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    [post_content] => Even with ridership down by 90 percent and fare collection suspended, public transportation is considered an essential service.

In recent weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has forced transit systems worldwide to suspend fare collection to keep workers and riders safe. These changes were implemented to protect the public in a crisis, but the idea that urban areas should provide at least some free public transit is not new—roughly 200 cities around the world already do. Most of those cities are in Europe, but even in the United States, cities as disparate as Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Miami, Oakland, Olympia, and Pittsburgh have made some public transit fare-free for some or all riders.

According to An Van hamme, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company (STIB), public transit ridership in Brussels, Belgium, has fallen to about 15 percent of its normal level. “Price setting…is the prerogative of the Brussels government,” Van hamme responded to questions in an email. “There haven’t been any changes in the price setting since the coronavirus crisis began.” STIB has, however, taken steps to protect staff and riders, including banning payment aboard vehicles and implementing a “protection zone” around drivers, prohibiting the use of cash in STIB ticket sales, and taking extra measures to clean every tram, bus, metro, and terminal.

Verena Löw and Elke Krokowski, two spokeswomen for the transport association that serves Germany’s Berlin/Brandenburg metropolitan region (VBB), said in an email that they estimate a very sharp decline in the use of public transit since the onset of the coronavirus crisis, “between 50% and 90% depending on the line and mode of transport.” Despite this drop in ridership, they wrote, “public transit is rightly considered to be systemically relevant” and the region’s transit operators are committed to keeping it “up and running for those who need it.”

The front parts of buses in Berlin and Brandenburg are now closed to passengers to protect workers, and direct contact between riders and workers is strongly discouraged. All doors open automatically. Passengers must still buy a ticket before boarding a train, but they can no longer purchase tickets directly from transit staff (they are encouraged to use vending machines or apps instead). According to Löw and Krokowski, public transit is running “as much and often as possible in order to be able to offer lots of space for the passengers who do use it.”

Compare these measures to the situation in New York City, where ridership has declined by 87 percent on subways and more than 70 percent on buses. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) announced that it would reduce subway service by at least 25 percent. At least 59 MTA employees have died, over 6,000 have fallen ill or self-quarantined, and nearly 1,900 of the agency’s 72,000 workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, including the agency’s chairman, Patrick J. Foye.

Foye recently told The New York Times that the MTA has provided workers with 460,000 masks, “thousands” of face shields, and 2.5 million pairs of gloves; that they disinfect train cars and buses every three days; and have eliminated cash transactions between booth clerks and riders. According to workers, the agency did not implement many aspects of its own pandemic response plan, which was adopted in 2012, until nearly a month after the virus hit New York.

Ridership has declined throughout the city, but it has dropped by significantly less in areas like the Bronx, where most residents are black and Latino. Many hold jobs in health care, social services, retail, or food service, and few have the option of working from home. As The New York Times recently reported, many “say they have no choice but to pile onto trains with strangers, potentially exposing themselves to the virus” and the MTA’s service reductions have led to crowded conditions, “making it impossible to maintain the social distancing that public health experts recommend.”

The coronavirus crisis is proving that governments can always find alternative ways of funding essential services when they must. I asked the VBB spokeswomen how the agency plans to compensate for the sharp decline in revenue and how it has been able to continue offering high-quality service at a time when so few riders are paying to use it.

“That’s indeed the challenge many sectors are facing right now,” Löw replied via email. “In general, the financing of public transit is quite complex in Germany. Local public transit is financed roughly 50:50 through passenger fares and state subsidies.” The German government, she added, “has set up funds for companies facing financial difficulties due to the current crisis,” and the VBB is working with transport operators and the federal states of Berlin and Brandenburg on various financing schemes as well.

In the U.S., Congress recently passed a $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill which included $25 billion in federal funding for public transportation systems. The money is intended to fund daily operations, make up for lost revenue, and sustain transit workers’ jobs. Similarly, in Canada, transit experts concerned that a steep decline in ridership could cost the country's transit authorities millions of dollars are calling on Ottawa for federal support.

Fare collection is itself a waste of time and money. It’s expensive to purchase and install state-of-the-art ticket machines. It’s expensive to pay and ensure the safety of workers tasked with collecting individual fares. Most frustrating of all to the average city dweller, it causes delays

Criminalizing fare evasion and enforcing laws against it contributes to growing inequality. In 2015, the New York City Police Department arrested more New Yorkers for fare evasion than for any other offense. Of the 29,000 people arrested for fare evasion, 94 percent were people of color. From October 2017 to June 2019, black and Hispanic people—who account for slightly more than half of New York City’s population—made up nearly 73 percent of those ticketed for fare evasion and more than 90 percent of those who were arrested, rather than issued a ticket.

Peter Harrison, who is challenging long-time incumbent Rep. Carolyn Maloney in New York’s 12th congressional district, has put forth the “Freedom of Movement in America Plan,” which would require the federal government to invest $1.7 trillion in public transportation over the next decade and provide $17 billion in federal funding to cover fare revenue and make transit fare-free throughout the country. He recently told City Limits that his plan’s name was the result of his desire to start a conversation about what “freedom” means.

“I don’t think you’re free if you can’t walk down the stairs to get on the subway to go to a doctor’s appointment,” he said. “I don’t think you’re free if you’re one flat tire or missed car payment from losing your car, triggering losing your job and losing your house, and that’s the reality for a lot of people in New York City and for a lot of people in America.”

If fare-free transit is the goal—for the safety of riders and workers alike, for a freer and fairer society, for more efficient mass transit—where do we find the funding? Harrison and other proponents of free transit believe the money is already there.

“We spent $6 trillion on 20 years of endless wars…and we have spent a trillion dollars annually on deficits for taxes,” he told Town & Village in February. “Republicans have shown that we have enough resources in the federal government to pay for the types of infrastructure investments that we want. Putting money into our sustainable transportation system will unleash an immense amount of economic growth.”

