Monthly Archives: June 2021

People have started thinking about what theyve been doing and whether they want to continue on in ... [+] the same job or career for the next five to 25 years. The results of this introspection clearly show that they want to make a move.

I was highly skeptical of the Texas A&M University professor Anthony Klotzs prognostication that the great resignation is coming. Klotz contends, When theres uncertainty, people tend to stay put, so there are pent-up resignations that didnt happen over the past year. This should lead to a mass exodus of workers leaving their companies for greener pastures with better opportunities.

At first, it seemed a little too far-fetched that workers en masse would quit with or without new jobs already lined up. However, his assertion is proving true. American workers are quitting their jobs more than any other time in the past two decades.

The United States Department of Labor reports weekly and monthly data on unemployment. A lesser known indicator is the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, referred to as JOLTS by economists. CNBC pointed out that the most recent JOLTS report showsjob openings in April soared to a record 9.3 million, as the economy rapidly recovered from its pandemic depths.

It's hard for many to comprehend the amazing resurgence in job openings. A year ago at this time, the U.S. was in a terrible place. Millions of people lost their jobs.There was an overhang of dread and fear over the bleak future in front of us. Those who were employed sheltered in their jobs. They hunkered down, waiting out the outbreak.

Now, everythings changing. It's moving fast too. The same sectors that were crushed during the pandemichotels, restaurants, bars, manufacturing, travel, concerts and sporting eventsare now leading the charge in job openings.There are so many open jobs available that businesses have been raising wages, offering sign-on bonuses and other incentives to procure workers. Companies are offering flexible and remote-work options. Wall Street investment banks gave their staff Peloton bikes, Apple products and sizable raises and bonuses to show their appreciation and retain personnel.

Over the last few weeks, Ive spoken to the CEOs and executives of leading job sites and recruiting platforms that represent a cross-section of both white, blue and grey-collar workers. The leadership at Monster, Snagajob, Adzuna, HireVue, Hiretual and LinkedIn have all unanimously told me that there is huge demand for workers and companiesand it's highly challenging for companies to find people for their openings.

Theres been a mood shift and change in the zeitgeist. Weve learned firsthand how fragile life is. Many people have reexamined their lives. They realize they have a limited time here in this world. This has caused a bit of an existential moment. People have started thinking about what theyve been doing and whether they want to continue on in the same job or career for the next five to 25 years. The results of this introspection clearly show that they want to make a move.

There are an array of personal reasons to make a move. Some simply refuse to schlep back and forth to an office, taking two-plus hours a day commuting into a crowded, dirty and crime-ridden city. Insurance and financial services giant Prudential conducted a study that found one in three American workers would not want to work for an employer that required them to be onsite full time. The survey also indicated, A quarter of workers plan on looking for a new job when the threat of the pandemic decreases, signaling a looming war for talent. Prudential vice chair Rob Falzon admitted, "If there's one thing that keeps me up at night, it's the talent flight risk.

Seeing all sorts of opportunities, people have switched industries. Some have taken classes or attended online bootcamps to learn new trades or professions in fast-growing areas, like technology. There are still people concerned about the virus and have pulled themselves out of the job market. Working mothers felt the need to choose between work and childcare. This has been especially difficult for people who live in cities where the public schools stopped in-person learning and sent students home.

People dealt with overwhelming stress and anxiety during the outbreak. Mental health issues, feelings of burnout, depression and isolation were widespread. These people may have taken a break or sought out employers who provide an empathetic and caring environment.

This movement is exciting. By quitting a job, workers show that they are confident in the future. It also signifies that there are sufficient jobs available that if the move doesnt work out, they could relatively easily find a new one. This was certainly not the case for most of the last year and a half.

Heres one piece of advice though. Please dont quit your job unless you have something else already lined up. It's too risky. Without a job, you have less negotiating power. Without a current job, you cant leverage the possibility of a counteroffer to gain a higher salary. You could be out of work for three to six months or longer. When you interview, hiring managers will question your judgment. Theyll be concerned that you are too impulsive and may leave their company too over some minor trivial matter.

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Workers Are Quitting Their Jobs In Record Numbers, As The U.S. Experiences A Booming Job Market - Forbes

Brands for Good+ Research

We are no longer on the cusp of a sustainability movement. The markets are shifting rapidly to support impact brands with implications for growth and blue-chip companies alike who are bringing environmental and social good products and campaigns to market.

BlackRock put forward its own net-zero agenda on the heels of CEO Larry Finks annual letter which said, We know that climate risk is investment risk. But we also believe the climate transition presents a historic investment opportunity. Over the past three years, the market has seen environmental assets in investment funds triple, reaching $2 trillion in the first quarter of 2021 to the tune of $3 billion per day. Nearly every day, we see unprecedented stakeholder activism, legislation and grassroots movements supporting the global zeitgeist around environment and social good.

