shaping our long-term plan for engaging and serving a broader communitya plan that involves training, awareness and action, Alter Warden said.

Expanded educational offerings include a lecture series on racial equity and housing and training that focuses not only on what agents should not do when it comes to Fair Housing, but also what they should do to engage and serve more diverse clients. As part of a massive archiving project that covers its 165-plus year history, the company has also documented the progress and set-backs of racial inequity in housing as a means of ensuring those experiences are not forgotten.

When it comes to awareness, Baird & Warner is using its charitable arm, Good Will Works, to address larger issues. For example, one of this years beneficiaries, the Spanish Coalition for Housing, will speak to agents on the importance of understanding the specific needs of diverse consumer segments and offering services in multiple languages.

Jack Conway & Company encourages conversation and action

Similarly, Jack Conway & Company approaches diversity and inclusion with a multi-part plan. President/CEO Carol Bulman directly addressed George Floyds killing in a video message sent to agents and staff. It broke our hearts to see so many of our people in pain. It was important to acknowledge it openly and honestly, Bulman said.

Carol Bulman

Next, the company developed a marketing vision with themes that emphasize inclusivity and caring for your neighbor. Social media graphics are made available to agents every week, giving voice to these issues and reflecting the values of the company. Education is also a top priority, including holding a Fair Housing CE class and enlisting a diversity trainer.

One of the most impactful components of Jack Conways strategy was a panel discussion, moderated by Bulman and COO Al Becker and featuring a diverse group of staff and agents. Our discussion was raw and emotional, and the feedback has been overwhelming. As leaders, we have the obligation to close the gap of silence and truly listen. We shouldnt be afraid to actually ask the questions because our own insecurities can keep us from having important conversations.

Edgerton acknowledges that the work thats been done to date, while significant, is just the beginning. This isnt a sprint. Its not even a marathonmarathons have finish lines. In the end, as real estate professionals, we are in the business of dignity, of community, of helping others build wealth. And our way forward is to ensure that these things are not out of anyones reach due to their skin color, or their national origin, or their membership in any other protected class. Inclusivity needs to be in our blood.

More here:

Keys to addressing diversity, equity and inclusion in real estate - Inman

Massacres in Colombia Lay Bare Next Phase of the Conflict – NACLA

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

In recent weeks, seemingly every day there is news of another massacre in Colombia. On August 11, five teens were slayed in Cali, and five days later eight more youth were killed in Nario. The following week, there were massacres in Arauca, Cauca, Antioquia, and another in Nario. Then on September 7, there were three massacres in 24 hours, two in Antioquia and one in Bolvar a mere two days after a massacre left three dead in Cauca. On September 9, a video circulated social media showing police in Bogot killing Javier Ordez. Twelve more died in the ensuing protests.

Massacres have risen 30 percent during the first two years of Ivn Duques presidency. Through August 25, Colombian think thank Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (Institute for the Study of Development and Peace, Indepaz) registered 55 massacres this year. The killings coincide with areas where social leaders have been murdered in recent years, and where the now demobilized FARC-EP guerrillas previously controlled territory. While the massacres follow past patterns of violence, they also indicate new dynamics, where the actors and interests behind attacks are not always clear-cut.

The regions with the most massacres this year have been Antioquia with 12, followed by Cauca and Nario on the Pacific coast with seven each, and Catatumbo on the Venezuelan border and Putumayo on the Ecuadorian border with four each.

There is an interest to control these areas: Control of strategic corridors, of places for political control, and of places where there is conflict between armed groups, says Abilio Pea, a human rights defender based in Bogot who works with the NGO Ansur, which gives self-protection workshops to grassroots communities .

Its obviously systematic. It isnt coincidental that there have been more than 40 massacres this year. There is a pattern, says Pea.

Leonardo Gonzlez, author of the Indepaz report, pointed out the conflict between armed groups to control territory is linked the failure to implement the 2016 Peace Accords with the FARC-EP.

There are two phenomena. One is the homicides of social leaders, and the other is the massacres, says Gonzlez. These phenomena began to appear in 2016, and with a sharp increase more recently. We could say this has been a response by armed groups to impose order in areas vacated by the FARC.

Post-Peace Accords, Cycle of Past Violence Continue

In August, the number of social leaders assassinated since the 2016 Peace Accords passed 1,000. There is nearly an identical geographical correlation between departments with the highest number of assassinations of social leaders and the highest number of massacres. In Cauca, 240 social leaders have been killed, 133 in Antioquia, 91 in Nario, 75 in Valle del Cauca, and 61 in Putumayo.

The apparent deepening of the conflict should not be viewed in isolation but, instead, as connected to cycles of past violence. There have been patterns throughout history. During the times of President Turbay, torture was more frequent. During the time of Samper and Uribe, there were more forced displacement, Pea says. Today, they have combined selective assassinations with massacres as strategies of social control. As a way to exercise dominance in certain areas. And, obviously, there are economic and political interests in these areas.

Willian Aljure can also speak to the connection between todays violence and the past. He lives in the municipality of Mapiripn, on Colombias eastern plains, a disputed territory. He is the president of a network of Indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesino communities called Comunidades Construyendo Paz en Colombia (Communities Constructing Peace in Colombia, Conpazcol). Aljure has lost parents and grandparents to the Colombian conflict, and his land is currently occupied by the palm oil company Polygrow.

This isnt new, at least, speaking from the experience of the Aljure family. My grandfather had signed peace accords with the government that in the end werent upheld, he says.

The Colombian government has denied that there is conflict. As if lifted straight from the Principles of Newspeak, President Duque described the recent wave of massacres as collective homicide. The Colombian Defense Minister blamed drug trafficking, enraging victims and using a common trope for the state to avoid responsibility for its own inaction to prevent these tragedies.

The Colombian High Commissioner of Peace, Miguel Ceballos, went further, denying that there were any massacres at all, and attributing the deaths to disputes between drug-traffickers, except for the assassination of the eight youths in Nario.