“During a pandemic,” Harrison told me in a recent phone interview, “the least we can do is make subways and buses free and reduce touchpoints to make [mass transit] safer for the people operating and using it.” But in order to achieve fare-free transit throughout the United States, he acknowledged, we need to have a “deeper conversation” about restructuring our entire society. Our freedom of movement depends on it.
    [post_title] => The global pandemic shows that cities can afford to make public transport free of charge
    [post_excerpt] => If fare-free transit is the goal—for the safety of riders and workers alike, for a freer and fairer society, for more efficient mass transit—where do we find the funding?
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The global pandemic shows that cities can afford to make public transport free of charge

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    [post_date] => 2020-04-10 17:36:04
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    [post_content] => In northern British Columbia, a female chef draws on her native heritage and introduces diners to local, pre-European cuisine.

Generations ago, Indigenous communities living in harsh environments found comfort and sustenance in a basic bread recipe. 

For many remote First Nations communities throughout North America, flour wasn’t available, so bread was made with ground-up roots, bear fat and berries to sweeten, it was then cooked in an open fire or wrapped around a stick to bake.

This bread, called bannock, changed over the years incorporating ingredients like flour, fat, and sugar that were rationed to people after the government forcibly removed them from their land. It was then fried and became an important staple at powwows. Indigenous people took the scraps of oppression and made something delicious with it.

Powwows are a meeting, a chance for Indigenous people to get together and showcase dancing, singing, artisan creations and spend time in cultural appreciation and celebration. They have also served as an act of powerful resistance against continuous attempts to destroy, legislate and remove Indigenous culture. They are a demonstration of pride.

Sharon Bond, who is from the Nooaitch Indian Band in Merritt, British Columbia, has made her “bannock and butter” from bringing this ancient food to modern diners and the public can’t get enough.

“Bannock was a survival bread that really brought communities together through celebrations and gatherings. And it was one of the roots of keeping people alive,” she says.

Bond owns Kekuli Cafe, which has become the first Indigenous-owned restaurant franchise in Canada. With two locations and a third set to open in the near future, Bond’s long-held desire to run her own restaurant has come to fruition. But it doesn’t stop there; by offering franchising opportunities, Bond is helping to empower another generation of Indigenous entrepreneurs to taste success with bannock too.

Indigenous youth can be supported from the time they are in high school. We need to bring entrepreneurs and business people into schools to teach and inspire youth, to bring out their ideas and to be creative and know that they can make their dream into a business. Mentors are needed,” she says.

She herself guides and empowers youth and aspiring business owners through an initiative called Futurpreneur and through monthly Indigenous Women Networking Sessions. She also sees mentorship as a cycle and continues to benefit from her own mentor, a successful restaurant owner, who she can talk to about any industry-specific questions she may have.

Her journey to becoming a restaurant owner was a long process, in part because she wanted the endeavor to be a success and took her time to design a winning product.

“It took a few years to do the business plan, we took our time to make sure that everything was going to be just right, the colors, the logo, the slogan. We just wanted to have a very strong business. It took time to get to that point and then when we finally opened our doors people thought we were a franchise which was pretty cool. So, I said, Well, we're not, but we will be now!”

One of the decisions she grappled with was the name for the cafe, she eventually found the word “Kekuli” in a book by James Teit, a Scottish anthropologist who wrote extensively about the people of the Interior Salish First Nations.

It’s the name for a winter dwelling, found across the Okanagan region, a house built into the ground to provide shelter and warmth. Pronounced ke-koo-lee, it seemed like the perfect moniker for the type of space she wanted to create, she registered the business name the very same day.

Even though the process of launching the business was a slow burn, Bond has been interested in cooking since she was a child, when she was making a mess in her mom’s kitchen and watching her bake cinnamon buns and bread. She remembers enjoying the smell of spices and recently found an old recipe book with a missing cover, the pages of which were decorated with her childish doodles and colorings.

One of her mom’s regular recipes was chili, which also features on Kekuli Cafe’s menu, although Bond says its quite a different recipe. A staple offered at powwows; chili is traditionally served atop a piece of bannock to catch all of the meaty juices.

Bread forms a part of almost every human culinary culture across the globe and Bond has often been told that her bannock reminds customers of other fry bread that they remember from their childhood, whether that was in China, Scotland or anywhere else across the world.

Different Indigenous communities across North America make their bannock to their own unique recipes, in fact, at Kekuli they have their own ancient and secret recipe.

Bannock fans will find that the familiar frybread taste replicated perfectly at Kekuli Cafe with regulars often praising the softness of the bannock. But you can also find a number of innovative menu items like dessert topped bannocks, BLTs and bannock-wich sandwiches.

“Time has evolved so now we've got flour and oil and cast iron pans and fryers. It’s bannock with a twist, you know a little bit more contemporary bannock,” she says.

That contemporary bannock topped with sweet treats remains very popular but the traditional bannock is favored by purists as are some of the sweet yet naturally Canadian flavors from the land like Saskatoon Berry, Maple Glaze, and Maple Walnut.

The restaurant’s slogan “Don’t Panic... We Have Bannock!” came about from one of the first customers who ran up to the counter worried that they may have sold out. Sharon reassured them by stating the now-famous line and they all broke into laughter.

Bond is an incredibly warm person who makes people feel at ease, no doubt due to her genuine care and concern for how others are feeling. One of the philosophies that Kekuli Cafe is built upon is that all her customers should feel acknowledged when they arrive.

“I wanted to open a restaurant for 20 years and I always thought ‘Oh I'm going to do this with my restaurant,’ I'm going to make sure everyone smiles and is acknowledged, you're not just someone who comes in and orders and sits down and that's it. You know, I engage with all my customers and I really felt that there wasn't enough compassion or empathy, it's important to make someone's day,” she says.

Bond is also humble and credits her success to the whole team. In fact, she was recently awarded the Indigenous Woman-Business Award of Excellence from The National Aboriginal Capital Corporation but was almost too shy to tell me. She admitted that she sometimes finds it difficult to enjoy her success without feeling like she’s bragging.