But heres the rub. According to a study by SB Brands for Good 88% of consumers would like brands to help them lead a sustainable lifestyle and yet Etienne White, VP of Brands for Good at Sustainable Brands, says 67% of consumers could not name a brand that goes above and beyond to address environmental challenges and 72% couldnt name one that addresses societal challenges. Whether that gap is from misinformation circulated to position companies as sustainable (greenwashing) or from brands underselling their initiatives for fear of cancel-culture if they make mistake (greenhushing), whats clear is the opportunity for brands to integrate sustainability into their brand strategy in a meaningful way.

Brands for Good study on the opportunity for sustainable brand building

I attended the Brands for Good conference, to get a few ideas on how to build a world-class sustainability program that takes advantage of this opportunity. Heres what I learned:

Set A Broad Vision With Measurable Goals

One of the reasons for the current greenwashing cancel-culture phenomenon is that companies oversell their one kinda green product instead of making a meaningful commitment and launching a measurable program. Then, when other brands who are doing good work see consequences, they often shut down for fear of retaliation. What if their work isnt perceived as enough or if they dont meet their goals? Many of them underpromise or greenhush on the public commitments that could attract new customers.

Customers are smart. They dont expect brands to solve every environmental and social issue in the world right now, but most of them want to feel confident that the money they spend and companies they supports reflect their values. This means making a commitment and bringing your customers into that story. According to Sandy Skees, Global Lead of Porter Novellis Purpose and Impact Practice, the data shows that customers want to know what companies are doing at the product level and at the company level. And, White shares, 96% of U.S. consumers try to live sustainable at least some of the time and 4 out of 5 customers want brands to help them become more sustainable.

This is a huge opportunity for brands but it requires trust. One way to do build this trust is for brands to set an ambitious, big picture vision of what they want to achieve supported by measurable goals and objectives. Sound familiar? Thats because this is the same formula companies use to set performance goals against their long term vision. The opportunity is to connect the dots and integrate sustainability at the highest level of business strategy.

Storytell The Journey, Not Just Goals

Consumers want honesty over perfection, says Skees. Almost two-thirds understand that working on climate and social justice takes time. It's a journey and they are willing to hear how your company is doing over time.

When brands share their journey, customers are more likely become invested and build empathy for the company. As brands miss the mark and share their learnings, customers are more likely to be forgiving (more on this below). And, as brands make progress toward their goals, customers are more likely to identify with those wins, celebrate and share them.

The challenge here is that brands need access complex data sets to tell credible stories and measuring commitments around sustainability programs, for example Scope 3 carbon emissions, can be difficult and expensive to do. While companies like Watershed are building emissions dashboards for companies like Doordash and Stripe to track emissions, the traditional model is to hire consultants to crunch the numbers which can be expensive and therefore infrequent. Skees recommends storytelling about sustainability with the same frequency as marketing new products: ongoing and consistently.

Product as Marketing

A brand is to a company what character is to a personits what we perceive their values to be by the choices they make, the problems they solve, and what they dont do. When theres a gap between the brand promise and the product experience, you have a problem. Youll experience brand impactcustomer service calls, returns and a barrage of upset tweetsuntil you fix the product. The same principle holds true when companies make brand promises around sustainability.

The most authentic and aspirational way to market a sustainability story is to tell how and why your product was made. And its important for that product to be integrated into a brands core business strategy. As Skees tells us, allowing just some small progress program or product be the carrier of all your sustainability communications is a type of greenwashing.

Some companies whose product or brand promise are centered around sustainability include kelp CPG company, AKUA, which focuses on creating food like burgers and jerky because reducing meat consumption cuts carbon emissions and farming kelp, which has the ability to remove carbon and nitrogen from the ocean five times more effectively than land-based plants, is good for the planet. The fashion industry has made some huge strides in product innovation as well, with Girlfriend creating leggings from recycled fishnets and Everlane launching an entire clothing line from plastic bottles. In all of these examples, the product itself is the story worth telling because it moves beyond sustaining the status quo into actually solving environmental issues.

If your core business isnt green, thats okay. But when launching a new line of products, stay away from overselling what youre doing. Instead tell the story of the journey and enlist your customers to support it, like Everlanes plastic commitment which is brilliant. I recently read a press release from a famous toy producer that created a line of dolls from ocean-bound plastic*. On the surface, this seemed pretty cool. But because of its positioning, I found myself researching that asterisk disclaimer and found confusing language and unconvincing promises at the end of the tunnel. It also made me wonder why this company hadnt positioned this as a test before making a broader commitment to use recycled, ocean-bound plastic in all of its toys. This is an example of how overselling one product can become a brand detractor, hurt your authenticity and break trust.

Consider Your Entire Supply Chain

The rainforests breathed a huge sigh of relief this week when luxury retail giant, LVMH, joined Canopys Pack4Good initiative. Canopy, known for greening the Harry Potter books, focuses on protecting old growth, frontier forests from falling victim (sorry) to unsustainable product supply chains. And they are crushing it. The Pack4Good initiative now comprises 156 brandslike UGG, Hunter, Patagonia and many moreworth over $78.5 billion USD in revenue.