Massacres as a Form of Social Control

Massacres are not collateral damage as armed actors dispute territory. They are an intentional strategy to consolidate social control.

Massacres are intended to send messages to those who live. If they want to have territorial control, they need to have social control, says Gonzlez of Indepaz For example, illegal armed groups are massacring people for having violated the quarantine. So, its a way to tell the population we are the ones who are in charge here. Massacres are a message to the population.

Aljure agrees. They are different contexts, but in the end its the same story. And the story is to kill at all costs to send a message. In Nario, they were adolescents having a good time, and look at what happened They arent killing old men anymore, just look at the quantity of children they have killed the past few weeks, he says. By killing children, those behind the massacres are trying to intimidate any resistance that might oppose their domination.

Another contrast between the current moment and the past is the clandestine nature of the modus operandi of the armed groups carrying out the violence. For example, in 2017, 62 percent of murders of social leaders were perpetrated by an unknown assailant or assassin.

It isnt like an armed group is arriving to an area, threatening people, and then carrying out a massacre, Gonzlez says. Its a new modality because before you knew the identity of the armed group and you knew what this group was trying to accomplish. Today, we dont know who is moving the chess pieces of war, who is winning and who is losing.

Violence Linked to Economic Interests and Paramilitaries

Enrique Chimonja is a human rights defender with Fellowship of Reconciliation and Conpazcol, and a victim of the armed conflict who lives in the department of Huila. He adds that in addition to the clandestine nature of todays illegal armed groups, the political goals of these organizations have been subordinated to economic aims.

Chimonja says that the economic interests go beyond drug-trafficking. The model has no other option but to resort to what it has always done, Chimonja says And that is to resort to violence and criminality. It has to take advantage of the states weakness to displace and continue consolidating its economic project of accumulation without limits that characterizes the neoliberal model.

Armed groups aim not only to control drug-trafficking corridors but the resources in these disputed regions. Extractive economic projects exist in many of the municipalities where there have been massacres. For example, in El Tambo, Cauca, where six were killed on August 21, there are solicitations for coal mining licenses. In Samaniego, Nario, where two massacres happened this year including the eight youth killed in on August 15, there was a meeting between the mayor and the National Mining Agency in 2017 to explore the extraction of gold and other minerals. Arauca, where five where killed on August 21, has extensive oil interests. The Canadian company Colombian Crest Gold Corp owns gold mining titles in the municipality of Venecia, Antioquia where three were killed on August 23, and the municipality of Ands, Antioquia, where three were killed on August 28, has a dozen mining concessions in gold, coal, and other minerals with solicitudes for dozens more. In the region of Catatumbo, where four massacres have happened this year, there are agro-industrial and mining interests at stake.

Aside from achieving territorial control and controlling populations, Aljure refers to a third factor which he was almost reluctant to admit. The current political context of Colombia includes the recent order by the Supreme Court to put the former President lvaro Uribe Vlez on house arrest.

Pea says that while there is no direct relation between the order to arrest Uribe and the massacres, there are correlations. He says that since the days of Pablo Escobar, a sort of mafia-drug trafficking-landowning class had been rising in power, peaking with the arrival of Uribe to the presidency in 2002. And now, we are in a moment where this power is in decline, and the capture of Uribe is a symbol of this. However, this doesnt mean the power will end soon, Pea says.

The spirit, the mentality of paramilitarism has been conceived by the ex-president Uribe. With the Convivir, with the massacres, with the parapolitica, are all connected to the ex-president Uribe. And this continues intact. This hasnt changed, Pea says. The Convivir was a legal mechanism created in the 1990s to allow for private citizens to defend themselves against the guerrillas, but became a nexus for coordination between paramilitaries, militaries, and private companies. While governor of Antioquia, Uribe advocated for the use of Convivir throughout the department. The parapolitica scandal involved over one hundred Colombian lawmakers and politicians under investigation for relationships with paramilitary groups. Recently released cables show that during the Bush Administration, the U.S. Defense Departments strongly suspected Uribe of having ties to paramilitary groups.

Pea also pointed out the U.S. administrations unconditional support for Uribe. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted his support for the former president.

There has been fear growing in the territories of Colombia. Aljure, as president of Conpazcol, is concerned about community of the Naya River which received news of a possible massacre on August 23. This Afro-descendent community on the Pacific Coast lives in a disputed region, where three people disappeared in 2018.

Aljure says that more international attention to the massacres is needed. Not just to talk about what already happened, but to avoid what may happen.

Thomas Power is a candidate for a masters degree in Estudios Polticos (Political Studies) in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Universidad Nacional of Colombia) and was an International Human Rights Accompanier with Fellowship of Reconciliation from 2016-2018, where he continues to collaborate.

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Massacres in Colombia Lay Bare Next Phase of the Conflict - NACLA

When diversity and inclusion are part of the mission – The Advocate

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Editor's Note

This article is brought to you by Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System.

I feel fortunate and blessed to have worked nearly half of my 20-year career for the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, an organization with a mission thats committed to justice and reverence for all of life.

Those core values drive progress in diversity and inclusion. Having grown up as a brown girl (how I affectionately describe myself), I know what it feels like to be denied opportunity because of the color of my skin and/or for being a female. And racial profiling by the police? Ive had that experience, too.

And its why Ive often had conversations with my 15-year-old son in which we rehearse what he should say and do if he is ever stopped by the police. Please understand I support our police department, as well as all people working in public service. I believe in them. But our (my) reality is we must prepare and teach our young, brown children about a world where the worst is often assumed about them through conscious or unconscious bias.

Here at the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, Ive had more experiences of feeling valued than not valued. In fact, Im often inspired by the extraordinary care administered by our entire team, regardless of a patients race, gender, religious belief, or socioeconomic status, which are all facets of diversity and inclusion. Ive been moved by our teams stirring acts of kindness and compassion.

Those moments are the product and result of a very real and intentional commitment to justice and reverence for all of life.