Where she excels, however, is in empowering other women to proudly and confidently promote themselves. A culture she is trying to develop in her local community through her Indigenous Women Networking Sessions. 

“I can see it becoming a very important networking group. I've been to other networking groups for women and sometimes I just feel out of place,  it doesn't seem to be me, I'm not a high heel wearing type person and everyone's all decked right out and I am more of a Doc Martens person!” she says.

Through mentorship, encouragement, and plenty of bannock, Bond is building a culture of shared success.
    [post_title] => In Canada, a female Indigenous chef popularizes local, pre-European cuisine
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In Canada, a female Indigenous chef popularizes local, pre-European cuisine

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    [post_content] => What has been driving the harmful behaviors exhibited by some Christians in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic?

The World Health Organization worries, in a February 2 report about the spread of the COVID-19 virus, that an “infodemic,” i.e., “an over-abundance of information—some accurate, and some not,” is making the public feel that it’s difficult to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance. The authors of the report seem to assume that most people want objectively reliable information. Unfortunately, far too many are looking not for objectively reliable information, but rather for “guidance” that corresponds with their political loyalties and ideological preconceptions.

In the United States, there are fundamentalist Christians who see institutions like the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of a “godless liberal” plot. Tony Spell, the Apostolic Pastor of Tabernacle Life Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said: “The virus, we believe, is politically motivated.” He made this statement during a church service reportedly attended by 350 people on the evening of Tuesday, March 17, in defiance of a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people issued by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards.

Governor Edwards is a Democrat.

While CBS News reported that police told Spell the National Guard would break up any future gatherings at his church, a FOX News report quotes Louisiana National Guard Colonel Ed Bush denying that any such order has been issued. In any case, Life Tabernacle Church doubled down, bragging that it planned to bring 27 buses’ worth of area children to church on Sunday, March 22;  and, according to a public Facebook post by Tony Spell’s father Timothy, that they planned to host a blood drive on the same day. And the church followed through.

In a period of surging right-wing authoritarianism, defenders of democracy must not ignore the dangers posed by those who embrace “alternative facts.” Anti-intellectualism and pseudo-intellectualism are hallmarks of authoritarianism, and in the United States in particular, opposition to much modern science has come to define the mostly white, mostly Christian Republican Party. The problem, however, is global.

Independent Apostolic Christians like Spell are extremists even among extremists, but similar radical charismatic Christians are attaining ever more power and influence in a number of countries, including Uganda and Brazil, where these far-right Protestants represent strong-man President Jair Bolsonaro’s base. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has emerged as the global standard bearer for international efforts to oppose women’s and LGBTQ Rights. Russia, too, is one of the countries in which authoritarian Christians have undermined efforts to stem the tide of the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the past few weeks, the coronavirus threat has dominated the news cycle, and quite a few stories about the reactions of churches—both responsible and irresponsible—have appeared. In the Orthodox Christian World, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople—traditionally considered “first among equals” among the world’s Eastern Orthodox Churches—initially sent mixed messages; now, however, in a tacit rebuke to Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians’ insistence that “coronavirus cannot be transmitted by communion,” it has announced the cancellation of all services for laity within its jurisdiction. Here geopolitical tensions are in play, as the Putinist Russian Orthodox Church has increasingly defied the more moderate Constantinople in recent years.

Meanwhile, after calling the virus, or at least Democrats’ responses to it, a “hoax,” President Trump seemed to feel compelled to address COVID-19 in a more serious (if still dubious) manner, and, for a moment his white evangelical supporters seemed to be shifting with him, at least in some cases. Jerry Falwell, Jr., who at first declared that he would not shut down Liberty University, changed his mind. Pastor Robert Jeffress, leader of the influential megachurch First Baptist Dallas, has canceled physical church services, even going so far as to state that “every pastor and every church ought to follow the guidance to not assemble during this crisis.” But then President Trump oafishly declared that he wanted America’s economy reopened by Easter (April 12 this year for Protestants and Catholics), and Falwell called for Liberty students to return to campus after all, in sharp contrast to most universities essentially shutting down in order to slow the spread of the virus. Liberty University’s residential enrollment is around 13,500 students.

What has been driving the harmful behaviors exhibited by some Christians in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic? I turned to several experts on aspects of the crisis for their assessments of Christian defiance of public health measures.

Sarah Kendzior, an expert in authoritarianism, notes in fairness that “there’s a rational component” to the fear of government malfeasance and overreach, which underlays the paranoia of American far-right actors. She sees “a combination of defiance and obedience” in right-wing Christians’ reactions to the pandemic, and is spot-on in describing Trump’s style of demagoguery as “much more similar to a televangelist than to any previous president.” Kendzior’s observation goes some way toward illustrating why white evangelicals tend to be Trump supporters.

Obedience to authority is certainly emphasized as a virtue among authoritarians, and the Christian Right is no different in this regard. However, the authority in question must conform to their white supremacist patriarchal social hierarchy in order for them to consider it legitimate. Hence the “defiance of what they think of as evil liberal officials telling them what they can’t do,” as seen, for example, in former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore calling the inclusion of restrictions on church services in public health responses to the pandemic “tyranny.” When asked about the parallels between right-wing American Christians and the Russian Orthodox Church with respect to coronavirus, Kendzior found them unsurprising.

André Gagné, a former charismatic pastor and current Associate Professor of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, offered some insights into why charismatic believers are so vocal in defying the imposition of public health measures to contain the spread of coronavirus. He maintains that we must understand charismatic Christians’ defiance in terms of their theology of “spiritual warfare” and the “victorious eschatology” espoused by some charistmatics, i.e., “the idea that the church will be victorious before the second coming of Christ.”

According to Gagné, “Some neo-charismatics believe that ‘end-time’ Christians will be able to heal people from plagues, diseases, or any other physical conditions, and even take dominion over entire hospitals, healing every patient in them by laying hands on the building.” Such theology is, of course, not benign. “When people die, these ministers will find a way to rationalize the consequences, saying that the Church is also called to go through a time of tribulation and persecution, and that God is somehow sifting his Church for the Second Coming of Christ.”