There are also new packaging incumbents on the rise, like Olive, which is focused on eliminating cardboard shipping altogether. Using re-usable totes to ship for retailers like Adidas, Anthropologie, and Goop, Olive hopes to make a dent in the billions of cardboard boxes we used to support over $860 billion in online orders in the U.S. last year, up 44% from 2019. While this strategy is old-hat for e-commerce giants like Rent the Runway, which has shipped in reusable totes while recycling plastic hangers and liners since its beginning, seeing new businesses emerge that can support sustainable shipping options at scale means we have choicesas business owners and consumers. And this means a responsibility to make more responsible choices around a brands entire product supply chain and the waste it generates.

Own Mistakes and Do Better

Cancel culture is a real thing. Consumers teeth are sharpened and claws are out. It can feel scary to admit fault when the risks of not being forgiven are a real threat of a brands very existence. And, I would argue, its not the mistake that people cancel. Its how brands show up to that mistake. How they take responsibility, make a commitment to do better and actually do it.

Ive experienced this first-hand, on the front lines managing crisis communications for a well-known brand. In those moments (and in all moments, frankly) people dont want lip service or excuses. They want to know that youre going to make it right.

Lets look at the beauty industry for a case study of two iconic brands with enormous brand loyalty: Glossier and Fenty. Glossier takes a hit for marketing vegan mascara that is found not to be vegan at all after a post by whistle-blower Instagram account Este Laundry. Shortly after, Este Laundry takes issue with the amount of bubble wrap used in the companys packaging. Glossier responds by launching a new product called Bubblewrap which does not go over well. A year later, Glossier comes around and makes a clearer commitment to sustainable packaging, essentially paying a penalty on brand sentiment to end up doing the thing customers wanted anyway.

Now lets compare this to Rihannas beauty brand, Fenty Beautywho named a face highlighter Geisha Chic, referencing the face paint worn by Japanese hostesses. Within a week, Fenty apologized and pulled the product until it could be renamed. Customers and fans felt heard and Fenty got celebrated for its quick response. This is the model of a growth mindsetwhen brands listen to their audience and take responsibility for mistakes. According to Este Laundry, The worst thing brands and targets of negative criticism can do is to stay silent and hope for things to blow over. We were surprised and delighted by Fentys immediate response. Most brands get defensive and try to attack us.

These mistakes can be expensivewhich is why user research and focus groups are a critical part of shipping new products. Even if thats doing a small test with friends of friends, asking for feedback and listening, iterating and growing is a huge factor in building a sustainable brand.

Final Thoughts

Support for sustainability, environmental and social good is only going to get stronger as we continue to face global issues like climate change and social unrest. By starting now and building a sustainability program, brands can still catch up and capture valuable market share and support from investors. As Skees, says we're starting to see ratings, rankings, and indices that are doing data scraping, and if you're not talking [about sustainability], you're not getting credit for what you're doing and there's perhaps the perception that you arent as far along as you actually are.

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5 Ways To Build A Competitive Sustainability Program - Forbes

This September 2021, Greenpeace will celebrate 50 years of environmental activism, dating from the launch of the first Greenpeace campaign to stop a nuclear bomb test in Alaska.

Leading up to the anniversary, Greenpeace will reflect on and we will see media coverage about the early campaigns, and subsequent years of lessons, risks, failures, and successes. Greenpeace, however, did not arise out of thin air. Its important to consider some of the cultural context, circumstances, and movements that gave rise to Greenpeace in Vancouver, Canada in 1971.

The global Zeitgeist after World War II resonated with a desire for peace. Even so, the Cold War between Russia and the European/American allies led to dozens of surrogate conflicts Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba and a chilling nuclear arms race.

During the 1950s, common citizens around the world began to hear new words such as fallout and genetic mutation, and the fear of nuclear holocaust gripped the world. A nuclear disarmament movement started in Japan, in response to the experiences at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and this movement connected with older pacifist traditions around the world.

In Providence, Rhode Island, in the United States, Irving and Dorothy Strasmich (later Stowe) were among millions influenced by the nuclear bomb threats. Dorothy had organized the first social workers union in Rhode Island and became president of the state employees union. Irving was a lawyer and jazz enthusiast, and his Black musician friends invited him to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP. Dorothy and Irving married in 1953, with a reception dinner at NAACP headquarters. The couple attended Quaker meetings and later took the name Stowe after Harriet Beecher Stowe, Quaker advocate for womens rights and the abolition of slavery. Two decades later, they would help launch Greenpeace. The Stowes were fighters. Find out just what people will submit to, I recall Dorothy quoting abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them.

Canadian Ben Metcalfe lied about his age to get into the British Air Force during World War II. While he served the British in India, Congress Party leader Mohandas Gandhi refused to cooperate with the British war effort. Metcalfe sympathized with Gandhis pacifist movement that made the British look like hypocrites. To avoid bombing pro-Gandhi villages as ordered, Metcalfe and his Hawker Demon bomber pilot dropped their bombs in fallow fields while villagers below watched and waved. The airmens defiance was probably an act of treason under British law, but Metcalfe and his pilot supported Gandhis views. After the war, Ben became a journalist in Winnipeg, Canada and married colleague journalist Dorothy Harris. The couple moved to Vancouver in 1956 and they both became instrumental in the founding of Greenpeace.