Our health system was founded more than a century ago by Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Sisters, women who arrived in Louisiana with a mission to provide essential healthcare to a population that often went without.

The Sisters were trailblazers, creating a new ministry at a time when women werent at the forefront of leadership. They were courageous and passionate enough to travel all the way from Europe to provide care, to overcome being told no, and being denied necessary resources to start their work.

But they endured and successfully began their healing ministry in Monroe.

Today, our health system employs 18,000 team members in Louisiana and Mississippi.

This organizations history and core values resonate with me. This ministry possesses the self-awareness to know where were supposed to be just yet, and so remains committed a never-ending journey creating an inclusive culture.

Our health system often pursues healthcare commitments to which other organizations may hesitate, including providing vital access to mental and behavioral services within our communities, expanding our commitment to the elderly through our Senior Services, and investing in the future of our state with our Childrens Health network.

We treat our patients with dignity and respect and its why people from all walks of life know when they come to us theyll receive the highest quality care at every touch point of their experience.

Were strengthening a workplace culture in which our team members can thrive, and feel connected to their work. That is our goal. That is my personal passion and purpose. Throughout my career here Ive felt my fit, from the time I was an entry-level employee, to a single working mom recognized for my potential to lead, to the executive I am today. Encouraging each persons potential and growth is what our ministry does. We work hard to constantly refine and build our positive cultural behaviors which ensures we are always assessing and challenging ourselves to be empathetic with one another. And that we live up to our mission which closes with, We are, with Gods help, a healing and spiritual presence to each other and to the communities we are privileged to serve.

Just recently, I was sharing some of my personal experiences about exclusion and racism with a fellow team member, including those talks with my teenage son to ensure he has safe encounters with police. Afterwards, she texted me and said, I dont always understand what youre going through, but I certainly want to learn, I want us to learn together.

That meant the world to me. Thats who we are as a ministry.

When diversity and inclusion are part of the mission - The Advocate

OPINION: Creating equal access to energy efficiency crucial for cities like Fall River – Fall River Herald News

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Sabrina Davis, is the lead organizer of environment and transit at the Coalition for Social Justice and a resident of Fall River. Cindy Luppi is the New England director of Clean Water Action.

As the economic and public health consequences of the pandemic continue to reverberate in Fall River and across the Commonwealth, one thing is clear: Once again, Black and brown communities, and communities with a higher percentage of low- and moderate-income households, are bearing a disproportionate burden of its devastation. We need to use this moment of crisis to take a hard look at the systems and solutions that will be critical to helping all of our communities recover and rebuild.

This is particularly important when it comes to how we consume energy in our homes. A recent study found that economic hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic could force as many as 20% of families nationwide who are already in a precarious financial position to take on significant debt from unpaid energy bills that soared during a summer with prolonged periods of extreme heat.

One of the solutions at our disposal in Massachusetts is energy efficiency, which can significantly reduce utility bills and create healthier and more resilient communities. And for nearly a decade, Massachusetts has been celebrated as the top-ranked state in the nation for our energy efficiency programs. But beneath these accolades are data that show deep gaps between communities that benefit the most and the least from the states programs.

The MassSave program, administered by the state's utilities, provides efficiency upgrades and incentives -- such as heat pumps, high efficiency central air conditioning systems, and smart thermostats -- to help households reduce energy costs and fight climate change by reducing their carbon footprint. Renters and homeowners contribute to MassSave through a monthly fee on their utility bills, and overall, the program plays a vital role in helping energy consumers save money and the state meet its obligations to fight climate change. These programs also reduce the energy we use from power plants which in turn reduces the pollution that damages our lung health and contributes to asthma incidence and even premature death.

But studies also show a critical flaw in the program: benefits are not reaching all of our communities. A recent report commissioned by the utilities shows that MassSave participation rates in some Gateway Cities are as low as 6%, while participation in more affluent communities can be up to seven times higher. Recently, Mary Wambui, a member of the states Energy Efficiency Advisory Council which provides oversight of the states programs, decried this imbalance, writing business as usual is failing our communities both the utilities and the state have a responsibility to ensure that all communities can access these benefits equally.

Here in Fall River the report found a participation rate of only 6%, tied for the lowest in the state. Due to a chronic lack of investment, will and intentional policies to remedy these gaps by the utilities and the Baker Administration, lower and moderate income residents receive fewer benefits despite contributing a greater share of their income. The good news is that, as the administration approaches its next 3-year plan, there are things we can do right now to take an already strong initiative and make it truly equitable.

For over 10 years, our organizations and partners in the statewide Green Justice Coalition have called for real attention to this inequity which denies low income and communities of color meaningful access to these programs. For the current three year plan which began in 2019, members of the states Energy Efficiency Advisory Council unanimously approved a solution that specifically addressed the needs of renters. This was an exciting advance which proposed an incentive bonus for utilities to encourage increased service to renters, a tool that would help expand services for low income residents and non-English speakers among others. Despite support from all corners for this new approach, the Department of Public Utilities killed the program unilaterally and with complete disregard for the needs of a big percentage of our states population.

In the short term, as so many continue to work from home or are out of work because of the pandemic, the MassSave program must do everything it can, before the beginning of winter, to help people in all communities invest in efficient heating through technology like efficient heat pumps.

Long term, we need to chart a different course to inform the next three year plan at all levels of government. Instead of turning a blind eye to the needs of our most vulnerable residents, we need to center them. We call on the Governor and his state agencies to reject any plan that fails to create real access to energy efficiency programs for residents here in Fall River and others like us across the state.

As we recover and rebuild from the crisis, Massachusetts must commit to an equitable long-term strategy that ensures that all communities reap the cost-saving and public health benefits of energy efficiency. Only then can we truly live up to our No. 1 ranking.