Also in play is Christian nationalism, a phenomenon that sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry have found to be predictive of Trump support. Whitehead was kind enough to speak with me about the issue and about his forthcoming research with Perry and Joseph O. Baker, which shows how anti-science views in the United States are intimately intertwined with Christian nationalism. Noting that “Christian nationalism is a threat to a pluralistic democratic society,” an issue I have also written about for both The Conversationalist and Religion Dispatches, Whitehead observes that Christian nationalists “legitimate their desires for the country in the will of the Christian God. This severely inhibits any chance or even desire for compromise.”

But how is this related to the kind of science denial we find in right-wing Christian responses to the coronavirus pandemic? Whitehead summarizes some of the key findings from his forthcoming paper with Perry and Baker as follows:

We find consistent evidence that Christian nationalism—a desire to see a particularistic and exclusive version of Christian symbols, values, and policies privileged and enshrined in US civil society—is a strong predictor about Americans’ attitudes toward science. In fact, the effect of political conservatism on skepticism about the moral authority of science is mediated through Christian nationalism, meaning that political conservatives are more likely to be skeptical of science because they are more likely to be Christian nationalists.

The conclusion of the new paper puts it more simply: “Christian nationalism is many things, but above all it is an effort to (re)assert the dominant moral and cultural authority of a white, native-born, straight, masculine, and Christian social order. Likewise, disputes about ‘science and religion’ are primarily conflicts over moral and cultural order.” We can only hope that the empirical demonstration of such connections will prove useful in the struggle for a more equitable democratic future for reasonable believers and non-believers alike. Charismatic and evangelical Christians represent, after all, varieties of Christian fundamentalism, and fundamentalism is a constant source of disinformation. Indeed, fundamentalism is incompatible with democracy, yet for the most part the American press remains deferential to authoritarian Christians. That needs to change if we have any hope of stemming the influence of the radical right-wing Christians Trump has surrounded himself with. As has become clear, they threaten not only our human rights, but also our public health. [post_title] => Authoritarian Christians are deliberately undermining the public health response to coronavirus [post_excerpt] => In a period of surging right-wing authoritarianism, defenders of democracy must not ignore the dangers posed by those who embrace “alternative facts.” [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => authoritarian-christians-are-deliberately-undermining-the-public-health-response-to-coronavirus [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://conversationalist.org/?p=1669 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Authoritarian Christians are deliberately undermining the public health response to coronavirus

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    [post_content] => With environmentally conscious, humane butchery, Hannah Miller stakes a position between factory farming and veganism.

Picture a butcher and what do you see?

Perhaps a burly mustachioed man swinging a meat cleaver into a carcass. Hacking away, smeared in blood, working in a quick and inelegant fashion. Heaving body parts up onto his thick shoulder and then slamming them down onto a cutting table.

That out of date image persists but at a New Zealand company, aptly named “A Lady Butcher,” owner Hannah Miller does things quite differently. First of all, there’s no music blaring and no loud power tools or machinery running. In fact, it’s rather quiet—Zen-like, even. 

Miller, originally from Portland, Oregon, practices a type of butchery called seam cutting. It’s careful, precise work where every part of the animal is used. Miller describes this nose to tail work as “mindful” and finds it peaceful.

“When it's just you and a knife you have to pay attention to what you're doing. The seams and the muscles tell you what to do, it's very obvious where to cut. You can't be joking around and having a laugh and singing to music because you'll miss it, you'll miss the intricacies and the detail of that style of butchery, it's that mindful practice, I call it the Zen of butchery,” she says.

Before learning to butcher in London, Miller was a culinary student in New York. After a lecture delivered by world-famous chefs Anthony Bourdain and Fergus Henderson, she was inspired to make the move to the United Kingdom and found that butchery and cooking go hand in hand.

“They're completely intertwined, I don't think you can have one without the other,” she says.

The more butchers understand about the restaurant industry the better they can respond to operational matters like creating workarounds to offer little-used cuts of meat to prevent waste. For instance, when a trend for lamb rumps meant that restaurants might require dozens of lambs a week but were only using one part of the animal for their signature dish.

Practically sharing information and skills also means that butchers can better educate customers on the cuts of meat they need to create the recipe they have in mind. Miller says she would challenge butchers to go home and cook a particular cut and then have them share their experience with the crew the next day.

Before settling in New Zealand, Miller had traveled all over the world always finding that butchers were in short supply. When she landed in New Zealand at dawn, she had her first interview and had secured a job by lunchtime. 

Despite New Zealand traditionally having a meat-heavy diet, with dinner often called “meat and three veg,” Miller was surprised to discover that the majority of cured meats in New Zealand were imported.

A Lady Butcher began to provide homegrown Pancetta, Prosciutto, and Bresaola using grass-fed lamb, local free-range pork, and wagyu, from First Light Farms.  

Sharing meat education continues to be one of the most important parts of Miller’s business philosophy. She gives workshops to chefs in restaurants in Auckland, teaching them how to prepare different cuts to serve in order to use the animal economically. This is a better way for the restaurant to maximize profits and introduce customers to new cuts, but it also serves to reinforce her commitment to less wasteful meat production.

“We've chosen to take an animal for our own nourishment, so absolutely nothing can go to waste. I make sure the bones are perfectly clean, that everything's trimmed properly, part of the whole process is being in the moment, but also ultimately it's about respecting the animal,” she says.

She has also spread that message of education by offering workshops to chefs and in April when her new restaurant, Churly’s Brew Pub & Eatery, opens members of the public will be able to sign up for butchery classes too. This new venture will be a leader in nose to tail restaurants, changing the menu up regularly, sometimes even during service, to ensure all meat cuts are utilized and that nothing goes to waste.