Bob Hunter learned about bombs and radioactive fallout in grade school in Winnipeg. As a teenager, he heard about US Army General James Gavin telling the US Senate that a Soviet nuclear attack could leave vast regions of North America uninhabitable, which inspired him to write a short futurist novel, After the Bomb, about a post-nuclear-holocaust civilization. Hunter quit school in 1958, after grade 11, and set out to be a writer. In London, he met his future wife, Zoe, who introduced him to Bertrand Russell during a nuclear disarmament march in London.

In 1962, at the age of 21, Hunter read Rachel Carsons Silent Spring and began to think about a new idea: Ecology. He realized that Carsons statement in nature, nothing exists alone, was literally true, and this changed the way he saw the world. Stopping militarism wasnt enough; we had to stop another war against the natural world.

Meanwhile, a young biologist, Dr. Barry Commoner, had been collecting deciduous teeth from children in St. Louis and documenting the absorption of strontium-90, a carcinogenic byproduct of nuclear explosions. Militarism was now a source of deadly pollution. The peace movement and the ecology movement began to merge.

In 1966, Irving and Dorothy Stowe, in opposition to the US war in Vietnam, moved to Vancouver, on Canadas west coast, with their two children, Robert and Barbara. They attended Quaker meetings, led peace marches to the US embassy, and corresponded with Bob Hunter, who was now writing for the Vancouver Sun newspaper, and with Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe, who were reporting for the CBC. They worked with Indigenous rights groups and with Deeno Birmingham and Lille dEasum from Canadas Voice of Women.

Hunter wrote about ecology, civil rights, and the peace movement in his newspaper column, and worked on his first non-fiction book, The Enemies of Anarchy His book addressed the consciousness of interrelationships that he had picked up from Rachel Carson, a cultural revolution that Hunter believed would involve social diversity, gender equality, electronic media, and ecology. He grew convinced that the next big change in society would be an ecological revolution. He told his friends at the pub, Ecology is the thing.

Ben and Dorothy Metcalfe uncovered a scheme to swindle B.C.s Sekani First Nation out of their homeland to construct a hydro-power dam financed by Axel Wennergren, a Swedish industrialist suspected of working with the Nazis. Ben Metcalfes story in the Vancouver Province newspaper was picked up by Toronto media, inciting Liberal Cabinet Minister Jack Pickersgill to blurt out, Im not interested in sick Indians. The incident blew up across Canada and Metcalfe became a media celebrity.

In 1969, Ben Metcalfe went fishing in Howe Sound, near Vancouver, and witnessed the stench from bellowing smokestacks at the Port Mellon pulp mill. A few weeks later, he attended a Forestry Commission meeting and asked the politicians what they planned to do about the foul air in Howe Sound. We have to accept it, an industry executive told Metcalfe. No we dont, Metcalfe declared. On their own initiative, at a cost of $4,000, the Metcalfes placed twelve billboards around the city. They created a logo to represent the environment, two waves joined together into a spiral maze. If you can promote companies and products, he told his friends, you can promote ideas. The billboards declared:

Look it up! Youre involved.

An ecology movement was being born in Vancouver.

A Green Peace

I was one of some 50,000 American draft resisters, opposing the Vietnam War, who slipped north into Canada between 1965 and 1973. I soon met the peace activists such as Hunter and the Stowes. Vancouver was an eclectic city. Chinese and Japanese communities flourished, with Buddhist temples, Tibetan meditation centers, Quakers, beat poetry coffeehouses, and a radical network of back-to-the-land farmers, naturalists, and conservationists.

Jim and Marie Bohlen came to Vancouver to avoid the military draft for their sons, Lance and Paul. Jim from New Yorks West Bronx had joined the US Navy and, like Metcalfe, had witnessed Japan after the bombings. He met Marie a nature illustrator, a member of the Sierra Club at a Quaker gathering in Pennsylvania. In Vancouver, they joined the Sierra Club, met the Stowes, and became close friends.

In the working-class neighborhood of East Vancouver, twenty-two year-old Bill Darnell organized an Ecology Caravan, which toured the province. When the government proposed a highway through Vancouvers beach front, Darnell helped organize protests with the Stowes, the Hunters, and others that blockaded bulldozers and halted the project. With this campaign, the environmentalists in Vancouver discovered the greatest inspiration to any social visionary: they could win.

A single event brought all these people together. In November 1969, the United States announced a 5-megaton thermonuclear bomb test, code name Cannikan, scheduled for October 1971 on remote Amchitka Island, 4000 kilometers northwest of Vancouver, across the Gulf of Alaska, among the Aleutian Islands. The island was supposedly a US Federal Wildlife Refuge for 131 species of sea birds. An earlier, smaller test, had registered 6.9 on the Richter scale and killed wildlife all around the island. The Cannikin test was going to be five-times more powerful.

Bob Hunter wrote a column about the risks, proposing that the explosion could cause a tsunami that might swamp western Canada. For a demonstration at the US/Canada border, he created a sign, declaring: DONT MAKE A WAVE. At the protest he met Irving Stowe in person, who proposed forming a citizens group to halt the bomb. Stowe called Deeno Birmingham with the Voice of Women, Bill Darnell, the Metcalfes, and the Bohlens. Hunter reached out to radical activists Rod Marining and Paul Watson. They formed an ad hoc group, technically a committee of the Sierra Club, that they called The Dont Make a Wave Committee.