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OPINION: Creating equal access to energy efficiency crucial for cities like Fall River - Fall River Herald News

OPINION: IU and Bloomington exacerbate violence against those without homes – Indiana Daily Student

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

The Bloomington Homeless Coalition, with members of the IU Field Hockey and Soccer teams, gather Sept. 12 for its weekly community clean-up. Courtesy Photo

Luxury student apartments and enhanced commercial and entertainment amenities appear to bring life and movement to Bloomington. This is at the expense of low-income individuals and people experiencing homelessness in the city.

Bloomington, with a poverty rate soaring at 36.6%, instead marvels at the university and the wealthy, white students it tends to attract. The influx of these students has increased demand for housing, driving the cost of rent so high it is not affordable for many Bloomington residents.

Despite an image projecting a vibrant campus and city life, IU and Bloomington exacerbate violence toward people experiencing homelessness, to which both institutions must render reparations for the trauma they have perpetuated against those without homes.

In 2016, the city launched the Safety, Civility and Justice Initiative aimed at making downtown look, feel and become safer. This followed an outcry from business owners, students and members of the public, who cited human waste, littered syringes and other unwelcome behaviors from unhoused folks that made residents feel unsafe. The use of Peoples Park by people experiencing homelessness even inspired a petition on Change.org to address these concerns.

I feel scared walking past this park at night, and with as much tuition as I am paying (out of state), I deserve to feel safe, wrote one petitioner.

People experiencing homelessness, too, deserve to feel safe and welcome in their communities.

The city's 2016 initiative increased police presence along Kirkwood Avenue and the downtown area and had security cameras installed around Peoples Park and Seminary Park to monitor criminal behavior. It also included hiring four IUPD officers to spend 100 hours a week assisting the Bloomington Police Department with their tyranny downtown.

Rather than provide adequate mental health resources, addiction services and affordable housing, IU and the City of Bloomington pressured people without homes to disperse and forced them out of the public eye. While the poor may be highly visible in some areas, they are otherwise ignored to preserve the comfort of those passing on the street.

The newly constructed, multi-million dollar Switchyard Park boasts 57.52 acres of free amenities. Mayor John Hamilton said in a May 2018 interview the park is free and open to everyone. Lo and behold, the park locks its restroom facilities and BPD surveils it at night, ensuring those without homes know they are not welcome. This obliges them to set up tents in other remote areas, where they are often subjected to verbal and physical harassment from the police.

Now that it is illegal to be without a home, it has been made clear that law enforcement and the motto protect and serve is not granted to the homeless population because they are not truly part of the community, read a 2018 report from the National Coalition for the Homeless. This leaves a homeless individual as an easy target for police brutality and inhumane treatment from the community.

Forrest Gilmore, director of the Shalom Community Center, said the tension between the Bloomington community including students and those experiencing chronic homelessness is not new. He recalled a 2013 incident when IUs Kappa Delta sorority chapter hosted a homeless-themed party. They smudged dirt on their faces and proudly held signs with the slogan Why lie? Its for booze.

These blatant attempts to demonize the unhoused do nothing but encourage vicious perceptions and behaviors toward them.

Bigotry and hate crimes directed at people without homes is not uncommon at all, Gilmore said.

Members of the Bloomington Homeless Coalition reported an unhoused man was assaulted in August by four young men along the B-Line Trail after riding around and taunting him on electric scooters. While one person recorded, the other three beat the man relentlessly with baseball bats.

Just last year, an unhoused woman was dragged behind a car repair shop and raped by a man in his twenties who she had lent a cigarette

In 2016 and 2017, there were 112 documented attacks and 48 of the victims lost their lives, according to a 2018 National Union for the Homeless survey.

These attacks are motivated by bias against people experiencing homelessness or by the perpetrators ability to prey on individuals because they are without the safety of a home. They are made possible by the structural violence that leaves people without access to the things required to fulfill their basic needs.

Regardless of these statistics, people experiencing homelessness are treated so poorly in society that hate crimes against the protected class are habitually unreported and forgotten. There is no way of knowing the full scale of the abuse in Bloomington.

The city and universitys intentional move to centralize students to the downtown area has violently undermined the needs of those experiencing chronic homelessness. With reasonably little faith in these institutions and the surrounding community, people that are unhoused often have nowhere to turn but to each other.

Anti-homeless violence unveils an epidemic of systemic and economic challenges that continue to plague the poor. Deep reflection and dialogue between the city, community and those disenfranchised are necessary for Bloomington to address and dismantle the roots of poverty and the stigma surrounding it.

We must remove our biases and work to understand our unhoused brothers and sisters as individuals with vastly diverse and valuable life experiences.

Nonetheless, Robert Pops Downham, who helped spearhead the Bloomington Homeless Coalition, is determined their demands, as a family, will be met.

Change has got to happen, Downham said. And as far as we are concerned, change is gonna happen.

Peyton Jeffers (she/they) is a senior studying human development and family studies and human sexuality. She is a member of Camp Kesem at Indiana University.

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OPINION: IU and Bloomington exacerbate violence against those without homes - Indiana Daily Student

Environmental racial injustice highlighted by lack of diversity in advocacy groups – WTMJ-TV

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

MILWAUKEE Before it can tackle the problems of climate change and other environmental problems facing society, a Wisconsin advocacy group is looking introspectively at what it can do better to bring more voices to the table.

We recognize, these have been overwhelmingly fields of study and fields of professionalism that have been limited to whites, Fred Clark, Executive Director for Wisconsins Green Fire said. Not by policy, but certainly by history.

Wisconsins Green Fire is hosting a series of webinars looking at age, politics, race and the impacts they have on conservation. A study by the advocacy group Diverse Green shows only 30 percent of full-time employees in the top 40 environmental agencies and funding groups are people of color.

Its high tide we ask better questions, August Marie Ball, Founder and CEO of Cream City Conservation and Consulting said. What were really saying when were asking about inclusion, is how can I get people to come to me? Its a very white lens that were using when, in reality, the key problem is historically, people of color have been receiving the message, theyre not welcome in the industry.