From a 90-kilo animal, Miller says only about 150g should be thrown away. But she says to do this you really need to focus. “You can use absolutely everything, but you need to pay attention. When I teach butchery, I set out the rules and, safety is first, second is nothing, absolutely nothing goes in the bin unless I put it there.”

She says that the skill of the butcher determines much of the waste. Trimming fat from muscles meticulously results in a much higher yield of usable meat. She then renders down all the fat and bones for broths and even dehydrates sinew to make dog treats. Lately, she has also been giving away bones and skulls for people to decorate.

Her message of sustainability may at first glance seem to be at odds with her job. After all, veganism is often touted as the cure for much of the earth’s problems. I asked her if she ever thinks about the impact of meat production on the planet and she said it’s something that she considers daily. 

“It's not really so much about eating meat or not eating meat, it's about eating local, and seasonally. You don't need to eat a tomato in December, if you live in the northern hemisphere,” she says.

 Her remedy is that we all need to eat better quality meat from farmers that we know and trust, returning to a time before supermarkets and discount stores disrupted the relationship consumers had with the people who produced their food.

“Eat meat, but eat less of it, eat a better-quality meat. My husband and I eat meat most days. This week we had beautiful sausages, on the barbecue, I know the farm it came from and we had one sausage and then the rest of the plate was full of cauliflower salad and beautiful guac because right now we have tons of avocados.  We should first be eating local, and secondly, eating better but less.”

Developing a relationship with your local farm is an important step in becoming a more conscious food consumer, as I discovered when I first met Miller at the Taurapa Station in Napier, on New Zealand’s North Island. She gave a butchery demonstration using lamb from Atkins Ranch, who raise 100 percent grass-fed animals that wander and graze over beautiful pasture lands; it’s about as idyllic as farming can be.

In that way, New Zealand which is often described as 18 hours ahead and 20 years behind the rest of the world, really is a pioneer. Miller explained to me that the resurgence of interest in local foods and the proliferation of trendy farmers’ markets seen in the United States has always been part of the food culture in New Zealand.

Sustainability goes further for Miller though, it’s an entire way of life where she aims for balance. “We say regeneration instead of sustainability. Because regeneration is the idea of giving back. So, you're not just taking you actually make sure that this circle is completed. Think about it as a circle, instead of an A-Z,” she says.

Miller knows her customers care about where their meat comes from and how it was raised. At her new restaurant and pub, Churly’s, opening in Auckland, she’ll continue this education.

The restaurant takes its name from a popular kiwi expression. “Chur” can mean thank you, cool, OK, and a range of other expressions. It’s also the name of the mascot at her husband, Andrew Child’s, brewery Behemoth Brewing Company, which is a big part of the new brand.

To help with her increased workload, Miller has just taken on an assistant, another lady butcher, who sent her a message on Instagram asking to be mentored.

“I love that the people approaching me to come work for me and to learn and to invest their time are women. These women that I’ve  worked with have said how empowered they feel, they're just so excited and they have that feeling that they can take on the world and it just fills me with so much pride. I will definitely teach anyone and have a great time with it but there's something special about being a lady butcher,” she says.

 

 

 
    [post_title] => Nose to tail with a lady butcher
    [post_excerpt] => For those who avoid meat because they don't wish to participate in cruel factory farming methods, New Zealand butcher Hannah Miller offers a different approach.
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Nose to tail with a lady butcher

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    [post_content] => For the Christian Right, religious freedom means their right to discriminate against people who don't share their beliefs. 

In Bible class at my evangelical high school, I was taught that pluralism is “heresy” and must be rejected. This was a more formal way of conveying what I had already learned as a small child— that it was the task of all Christians to convert everyone to Christianity, and that the world would be a much better place if everyone were Christian.

A person who is committed to the liberal democratic project will probably be appalled at the idea of teaching children to desire a world in which everyone follows the same religion. Many, however, do not share that reaction—and that is because Christian hegemony is so smoothly woven into the fabric of American life that they fail to recognize it. Christian privilege and Christian supremacism are very real; if we are ever going to see the United States live up to the democratic potential contained in the higher ideals of the founding fathers, however much they failed to realize those ideals, we must be as committed to its dismantling as we are to that of white supremacism.