The group, however, did not yet have a plan.

Jim and Marie were familiar with a 1958 Quaker protest boat, the Golden Rule, that sailed from California to Enewetak Island nuclear test site in the Philippine Sea. The US Coast Guard intercepted the ship and arrested the captain, Albert Bigalow, but pictures of the ship appeared around the world, stirring the pacifist movements. One morning, over coffee, Marie told her husband, We should just sail a boat to Alaska.

That same day, a Vancouver Sun reporter called, asking what the Sierra Club might be planning to stop the test. Caught off guard, Bohlen blurted out, We hope to sail a boat to Amchitka to confront the bomb. The Sun ran the story the next day, and suddenly, the Dont Make a Wave Committee had a plan.

The Committee met at the Unitarian Church to discuss this idea, and ponder how they would find a boat and skipper willing to make the trip. As the meeting ended, Irving Stowe flashed the V sign, and said Peace. Bill Darnell replied quietly, in the same off-handed manner that Marie Bohlen had suggested the boat, make it a green peace.

This term, green peace articulated the merging peace and ecology movements, and stuck in everyones mind. When Lille dEasum, the 71-year-old executive of the BC Voice of Women wrote a research paper in March 1970, Nuclear Testing in the Aleutians, the Committee published it under the Greenpeace banner, the worlds first Greenpeace pamphlet.

Ex-Navy officer Jim Bohlen toured the waterfront, looking for a boat. At the Fraser River docks, he met Captain John Cormack, 60, who owned an 80-foot halibut boat the Phyllis Cormack, named after his wife. Cormack had 40 years experience fishing the west coast. The idea of taking his boat across the treacherous Gulf of Alaska in the fall storm season did not faze him. He agreed to take the charter.

When the Sierra Club rejected the campaign idea, the Dont Make a Wave Committee proceeded independently, incorporated as a non-profit society, and prepared to launch the 80-foot fish boat, which Captain Cormack agreed could be re-christened for the voyage as Greenpeace.

Irving Stowe called his pacifist friend Joan Baez to stage a benefit concert to fund the campaign. Baez could not attend, but introduced Stowe to Joni Mitchell, who agreed, and who brought rising star James Taylor with her. They were joined by pacifist music legend Phil Ochs, and by popular Canadian band Chilliwack. In October, 1970, the event raised $17,000, enough for the boat charter and some basic expenses.

Greenpeace had emerged spontaneously, out of the social stirrings of the 1960s, civil rights, womens rights, Indigenous rights, workers rights, pacifism, and the emerging awareness of ecology. After the first campaign, the Dont Make A Wave Committee adopted the name that so perfectly articulated a new, emerging zeitgeist: Greenpeace Foundation.

Originally posted here:

The roots of Greenpeace - Greenpeace International

There is an alarming trend sweeping our nation's institutions. School children as young as five are being inculcated into "anti-racist" activism. Administrators across the country are pushing the idea that merit is racist. Office workers are being pressured into DEI seminars where "white" people are forced to admit their irredeemable corruption. Journalists are losing their jobs because they uttered the wrong word, context be damned.

A great number of people have rightly pointed out how alarming this behavior is, much of it stemming from an academic framework known as critical race theory, or CRT. But too often, the response to this criticism comes in the form of the same dismissive refrain: "This is not CRT."

"Conservatives want to cancel critical race theory. But they don't know what it is," read a recent tweet from Slate. "Critical Race Theory is the new antifa and its just so frustrating to see this boogeyman political tactic work over and over again (sic)," tweeted a reporter from NBC news. "None of these people who have made attacking Critical Race Theory their life's work HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT CRITICAL RACE THEORY IS!!!!" declared MSNBC host Joy Reid.

Unfortunately, many of the alarming examples can be traced back to critical race theory. CRT was developed in the 1970s by Derrick Bell, Kimberl Crenshaw, Richard Delgado and others. It sought to point out the intersections between race and our legal system, societal structures, and cultural norms, and grew into a movement committed to rooting out white supremacy within them.

So how did that well-intentioned endeavor become a culture war rife with claims that "white" people are not just racist but subhuman on one end, and assertions that this ideology is so dangerous that it justifies voting for Donald Trump on the other?

Despite its academic origins, critical race theory no longer lives in the university. Nearly every invocation of the term, favorable or not, is now in the zeitgeist. It's the problem with having your theory go mainstream: Prominent people have interpreted and emphasized aspects of this scholarship and disseminated their versions to the public, who in turn do their own interpreting as they go.

Terms such as intersectionality, whiteness, and systemic racism have become buzzwords. "Woke" and "anti-woke" are not just descriptors but group identities, and serve as the fault line upon which the culture war rages. Much like Music Television became MTV and progressively featured less music, critical race theory has become CRT, and features less and less of the scholarship from which it originated.

And that causes confusion.