Ball started Cream City Conservation to help educate those in the environmental industry about how they can be more inclusive and diverse. Just like the world itself, everything is connected. African American and other communities of color face environmental injustices. Systemic practices have created situations for people of color that put their health at risk because of the environments theyre forced to live in.

When we think about racial inequities and disparities, we often go to, oh, slavery was so long ago, Ball said. There have been many things since slavery that have kept us in this pickle. From the Social Security Act, the VA loans, redlining, the Wagner Act and on and on and on. Policies are still being created to this day.

As a result, Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by a poor environmental factors. Flint, Mich. laid bare to the inequities that exist for getting clean water. The Centers for Disease Control say Black children are twice as likely have elevated levels of lead in their blood than white children.

Disparities can even be seen in the air we breathe. The Environmental Protection Agency says, Black people are exposed to 1.5 times more air pollution than their white counterparts. These issues, Ball says, could be remedied if more voices of color were at the table.

When you have a plethora of perspectives and experiences by which to choose from, youre able to have less blind spots, Ball said. Youre able to be more innovative and youre able to anticipate problems more effectively.

But its not for a lack of trying. Ball says many people of color are going to school to help with environmental advocacy. However, the hurdles of inclusion limit their participation.

Imagine being an indigenous person, walking into a National Parks Service Office and seeing a picture of Teddy Roosevelt or John Muir. It would essentially be likened to a Jew walking into an office and seeing a framed photo of Hitler. I know that sounds really harsh, but thats just the reality. A lot of our environmental agencies are reckoning with that reality. The Audobon Society, the Sierra Club. Were finally stepping into a space where were acknowledging that its not enough to prepare the next generation of environmental leaders. We also have to do things differently within our industry.

With a lack of diversity, it leads to slower progress on environmental issues. Ball says, as a Black woman, she has to focus some of her efforts on equity education.

We have to move past this idea of, if I cant see it, its not a problem, Ball said. If its not a problem to me, it shouldnt be a problem to anyone else. That is the epitome of privilege right there. We need to be on the same page about these problems so we can start moving towards a solution. Im sure were all sick of talking about race and racism. So, lets solve it.

In order to solve the issues facing the environmental advocacy industry, Clark says theyre putting a plan in place to make them more diverse and inclusive.

Well be looking at ways we recruit and hire candidates for positions, Clark said. In our work, were also heavily dependent on volunteers. Well be asking, how it is we attract and provide opportunity for a wider diversity of volunteers in our organization. I think this is about building awareness around what has gotten us around here today and really set the stage for us to think critically about how we as organizations can help drive to a more diverse and equitable future.

Its not insidious or intentional, Ball said. Not all the time. But its a direct result of how our society has been designed. The acknowledgment of women of color in this field is rare but the existence of women of color in this field is absolutely not rare. Black women and First Nations women have been protecting the water and protecting the land globally since the beginning of time. They just havent been receiving media attention for it.

The attention on social injustices is arguably higher than ever. Ball says now is when they can make serious change.

We have to identify what sorts of policies and practices have kept us racially homogeneous all this time and then work backwards, Ball said. Thats what I try to do as an educator.

It certainly still does not reflect the diversity of our population, Clark said. I think now, for first time, having explicit conversations about why that is and what we can do differently to change that.

That kind of change is what Ball hopes will have lasting positive impacts on communities of color.

It's my hope that the next brown girl that decides she wants to go into this field doesnt feel the way I felt when I first entered into it, being very alone, Ball said. I want every young brown girl and Black girl to know that their perspectives are needed. They belong here, theres a place for them and they should be listened to. I wouldnt be in this industry if I didnt think this could be solved. I think, as humans, well create a new problem but I do believe it can be solved in my lifetime, at least thats my hope.

Wisconsins Green Fire is holding webinars on race and environmental injustice. You can find out more information on their website.

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Environmental racial injustice highlighted by lack of diversity in advocacy groups - WTMJ-TV

Police Bureaucracy and Abolition: Why Reforms Driven by Professionals will Renew State Oppression – CounterPunch

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The demands are clear: defund and abolish police. As those calls grow, so will efforts by reformers to propose new rules and regulations that they say will improve and restore legitimacy to policing. These bureaucratic reforms reflect the failed thinking that built up the carceral state, and they will make policing harder to dismantle. Reforms like this are meant to pacify social movements, replacing community self-determination with the expertise of lawyers, academics, and other professionals who are complicit in oppression.

Bureaucratic reforms are not just too little. They are also dangerous. Decades of judicial oversight, transparency legislation, and self-auditing requirements have not reduced the power of the carceral state. To the contrary, they have created a vast punishment bureaucracy giving political legitimacy and social inertia to a system of mass caging rooted in enslavement. Applying this same regulatory framework to the governance of policing will only expand the reach and harm of policing, just as it has helped to make the prison-industrial complex bigger, harsher, more durable, and racist as ever.

The chief proponents of police bureaucracy are typically professionals whose authority depends on working closely with the carceral state. Consider the recent L.A. Times op-ed by University of Texas professor Sarah Brayne, One way to shrink the LAPDs budget: Cut costly and invasive big-data policing. Brayne spent years embedded within the Los Angeles Police Department as a doctoral student at Princeton. Despite the op-eds title, it never proposes reducing let alone cutting any police surveillance. Instead Brayne writes about the secrecy that shrouds LAPDs data systems. She notes that New York City recently required the NYPD to disclose which technology it uses and what data it collects. She proposes that Los Angeles should follow suit.

Brayne asserts that surveillance technologies are largely missing from todays urgent conversations. That voice is missing only if one ignores local activists. Here in Los Angeles, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has fought to dismantle LAPD surveillance since 2011, recently forcing LAPD to end its LASER, Chronic Offender, and PredPol surveillance programs. An abolitionist organization, Stop LAPD Spying has also organized against laws like the one Brayne proposes importing from New York. That law, named the POST Act, tasks the NYPD with writing surveillance impact and use policies to post on their website, where the public has 45 days to comment. While police are asked to consider the comments, NYPD is not required to make changes or to share the information that underlies their conclusions, which will be framed by NYPDs army of lawyers.