Pluralism: what’s at stake

Pluralism, of course, refers to people of diverse and conflicting beliefs coexisting peaceably, linked by their adherence to a shared social contract which commits members of different groups to treating others fairly and accommodating them equally in the public square. Outside academic settings, however, pluralism is little discussed these days—except by right-wing Christians. That’s a problem: failing to articulate a liberal understanding of pluralism will allow the authoritarian Christian Right, already advantaged in what I recently argued in Playboy Magazine is our de facto Christian public sphere, to drag the country ever further rightward. Liberals do not feel comfortable discussing the place of religion in the public sphere, says Jeremy Forest Price, assistant professor of education and chair of the Jewish Faculty and Staff Council at Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. Avoiding the topic, however,  has unintended consequences. “It allows those who seek to push their own religious agendas, particularly evangelical Christians, Christian dominionists*, and Christian nationalists, to [convince the public] not only to support their beliefs and practices over others, but to make the public sphere itself mirror their beliefs and practices.” Because they reflexively support the separation of church and state, and therefore may not feel an innate sense of urgency to articulate its value, liberals and progressives run the risk of ceding the national discourse on pluralism to the Right. Fortunately, there is an increasingly visible broad-based movement, including both believers and non-believers, who oppose the Christian nationalism that is ascendant in the Trump era. They are working actively to reclaim the meaning of religious freedom from those who would define it as the right to discriminate against members of othered groups on the basis of “sincerely held religious beliefs,” even at the expense of equal accommodation in the public square. I contend that we need similarly to reclaim the liberal value of pluralism. Paul Rosenberg, a writer and activist who has documented and championed this movement, says that pluralism requires an openness that religious fundamentalists lack, and when it comes to building and participating in a functional democratic society, what people do is more important than their espoused beliefs. “It is in doing the work that we discover what we have in common,” he said, noting that the work itself leads to an appreciation of our differences. I asked other stakeholders to comment on what pluralism means to them in theory and practice, hoping to encourage further discussion of this critical civic concept among those of us who reject the Republican Party’s authoritarianism. To understand the stakes, we need to take a brief look at the state of the discourse around pluralism on the Christian Right. According to reactionary Catholic scholar Brad Gregory, “hyper-pluralism” is to blame for everything that ails the modern West, and the solution would seem to be a return to some sort of imagined Catholic unity. This would undoubtedly entail many horrors for non-Christians, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. Russell Moore , the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, is among those conservative Christians who dismiss pluralism as “heresy.” Sohrab Ahmari, the radical Catholic writer, unabashedly argues that conservative Christians should “enforce our order and our orthodoxy.” Attorney General William Barr seems to share this view: in a speech he delivered at Notre Dame University this past October, Barr decried “militant secularists” who were supposedly “behind a campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.” C. Colt Anderson, a Catholic theologian and professor of religion at Fordham University, was so appalled by the extremism in Barr’s remarks that he called him “a threat to American democracy.” There are other conservative Christian commentators, however—people like evangelical historian John Fea and David French, a frequent contributor to The National Review—who embrace a concept of pluralism very much of a piece with the Christian Right’s understanding of “religious liberty” as their liberty to discriminate against others, including Christians with whom they disagree. Fea and French are public figures who enjoy a degree of respectability; it is dangerous to cede our contemporary understanding of pluralism exclusively to them and to those even further to the right. The Christian Right already dominates sex education in our public schools and has effectively ended abortion in numerous states. Christian hospitals regularly deny women and queer people life-saving healthcare on the basis of strictly religious views that many of their patients do not share. Deregulated homeschooling, pushed above all by conservative Christians, allows abuse and fundamentalist indoctrination to flourish. If liberals will not argue the meaning of pluralism and religious freedom precisely as liberal values, the Christian Right will only subject more and more of American life to its harmful theocratic agenda. So what might a liberal pluralism predicated on robust separation of church and state and equal accommodation in the public square look like? And how might we navigate the tensions not just between representatives of different confessions, but also between believers and non-believers?

Liberal pluralism in theory and practice

Non-religious voters now make up the single largest defined bloc within the Democratic Party. But a large and significant part of the party’s base is composed of Christians—especially African-American Christians. It is self-evidently necessary for progressive atheists and agnostics to build coalitions with progressive believers and to work together toward the common good. Loud voices in the visible atheist community, like the prominent neuroscientist Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author, often alienate not only religious believers, but also women and people of color with remarks that are Islamophobic, racist, and misogynist. Progressive atheists who are interested in coalition building must work to repair the bridges that these men and their trollish online fans have damaged. Tom Van Denburgh, communications director for American Atheists, acknowledged that “people within the atheist community sometimes engage in anti-religious rhetoric,” but attributes this anger in most cases to their having been harmed by religion. But he agrees that justifiable anger at religious privilege, which in the United States primarily pertains to Christians, must not become an excuse to dehumanize all religious people. “While there’s still a lot of work to do, the atheist community has become increasingly inclusive and more concerned about how religious privilege impacts different groups in disparate ways. And that means advocating for women, LGBTQ people, members of minority faith communities, and people of color.” He added: “Integral to [our] work is building bridges with religious allies when we find common ground.” American Atheists can point to practical achievements in this regard, notably the launch of BlitzWatch Coalition, a project dedicated to opposing the Christian nationalist agenda of Project Blitz, which seeks to impose hardline Christian values on every aspect of American political and civil society. Van Denburgh sees the work involved in BlitzWatch Coalition as authentic pluralism in practice, and BlitzWatch Coalition’s member organizations include the Interfaith Alliance and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC). For Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson, RCRC’s Director of Spiritual Care and Activism, pluralism is associated above all with compassion. “To be compassionate requires decentering or stepping outside one’s own experiences in order to give priority to the experiences of others,” Jackson said. This task is more challenging, she added, for those who “are part of any privileged hegemony” because of “a limitation of experience and exposure.” Christianity represents one of these hegemonies, said Jackson. “For interfaith dialogues to be healthy and viable, now is a critical time for atheist perspectives to be included,” she said, adding: “The path to social harmony and national unity is paved by compassion for and a genuine valuing of the stranger, those whose beliefs, practices, and so on, are different from those in the social, religious or political majority.” Jeremy Forest Price, who is involved in interfaith work, agrees with Jackson on the importance of clear-eyed honesty regarding power dynamics and the importance of representation. “An emphasis on pluralism will help open up the discussion around religion (and worldviews, spiritualities, and the absence of religion) so that we can trace the ways that specific religious ideologies influence our shared public spaces,” he said. Such tracing must include facing the impact of Christian supremacism in the United States, which means breaking the social taboo on criticizing any large Christian group. The focus of much of my own work in recent years has been on facilitating the collective visibility of ex-evangelicals and others who have left fundamentalist religion, and on advocating for us to be heard in our national discussions of religion and politics. Efforts to halt America’s lurch into authoritarianism will fail unless we shift the national discourse on Christianity. I believe that by devoting some serious thought and effort to pluralism, both theory and practice, those of us who support democracy and human rights might succeed in nudging the American public sphere toward the kind of discourse that will aid us in the the realization of this country’s democratic potential. * While there are a number of specific fundamentalist Christian ideologies whose adherents refer to themselves as Dominionists (for example, Seven Mountains Dominionism), broadly defined, Christian dominionism simply refers to the beliefs and politics of Christians who pursue social domination over members of other groups by enshrining their religious beliefs in coercive law. [post_title] => The only way to save democracy from the Christian Right is by fighting for pluralism [post_excerpt] => “The path to social harmony and national unity is paved by compassion for and a genuine valuing of the stranger, those whose beliefs, practices, and so on, are different from those in the social, religious or political majority.” [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-only-way-to-save-democracy-from-the-christian-right-is-by-fighting-for-pluralism [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://conversationalist.org/?p=1616 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

The only way to save democracy from the Christian Right is by fighting for pluralism

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    [post_content] => We can't seem to quit social media, even though we know it's not good for us. Is there a way to take back control of the user experience? 