But claiming CRT's critics don't know what it is is dishonest, and helps no oneincluding proponents of actual CRT. It comes off as sweeping real concern under the rug, and foments the kind of distrust, miscommunication, and polarization over the issue that makes progress impossible.

The question that needs to be asked is this: Does this alarming behavior we're seeing stem from a plausible interpretation of the texts of CRT? If so, that interpretation needs to be honestly addressed. If not, then the distinction must be made clear and the behavior must be condemned by all sidesnot just the political right. This would prevent not just the corruption of the texts' intentions, but also the lumping together of disparate groups with differing ideas into a monolith.

Unfortunately, this is all too rare. Instead, concerns over CRT's excesses are labeled bigotry or racism, or right wing, or "white fragility." These dismissals are then seen by the concerned as tacit endorsements of excessive behavior, which prompts the creation of a more fervent, less precise, and even idiotic oppositionone that will grow increasingly willing to do anything to stop what they see as a mounting threat.

By the same token, those who claim that every single instance of excess reflects on all of CRT are equally wrong. Disregarding the accurate and useful aspects of critical race theory because some people are employing misguided, miscommunicated, or mistranslated tenets creates a similarly fervent, imprecise, and idiotic opposition in its defense.

That leaves us with two fervent, imprecise, and idiotic sides, opposing one another into oblivion.

I believe that most people sincerely want to make the world better. There will always be conflicts and misunderstandings, and we will need to communicate effectively in order to get beyond them. But we cannot do that if we are constantly at each other's throats, putting up straw men and chasing bogeymen around online. We're all guilty of this, and we all need to stop.

Rather than taking the opportunity to score cynical points, clear instances of excessive and insane behaviorfrom mob misconduct at our schools to attempts to legislate away ideas we dislikeshould be a chance for honest, well-intentioned people to stand up and call it out, regardless of what side they're on.

The most frustrating aspect of the culture war is that it isn't a real war at all; it's a conversation we are currently terrible at having. And we will continue to be terrible at it as long as we believe the war is real and that our conflict is zero-sum.

If we want to create the fair and just world we say we do, we have to recognize that this is the idea that truly dooms us all.

Angel Eduardo is a writer, musician, and visual artist based in New York City. He is a staff writer and content creator for idealist.org, and a columnist for Center for Inquiry. Find him at angeleduardo.com.

The views in this article are the writer's own.

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Stop Telling Critical Race Theory's Critics We Don't Know What It Is | Opinion - Newsweek

Im half an hour into my interview with John Oates when he insists I need to look at YouTube as a matter of extreme urgency. Youve never seen this? he says, incredulous, down the phone from his home in Nashville. My friend, I dont know you very well, but youre missing a great moment in music history. Your life will change. Your perceptions of us will never be the same again.

This is the 1973 video thatDaryl Hall and John Oates made for Shes Gone, the standout track from their album Abandoned Luncheonette, and a staple of their live sets to this day. Its certainly striking viewing. The pair are slumped, poker-faced, in armchairs (Thats the furniture from our apartment, notes Oates). Daryl Hall is resplendent in a pair of platform sandals; Oates is wearing a bow tie and dress shirt with no sleeves.

A woman walks in front of the camera this, Oates informs me, is the songwriter Sara Allen, Halls former partner and the coauthor of a string of Hall & Oates hits followed by a man with a moustache wearing a sparkly devil costume. The latter helps Oates into a penguin-suit dinner jacket with an enormous pair of flippers attached to the arms, in which he listlessly mimes a guitar solo. All three march around the armchairs together, then walk off.

Perhaps understandably, the local TV show for which they recorded the video declined to show it (They called our record company and said: Who do these guys think they are? They are mocking us! They will never appear on TV again!), but you can see why Oates has chosen to exhume it. For one thing, it points up the sheer oddness of Hall & Oates in the 1970s, of which more later. And for another, as Oates suggests, it helps to explain why the duo so successfully navigated the 1980s. Many of their 1970s peers struggled in the new world of music videos and synthesisers, but Hall & Oates thrived: if youd been filmed marching around a set of armchairs wearing flippers, you were ready for MTV.

The MTV years were the commercial apex of Hall & Oatess career. In the 1980sthey had five consecutive platinum albums and five US No 1 singles, a relentless succession of the kind of impermeable hits that continue to rack up millions of streams and ensure that the duo still play arenas: Maneater, Out of Touch, I Cant Go for That (No Can Do), Private Eyes.

As if to prove the point about their vast continued popularity, they are reissuing the 7in of their 1981 single You Make My Dreams. It wasnt even released as a UK single at the time, but it developed an afterlife because of its use in the 2009 film 500 Days of Summer: 12 years laterits by far their biggest track. It was played after Joe Bidens victory speech last November, a month after it notched up its one billionth global stream, a state of affairs that seems to baffle the duo.

Hall, primarily the singer, who is on the phone at home in New York state, suggests the songs success has something to do with its aggressive positivity, but admits: Im not really sure, thats the truth. Oates, primarily the guitarist, offers a lengthy and eloquent discourse on the pangenerational appeal of classic rock, then shrugs: Its just a f**kin great groove and a simple, direct statement. I could have cut all the crap I just said and said that.