These laws are also often coupled with efforts to limit use of a particular surveillance technology, like the restrictions on facial recognition enacted by San Francisco and the recently proposed Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, introduced by Senator Ed Markey and others this June. Explaining the bill, Markey acknowledged calls to dismantle the systematic racism that permeates every part of our society and noted that face recognition physically endangers Black Americans. But at the same time that his bill seeks to freeze police use of face surveillance, it outlines details of the regulatory scheme that Congress would enact to end the moratorium, including auditing requirements, standards for use and management, and minimum accuracy rates.

The idea behind these reforms is that policing can be tamed through paperwork and rules. This whitewashes the harm of surveillance, which will be used for racial domination no matter if it is lawful or unlawful, no matter if accurate. The politicians and lawyers behind the POST Act last month celebrated their tremendous and vital victory. But the truth is that legislation like this is the easiest possible win in this moment, betraying the bolder visions of the mass movement calling to abolish police.

No one is taking to the streets facing down tear gas to demand police bureaucracy. To the contrary, todays protests originate in the failure of past reforms, which have done little to end policings death toll. These protests have made police abolition a serious conversation. Whether and how legislation can be abolitionist are important questions. But if legislation is a goal, that power should be used to ban particular forms of surveillance, not just create a bureaucracy to regulate them. Calls for surveillance oversight ignore the lessons of past struggles against federal national security surveillance and Red Squad repression, which led to the creation of bureaucracies like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the NYPDs Handschu guidelines. Rather than dismantling policing, reforms like this help police adapt to criticism, to reinvent and rebuild.

When the POST Act was enacted, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition criticized the reform as surveillance bureaucracy and observed that laws like this presume that our communities want to be surveilled, so long as the state follows a heavily stacked process, pretends to consider input, and checks off a few baseline legal requirements. At the time, it may have appeared odd for activists from Los Angeles to criticize local legislation in another state. But Stop LAPD Spying observed that the national uprising against police terror will be used to force similar reforms across the country. We are seeing that now.

To be sure, this isnt the first time a reformer who worked closely with police has proposed surveillance bureaucracy laws for Los Angeles. In 2015 the ACLUs local Director of Police Practices sent a proposal for a similar local law that he had drafted to an LAPD deputy chief, asking if you have any concerns with any of the provisions that are in here and inviting ideas for provisions you think should be in here but arent. The ACLU later pushed a statewide version of similar legislation. An ACLU press release announced that the bill would offer a seat at the table and foster public debate to build community assent for surveillance.

This relates to the deeper issue with reforms like the POST Act, reflected both in who is advancing these proposals and in what these laws will create. Reform like this is pacification: it takes power away from the people, directing opposition into a bureaucratic process that marginalizes community voices, while elevating voices that support police or at most compromise with them. And at the end of the day, these reforms allow police to say that the community controls surveillance (community control is even in the title of the ACLUs model surveillance bureaucracy legislation, curiously named CCOPS) when the truth is that police set the agenda and violently hold the power. After securing public approval, police continue their harm with a claim of legitimacy. This is nothing like abolition. Its not even de-policing, reducing the scope of what police do. Its police preservation.

Abolition is decolonization. More than just ending policing and prisons, its a practice of building a new world. Those institutions are weapons of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, but they arent the only ones. Abolition requires dismantling all the weapons made using those ideologies. It requires dismantling universities, which colonize and hoard knowledge while credentialing experts who work to maintain oppression. It requires ending imperialism, whose wars, borders, and extraction are police violence on a planetary scale. And it requires dismantling the legal bureaucracies that legitimate and sustain a system of mass torture and killing.

Far more than dismantling and defunding though, abolition requires building the autonomy and self-determination that the carceral state denies. This begins with advancing the political vision of those who policing harms. Academics like Brayne arent the only people with ideas about how to address the harm of surveillance in Los Angeles. Brayne is using her authority to argue against the views of movement organizers who are working to dismantle LAPD surveillance. No matter her intentions, Braynes expertise comes from riding around in police cars and helicopters, shadowing police as they hunted people. In contrast, grassroots organizers speak from working to empower the communities harmed by policing.

Academics and lawyers dont need to get in the way of liberation. Instead of solely thinking about social problems, they can think with movements struggling to transcend those problems. They can defer to the deep expertise of communities marginalized by the state and participate in the daily work of building political power, advancing self-determination, and dismantling oppressive structures. They can amplify community leadership in an effort to ensure lasting social change, contributing their expertise to collective liberation rather than being another cog in the technocratic management and bureaucratic rationalization of structural violence.

The positive task of surveillance abolition building a world without mass suspicion and supervision poses questions that need deep attention. Surveillance extends beyond the hard social control and violence of police and prisons. Surveillance, writes Simone Browne, is the fact of antiblackness. Its purpose is to harm communities and administer an oppressive social order. Rather than settling for community control of this violence, communities that are resisting surveillance from the perspective of liberation are creating a new historical horizon, where at first light these important questions can be confronted and then in the fuller light of a new day can help new ways of life built around democratic self-administration to bloom. Advocating for reforms like the POST Act keeps us lost in the darkness of our present condition.

Abolitionists have long known that the purpose of policing is to violently maintain an oppressive social order. New rules and criteria will not end that violence. Instead, they will just lead police to invest more resources and expertise into monitoring and avoiding compliance with the latest rules. This will make our system of mass suspicion, incarceration, and banishment harder to dismantle. If academics and lawyers wish to play a role in advancing liberation, they need a radically different approach to expertise as well as deference to those working to build a world without policing. Reforms that build police bureaucracy go in the opposite direction, placing more authority in elite hands and giving police new footing to expand their violence.