The good news is that we now know, thanks to investigative journalism, that bad faith actors are using social media to manipulate our emotions and, by extension, our political domain. The bad news is that despite rising awareness, nothing has changed. Facebook is still manipulating its algorithms so that we all live in our own information bubbles. Twitter is still full of fake accounts, often called bots, that dupe even sophisticated users —  like prominent journalists or well-known politicians — into sharing information that simply is not true. 

As Robert Mueller said while testifying to Congress last month, social media manipulators working for Russian intelligence continue to interfere in U.S. politics “right now.”

An addiction to social media goes well beyond craving the dopamine hit supplied by seeing one’s Tweet shared widely, or one’s Facebook post liked many times. These days, journalists need Twitter to follow the news and promote their own work, while Facebook has become an all-but essential tool for staying abreast of cultural events and keeping in touch with friends and family. But while we’re “liking” photos of our friends’ new babies and sharing important investigative journalism via Twitter, we are also inadvertently exposing ourselves to people whose job it is to manipulate our thoughts and emotions. And they are experts.

Now scholars and journalists are warning that YouTube has become a terribly dangerous radicalizing tool. Zeynep Tufekci, an expert in the sociology of technology, warned about YouTube last year in a column for The New York Times. Almost by accident, she writes, she discovered that the video platform was algorithmically programmed to direct users toward opinions more radical than the ones they seemed to hold. If a user searched for a Bernie Sanders video, for example, YouTube might recommend an Atifa video. On the other hand, search for a video by a mainstream conservative commentator and next thing you know the algorithm is suggesting videos by white nationalists. YouTube, concluded Tufekci, "[might be] one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century."

One year later, The New York Times published an investigative story that shows how bad faith actors manipulated YouTube videos in order to radicalize Brazilian society by upending long-held social norms. Teachers quoted in the article say, for example, that their students disrupted classes to quote conspiracy theories they had seen on YouTube videos. Meanwhile Bolsanoro staffers were uploading videos that propagated conspiracy theories about teachers manipulating their students to support communism. The result: voters chose Jair Bolsanor, the far right newly elected president of Brazil. Danah Boyd, the founder of Data & Society, told The New York Times that the YouTube-influenced results of Brazil’s elections are “a worrying indication of the platform’s growing impact on democracies worldwide.”

Similarly, Britain saw its democracy undermined in 2016 when bad actors who funded and led the Brexit campaign used Facebook to manipulate British public opinion. The result: a slight majority of Britons voted in favor of leaving the European Union.  

Read more about Brexit: How less-than-great men brought Britain to its worst hour

But given that few Britons had expressed any interest in the EU prior to the referendum, how did this result come about? We now know, as The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr reported in a bombshell investigative piece, that British public opinion had been manipulated by misinformation published on Facebook accounts set up by a now-notorious (but then unknown) company called Cambridge Analytica. The same company later acknowledged the role it had played in manipulating public opinion in the United States prior to the 2016 presidential election. 

Craig Silverman, the Canadian BuzzFeed journalist who coined the term “fake news” in 2015, warned the CBC that Canadians are not immune from the disease of social media manipulation, either. Facebook, he told the CBC, is publishing anti-Trudeau propaganda as well as attacks on members of Trudeau’s government who are people of color. Silverman added that “...people acting outside of Canada publishing, in some cases, completely false or unsupported stories that are having an effect on what Canadians think about the current government and politics in Canada in general.”

How are we to remain connected and informed and still deal with the crisis of disinformation? 

Taylor Owen, a prominent digital media scholar who holds the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics and Communications at McGill University, suggests that some self-awareness would help. We must stop and think carefully before responding to news and opinion that makes us feel an emotion, whether it be satisfaction or anger. “When people are supplied with a wide variety of information that confirms their biases,” he says, they are less willing to accept opinions that contradict them. 

But journalists also have an important role to play, he says in this interview. According to Owen's newly published research, people who consume a great deal of news are not better informed. The reason: they tend to consume and retain information that confirms their biases. The media, suggests Owen, would be doing a public service by reporting deeply on issues for which there is bipartisan agreement. In Canada, interestingly, one of those issues is the environment. 
    [post_title] => How can we stop social media from manipulating our emotions?
    [post_excerpt] => An addiction to social media that goes well beyond needing the dopamine hit supplied by seeing one’s Tweet shared widely, or one’s Facebook post liked many times. These days, journalists need social media to follow the news and promote their own work, while Facebook has become an all-but essential tool for staying abreast of cultural events and keeping in touch with friends and family.
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How can we stop social media from manipulating our emotions?

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    [post_content] => More people are currently fleeing war and extreme poverty than at any time in history, but those who try to help often face criminal charges

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that 839 people have already died in 2019 trying to cross the Mediterranean. In 2018, the number of dead or missing was 2,277. At its height in 2016, 5,096 people died at sea. These are desperate people fleeing war and extreme poverty. But no state will take responsibility for them. 

Yet even as international accountability for human rights violations becomes a hollow joke, there are people who have taken it up themselves to dedicate their lives to rescuing and helping refugees, no matter what the personal cost. These are idealistic people who also have a firm grasp on reality: they know they cannot save the world, but they believe that capitulating to helplessness is not an option.

Salam Aldeen is the founder of Team Humanity, a Danish nonprofit dedicated to helping refugees who made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to the Greek island of Lesbos. A Dane of Iraqi-Moldovan descent, Salam flew to Lesbos in 2015 to begin sea rescue operations two days after seeing the now-iconic image of Alan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey. Alan and his family had been trying to reach Europe in an inflatable raft.