They met while both fleeing a fight that had broken out in a Philadelphia dance hall in 1967. Oates was a folkie, fond of country and blues. Hall had served a remarkable musical apprenticeship on Philadelphias very intense, very racially integrated soul scene. As a teenagerhe was friends with the soft-soul bands the Delfonics and the Stylistics; at the citys answer to Harlems Apollo, the Uptown Theatre, he hung out with the Temptations and Smokey Robinson.

When his own band, the Temptones, won a local talent competition, the prize was to record a single with producers Gamble and Huff, who would shortly change the face of pop with the symphonic soul and disco on their Philadelphia International label.

Ken Gamble attempted to lure Hall to the new label as an artist and writer, but he chose to move to New York with Oates. We were trying to forge our own version of the Philly sound, and we thought that the only way we could do that was by separating ourselves from Gamble and Huff they were doing what they were doing, and we wanted to do something different.

They released their debut album in 1972, but, from the outside at least, the next eight years of their career look like fascinating chaos. They had huge hits the aforementioned Shes Gone, Sara Smile and Rich Girl but they also had what Hall calls a lethal ability to experiment. One minute they sounded like a pop-soul band; the next they were releasing War Babies, produced by Todd Rundgren and backed by his prog band Utopia, home to songs with titles such as Johnny Gore and the C Eaters, and War Baby Son of Zorro. One minute they were on black R&B radio, the next they were on tour with Lou Reed in full Rock n Roll Animal mode (a strange cat, man his audience was even stranger, like junkie-wannabes).

They looked like regular 1970s singer-songwriters, but were absolutely plastered in makeup on the cover of their 1975 album, Daryl Hall & John Oates. That was [the makeup artist] Pierre La Roche, says Oates. He was responsible for Bowies look, he worked with Jagger. I remember sitting with him at dinner; he was a very flamboyant character and he said: I will immortalise you! Its the only album cover anyone ever asks us about, so I guess he was right. In 1977Hall made Sacred Songs, an Aleister Crowley-inspired solo album, with Robert Fripp, which so horrified their record label, RCA, that it refused to release it for three years.

At least part of the problem was that, for all their Philadelphia roots and their LA recording sessions, they were spending their spare time hanging out on New Yorks downtown 1970s music scene. The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Television it was all happening, says Oates. I was out every night, going to the Mercer Arts Centre and Maxs Kansas City We couldnt avoid the influence of it. We wanted to remain true to who we were, but we didnt want to ignore the zeitgeist of what was happening in our lives. And so thats what we tried to do.

Both agree that they truly hit paydirt when they were allowed to produce themselves and record with their live band: the result was 1980s Voices, from whence You Make My Dreams and the US No 1 Kiss on My List sprang. In the late 1970s, Hall had been one of the few straight white artists to publicly call out the Disco Sucks movement (Because I straddled the line, because of my background, I knew it for what it was: a racist thing, totally racist). On Voices, he and Oates minted a pop style that was equal parts soul and new-wave rock, a pretty ballsy move in the pre-Thriller United States of 1980, where the genres were sharply divided. Certainly, Michael Jackson took an interest, later telling Oates he loved to dance to I Cant Go for That, and that its bassline inspired Billie Jean.

One of the things I dont think we get full credit for is opening up the minds of commercial radio for that possibility, says Oates. We had our early success with black radio the African-American community had been as big a part, if not a bigger part of our success as anything. So to us it was normal, that was the music we made, it appealed to a wide variety of people. I think we opened the door to more acceptance of what they defined as crossover music. He sighs. Its all bullsh*t, those definitions, but nevertheless.

The pairs zenith may have come in 1985. They were asked to headline the reopening of the Apollo in Harlem, and insisted they would only perform if David Ruffin and Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations shared the stage: a few weeks later, Ruffin and Kendricks also shared Hall & Oatess slot at the US leg of Live Aid. They began to feel they had achieved all they wanted to achieve.

Hall talks about the Apollo gig completing the circle ... We felt like we had gone all the way around. Oates clearly enjoyed their success in time-honoured rock-star style he took up motor racing and began flying the duo to gigs in his own plane but concedes that he found the act of becoming far more interesting than the victory lap.

After 1990s tellingly titled Change of Season, they more or less walked away: Hall & Oates have released only four albums in the past 30 years. We almost felt, like, what could possibly be the upside of where we are now? says Oates. If we release another record and it doesnt go to No 1, is that a failure? We just felt like we needed something else. I personally needed to step away from writing, recording, touring in order to do that. I got divorced, sold everything I owned, moved to Colorado and started my life over in the mountains.

He returned to his musical roots, playing country and folk, while collaborating with everyone from Dan the Automaton and Prince Pauls hip-hop duo Handsome Boy Modelling School to The Bird and the Bee, super-producer Greg Kirstens indie band. Its evidence, like the steadily declining age of audiences whenever Hall & Oates chose to tour together, that the duos critical stock had begun rising dramatically in the decades since their 1980s hits.