‘It’s bigger than us’: Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel fights to get rid of two dozen Greek organizations – Duke Chronicle

Posted on September 18, 2020 by Danzig

Shreyas Gupta had just started to doze off at 2:45 a.m when a glass bottle smashed through his bedroom window.

His first thought was that there had been an explosion. Glass littered his windowsill; shards scattered across his carpet, reflecting moonlight. A bottle of Hells Belle beer rolled across the floor, still intact. He heard tires screeching on the street.

It was the night of Sept. 4, a Friday. Five days earlier, Gupta, a senior, had appeared on local TV news station WRAL to represent Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel, the group he helped start thats advocating for the abolition of 24 Duke fraternities and sororities. It was the first time he had spoken publicly about his involvement.

I just never thought something like that could happen while I was at Duke, he said of the act of vandalism.

Gupta cant prove the incident was related to his role in Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel. Still, he and other members of the team have received some backlash since the groups creation, but most antagonizers choose to wage their battles online, in Instagram DMs or on Facebook Messenger. After WRAL interviewed him, Gupta received a Facebook message from an older man he didnt recognize. Troublemaker! the message read. Why dont you leave Duke!

A few minutes after his window shattered, Gupta went outside to see egg yolks dripping down the wood panelling of the house. More broken beer bottles and egg shells littered the front lawn. Hell probably never know who vandalized his home or if they were retaliating against his calls for abolition, he said, but being physically threatened in his home made everything feel a lot more real.

Although the idea of abolishing Greek life isnt new, this iteration of the movement started with the creation of an Instagram page in mid-July, when criticisms fueled by the Black Lives Matter movement came to a head. The account, which was created before the Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel group, offers a space for students and alumni to share anonymous stories about their experiences in Duke Greek life. It now boasts more than 2,300 followers.

The students who began the Instagram page, who havent publicly revealed their identities, also started a petition calling for the formal abolition of all Duke chapters of the Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Associationhistorically white Greek organizations The petition has garnered more than 400 signatures.

Conversations sparked from the Instagram prompted Gupta and four other students to launch the Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel website about a month later. The same day, Aug. 12, their open letter was published in The Chronicle. The group has since amassed more than 40 members, Gupta said, and the open letter has more than 350 signatories.

The movement has prompted campus sororities and fraternities to internally evaluate their organizations. Panhellenic Association members Zeta Tau Alpha and Alpha Delta Pi have since voted to relinquish their charters. The attempts were rejected by the organizations national councils, according to the chapters.

But although calls for abolition began two months ago, for the five student leaders of Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel, the movement has been a long time coming.

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Four of the five members of the leadership team chose to speak with The Chronicle: Gupta, Christine Bergamini, Elena Gray and Carmela Guaglianone. Gupta said vandalization of his house dissuaded the fifth member from publicly attaching their name to the group.

Bergamini, a senior and former member of Kappa Alpha Theta, said she decided to disaffiliate when the Duke chapter was prevented from signing the list of demands issued by the Black Coalition Against Policing, which outlined a number of steps including the eventual abolition of the Duke University Police Department. To Bergamini, this proved the organization was only willing to engage in performative activism.

Senior Victoria Sorhegui, president of Dukes Theta chapter, confirmed in an email to The Chronicle that Thetas national policy prevents the chapter from attaching the sororitys name to the list of demands because of its political undertones. Representatives of the national organization did not respond to an email or phone call seeking comment in time for publication.

Gray, a senior previously in Kappa Kappa Gamma, said she had overall positive experiences in her sorority, but as a white woman, eventually, I had to ask myself why I was able to benefit from it, what factors of my identity allowed me to be welcomed.

Once I started asking myself those questions, I couldnt run from the problems of Greek life anymore, she said.

Guaglianone, a senior, accepted a snap bid from Gamma Phi Beta her freshman year but dropped a few months later. Greek life controls much of Dukes social culture, she said, and she has watched the archaic system place the burden of reform onto the members it disadvantages, often forcing victims of racism and sexual assault to advocate for necessary changes to their organizations.

Gupta had planned to drop his fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, before the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which he said allowed him to reflect on his own identity as an Indian man. He and his friends wrote an open letter to the fraternity detailing racism within the Greek system. A mass exodus of the junior and senior classes followed.

In total, 31 members reported disaffiliating, according to Abolish Duke IFC & Panhels disaffiliation tracker, a number confirmed by Gupta. Pikapp President Brian Hu, a senior, told The Chronicle that the number has risen to 35.

Other than providing the number of members who have disaffiliated, Hu did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Gupta clarified that the call for abolition does not apply to the Multicultural Greek Council or the National Pan-Hellenic Council, which, as Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel wrote in their open letter, provide community to BIPOC students on Dukes campus.

Gray and Bergamini said they recognize that their privilege as white women allowed them to benefit from and enjoy many aspects of their affiliations. Yet all three female leaders cited sexual assault by fraternity members, which Bergamini labeled innate to the Greek system, as a central motivation for their calls for abolition.

Pretty much every single one of my friends, including myself, has experienced sexual assault to some degree by fraternity members, Bergamini said. Its normalized. Why is that something were allowing?

In a 2018 survey, 48% of female students reported having experienced sexual assault at Duke. But from May 2018 to May 2019, only 169 cases were reported to the Office of Student Conduct.

Gray said misogyny in the Greek system stems from the binary and heteronormative nature of Greek life, which creates a power imbalance between fraternities and sororities.

If you break down a single fraternity partythey have the alcohol. They control the venue. They choose the clothes the mostly female participants are wearing, the theme, and how you get there and back, she said. You want to feel empowered as a woman, but that isnt an option.

Senior Rohan Singh, president of the Duke Interfraternity Council, wrote in an email that the members of the IFC executive board absolutely condemn acts of sexual assault and are aware that it is an issue that plagues our community.

We are taking measures to be proactive about eliminating sexual assault within the IFC, and encourage students to report acts of assault to Duke Student Conduct, he wrote.

Those opposed to abolition have argued that reforming the Greek system at Duke is a more feasible and desirable response to the criticisms lodged against Greek life. But Gupta, Bergamini and Gray said theyve tried to reform their organizations from the inside. They said it cant be done.

Bystander intervention trainings, a common reform strategy within fraternities and sororities to address the incidence of sexual assault, can only be so effective, said Gupta. He recalls one session hosted by his fraternity, led by a brother who is by no means an expert, and while attendance was mandatory, he said many members never showed up.

For trainings designed to combat implicit bias, the session takes two hours max, one day a year even when most members are in attendance, Bergamini said. Those reforms can be implemented, but they dont change the makeup of the organization.

Reforming the rush process has its limits, too, she said. Although dues can be lowered and sororities can make efforts to increase diversity, dues are never going to cost zero dollars, and being in a sorority has other associated costs, like formal dresses and costumes, she said. You can never eliminate the selectivity issue of whos allowed entrance into these organizations to begin with.

Bergamini also said Duke employs experts to tackle university reform while relying on unpaid student labor to address issues in Greek life like rampant racism without institutional support.

Gupta remembers feeling the burden of justifying the actions of members of his fraternity against students of color. But its not the responsibility of people of color to teach you how to not be racist, he said.

Mary Pat McMahon, vice provost and vice president for student affairs, highlighted several structures at Duke that serve to address misogyny and racism in Greek life, including the Office of Student Conduct, the bias response group and University Center Activities and Events staff, but she acknowledged that student training also plays a role.

Its definitely my goal to not burden students who are most impacted to have to do the training and the work, she said. Theres plenty of work that we have to do to become a more inclusive and truly equitable campus.

Yet the central issue with attempts at reform, said Gupta, is that the Greek system isnt broken. The group wrote in their open letter that fraternities were created after the Civil War to separate wealthy white male college students from the rest of the increasingly diverse student body. Therefore, Gupta said, Greek life is functioning exactly as it was intended, to uphold power structures and reinforce white privilege.

To make this system equitable and safe, Bergamini said, it would have to turn into something that its not.

Formal abolition would require that the Duke administration terminate their contracts with each of the national Greek organizations, as outlined in the Panhellenic executive boards abolition clarification statement.

McMahon noted that she hasnt yet heard from the national councils of ADPi or Zeta, the two Duke Panhel chapters that voted to relinquish their charters.

What our students are seeking is going to be the priority for how we think about going forward, she said.

Senior Kate Chen, president of the Duke Panhellenic Association, responded in an email to Abolish Duke IFC & Panhels statements. Reform within Duke Panhellenic is integral, she wrote.

Panhellenic members have the power to change how we support our members, include potential members, and treat other members of the Duke community, she wrote. These changes are much needed, regardless of whether Panhellenic as a greater community exists.

She also stated that the board seeks to lessen the association between IFC and Panhel and plans to indefinitely end all mixers with all-male organizations.

Singh said he felt obligated as a person of color to seek a leadership role in his fraternity. But he agreed that people of color should not be forced to educate white fraternity members on issues of racism, and said the IFC executive board is considering working with external consultants and Duke programs to design an anti-hate-and-bias curriculum.

The board also set up a task force to address campus sexual assault and is working with Duke Panhel and the Office of Student Conduct to promote better reporting practices, Singh said.

As a council, we are hoping to transform, rather than reform, our fraternities, he said.

Abolishing Greek life feels radical because Duke has never dared imagine what the universitys social culture would look like without it, Gupta said.

Theres no consideration of what the best option might be, he said. Its like, we have Greek life, and we will continue to have Greek life, so lets just tweak it so people are okay with it.

Although dissolving on-campus Greek housing would be a step in the right direction, it cant solve the major inequities inherent to Greek life, he said. In place of Greek organizations, Gray suggested a residential college system similar to those at universities like Yale and Princeton, which would address many concerns of advocates for Duke housing reform and change the face of Dukes social scene.

Asked if the administration is considering housing reform in response to racism and misogyny in Greek life, the short answer is yes, McMahon said. This is the time to ask the question, because everything is in its own funky spot right now.

This is going to be a year where we think a lot about the larger systemic connections around housing, student organizations, selectivity, and structures that are inherently racist or sexist, or in which students assume a certain identity or status, McMahon said.

Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel also wants Duke to halt the rush process for the spring semester to allow for continued discussion about the future of the Greek system.

Chen confirmed in an email that the Panhel executive board will have a vote Sept. 25 to determine what sorority rush will look like in the spring semester, including the possibility of postponing or canceling rush altogether, and that they plan to release a final decision Oct. 1. Senior Adam Krekorian, IFC recruitment director, wrote in an email that IFC plans to hold virtual recruitment in January.

Before the abolition of campus fraternities and sororities is possible, Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel wants the Duke administration to publicly recognize them.

If we can be brought in to have these conversations with administrators, at least they know what the students want, Bergamini said. That way, the administrators arent just relaying messages by themselves.

The group began exchanging emails with McMahon on Tuesday, which Gupta said is the first time they have formally reached out to set up a meeting with Duke administrators, having recently broken their anonymity. They plan to meet with Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education, and John Blackshear, dean of students, along with McMahon.

Gupta did meet individually with Duke administrators after his house was vandalizedgetting a bottle thrown through your window is a quick way to get an administrator to listen to you, he said.

Still, he said many students involved with Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel now feel afraid to speak out. The leadership team discussed releasing their names many times, and until recently wanted to remain anonymous, fearing potential repercussions.

But, Gupta said, Its bigger than us.

Editors note: The author of this article was briefly a member of a Panhellenic Association sorority during her first year at Duke but disaffiliated because of the cost.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized the open letter that Shreyas Gupta and his friends wrote to his fraternity. It detailed racism in the Greek system generally, not just instances they had experienced, and not all the authors were people of color, as was originally stated. This article has also been updated to reflect that Panhel will hold a vote on spring rush Sept. 25, not a town hall to discuss it. The Chronicle regrets the errors.