Hall, meanwhile, worked with the funk duo Chroma and appeared on the UK dance act Neros chart-topping debut album, and started Live from Daryls House, a YouTube series with a wildly eclectic list of guest performers that has proved immensely successful. He says he started it, with a certain weird prescience, after some Hall & Oates shows were cancelled as a result of 2003s Sars epidemic. I thought, What if this happens on a larger scale? Maybe I should figure out a way, if there ever comes a point where I cant travel, that I can bring the world to me.

He thinks the sheer range of guests involved soul legends, singer-songwriters, rappers, rock bands helps explain, maybe for the first time, where he and indeed Hall & Oates were coming from. Not easy to peg, not easy to categorise, he says. I blame myself, really, more than anybody, more than John. Live From Daryls House is a way I can explain that musical language, where I can have all these completely different musical styles and swim in any of those waters. And that sort of explained me. Before that, I absolutely think people were confused. Guardian

You Make My Dreams, by Daryl Hall and John Oates, is released by CMG

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Hall & Oates: They said, Who do these guys think they are? They will never appear on TV again - The Irish Times

In November last year, armed men swept into a village in Cabo Delgado, a rural region in northeast Mozambique. There, they gathered the inhabitants on a football pitch in the middle of the village and beheaded 50 of them. Later that month and half a continent away, 110 farmers in northeast Nigeria were gunned down whilst tending their fields. What links these events, separated by the vast interior of Sub-Saharan Africa? The short answer is the Islamic State. But longstanding stereotypes about Africa in Europe and America have played a supporting role.

Following its defeat in Syria and Iraq, the Caliphate went house-hunting. It settled on West Africa; a region well-suited to the organisations style of warfare. Whilst western commentators worried about their relatively small presence in Afghanistan, ISIS quite literally subsumed Boko Haram the jihadi organisation that came to fame by kidnapping schoolgirls in their native Nigeria. Boko Haram save for a small splinter movement became the Islamic States West-African Province or ISWAP. Since establishing themselves in Nigeria, IS has launched a characteristically rapid expansion, paying little heed to West Africas ex-colonial borders.

These successes have come despite a series of joint operations by the Lake Chad nations; Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Whilst Nigerias longstanding insurgency has had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with western media coverage, Islamist violence in her less globalised neighbours has garnered little attention. Individual massacres may be acknowledged, but few established media outlets in Europe and America have committed themselves to linking the massacres and portraying the scale of what is happening in Africa. Whilst an end to Sykes-Picot was a dominant theme in how IS in Iraq and Syria was reported, the growing nexus of Islamist power in Africa is often treated in isolation.

This is in part due to western perceptions of the African interior. Southwest Nigeria, with its international megalopolis, Lagos, may be part of the wests known world but countries like Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, are still subject to the Conradian conception of the African interior as dark, savage and inaccessible. This means that when massacres occur, they are accepted or ignored in a way that they would not be elsewhere. One such example is ISWAPs campaign in northern Cameroon which whilst sharing many of the hallmarks of the 2014 ISIS operation in Iraq has received a fraction of the coverage. This is despite the fact that Cameroon has long been a bastion of relative stability in the face of the regions Islamist problem. The same could not be said of Iraq.

Because of where Cameroon sits in the wests cultural imagination, massacres and mass displacement do not make the news as they would in other parts of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa lacks the oil fields of the Middle East and must do without the dubious privilege of being considered a strategic corridor between East and West. Since the end of the Cold War, Africas significance in the western zeitgeist has diminished further still. Yet Africa is important, and the clandestine elements of US military command recognise this. US special forces are deployed in 13 African countries, including Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The description of these operations as shadow wars, by both critics and proponents illustrates our continued tendency to draw on the Conradian lexicon of darkness when talking about Africa.

From what we understand, US special forces generally embed regional militaries in the fight against Islamist militants. West-African security forces stand accused of fighting fire with fire, and only the most egregious stories of human rights violations tend to make it out. A mass rape by Cameroonian soldiers in March last year achieved a degree of publicity and condemnation, but the use of rape, torture, and summary execution by security forces in Chad, Niger and Nigeria has gone predominantly unreported by all bar the usual NGOs. Due to the clandestine nature of the US presence in these countries, the proximity of US forces to these events cannot be assessed.

The perception of the African interior as murky and inaccessible allows mass atrocities and western military intervention to exist in the shadows. These shadows have been reified by centuries of colonial thought. This darkness in the wests cultural imagination has been a gift for the Islamic State, which has been able to expand its brutal influence from Nigeria to Mozambique, and a gift for domestic security forces which often operate with impunity. What is more, the western forces that support them appear largely unaccountable to all but the most opaque echelons of their respective militaries. Despite all of this, there is little appetite in establishment media to dispel the darkness and subject these issues to the sustained scrutiny that they deserve.

Given that the weapons being used to build the new caliphate are coming from Mediterranean states like Libya and Syria, the potential for militants to travel the other way is very real. Sadly, only once terror in European streets is given an African face, do those in the west begin to wake up to what is happening south of the Sahara.

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A New Caliphate is Being Built in Africa's 'Heart of Darkness' - But Why is the Media Silent? - Shout Out UK