In January 2016, Greek authorities arrested Salam and four other humanitarian volunteers after they responded to a distress call from a group of refugees on a sinking rubber raft. The arresting officers accused them of crossing into Turkish waters with the intent to traffic refugees into Greece. Salam spent 48 hours in jail, and then two more years on trial, with prosecutors seeking a life sentence. The five men were acquitted of all charges in May 2018 and Salam immediately went back to work, this time building a women and children’s center adjacent to Moria, a notorious refugee camp on Lesbos that is known for violence and horrifying conditions. Moria was built for 3,000 people but shelters more than three times that many, mainly Syrian refugees and Afghan asylum seekers. 

The Team Humanity center is a reprieve for the 1,500 women and children who use it daily. “All women and children are welcome,” Salam said, noting that 11 is the cutoff age for boys. There’s a playground, and space for people to gather to dance, listen to music and watch movies. The center is funded entirely through private donations from all over the world. The money goes toward providing camp residents with necessities like food, diapers, winter clothes, and underwear. Salam gets wistful when he talks about building a school. “I don’t have funds for chairs and tables.”

On August 11th, the night of the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Adha, a group of men attacked the women’s center. “It was Eid, Ramadan had finished and everyone was happy. People went out. But then some troublemakers started making problems,” Salam says. 

https://vimeo.com/355385248

Salam described a scuffle between camp residents, which included a drunk man, volunteer security people restraining him, and a woman who screamed and pretended to faint. “It was all over quickly, Salam says. “She fainted for attention, it was a joke, and the drunk guy apologized.” But then, he says, a rumor started in the camp that someone had hit the woman. Salam estimated that between 100 to 200 men from Moria showed up, angry. There were only 26 volunteers working at the time, with additional women and children inside. When some men began to climb over the fence, Salam chased after them with sparklers and they ran off. 

https://vimeo.com/355385512

The local Greek police took an hour to arrive. “They don’t want to help. They don’t want us to be there. They want us to suffer so we go home,” Salam says. 

On August 14th, the Greek police returned, this time to rearrest Salam. “The police said the fireworks that I used to protect us were illegal,” Salam says. “They held me for over two hours, and at the same time brought someone in to report me for hitting him. I don’t know what they promised him for that, but it’s so corrupt.” 

He doesn’t expect the harassment will stop. Salam says he received a letter from the United Nations last week, also sent to the Greek government, which condemned the legal actions taken against Salam and the criminalization of humanitarian aid. Still, his biggest hope is for celebrity intervention — a “We are the World” moment to capture international attention.

Salam Aldeen is not the only humanitarian volunteer facing legal charges for aiding refugees. Pia Kemp, the German captain of a ship that was impounded for rescuing migrants at sea, recently announced she was turning down a medal from the city of Paris. Addressing the mayor of Paris, Kemp wrote in a Facebook post, “Madame Hidalgo, you want to award me a medal for my solidarian action in the Mediterranean Sea, because our crews 'work to rescue migrants from difficult conditions on a daily basis'...while you raid protests and criminalize people that are standing up for rights of migrants and asylum seekers. You want to give me a medal for actions that you fight in your own ramparts." Kemp reportedly faces 20 years in prison in Italy on charges of aiding in human trafficking.

There is no humanitarian exception to the European Union Directive that criminalizes aiding illegal migration. The burden of hosting refugees and asylum-seekers falls heavily on Mediterranean countries due to the Dublin Regulation, an EU law which states that people seeking asylum are the responsibility of the first European country they land in. At the same time, whistleblowers in the Greek government have accused the state of misappropriating EU funds meant for refugees, and awarding inflated contracts to local businesses. As Salam put it, “Finance crisis, bullshit, I see new cars. They didn’t have them in 2015, now they do.”

In Denmark, Salam’s home country, the government’s laws and rhetoric are increasingly anti-immigrant. In 2016, Denmark passed the controversial “jewelry law,” which allows the government to confiscate valuables from refugees to pay for their care. The law has not been enforced, but the symbolism remains. “I’m ashamed that Denmark doesn’t take refugees. That’s why I’m here helping people. I’m trying to show that it’s not every Danish person that feels this way,” says Salam. 

In 2018, Arizonan geography teacher Scott Warren was charged by Border Patrol with three felonies for aiding a pair of Central American migrants. His trial resulted in a hung jury. Federal prosecutors have refused to drop the charges since the mistrial, and plan to retry Warren on two felony harboring charges in November.

Warren’s case, like his European counterparts, failed in court because prosecutors could not prove intent to commit a crime. Still, Warren’s arrest is part of an escalating attack on humanitarian volunteers, who for years have put out jugs of water for dehydrated migrants traversing the desert along the United States’ southern border.

Migration flows will increase as the planet warms and regions become uninhabitable. The post-World War II liberal order, built upon freedom of movement and freedom from persecution has failed. The Refugee Convention was not written to account for massive influxes of people fleeing widespread violence and climate change. Permanent impermanence has been normalized - the most obvious example being Palestinian refugees, who were placed under their own UN agency in order to sidestep UNHCR. 

Ironically, during World War II, Syria played host to thousands of European refugees. Now that the tables have turned, Europeans are treating the refugee crisis like a game of hot potato, selling out basic principles in order to keep Muslims out. What began with a 2016 deal to return refugees to Turkey was followed by an even worse deal with Libya

In America, our government has behaved no better. Just this week, the Trump administration announced a new policy that would allow for indefinite detention of migrant families and children. Meanwhile, Haitians who have lived for decades on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) now face deportation since the Trump regime denied them renewal. 

The crackdowns are real, and until new institutions are constructed to provide accountability, legal or otherwise, we’ll return to the same solutions humanity has used throughout history. 

There’s a Jewish teaching, naaseh v'nishma, which means “we will do and we will hear.” If somebody shows up to your doorstep, feed them, give them a bed, and ask questions in the morning.

Tyrants have always used vulnerable populations as pawns in their games with one another. But there have always been people willing to sacrifice their bodies and voices for others. 

Salam and his family arrived in Denmark in 1992 after fleeing civil war in Moldova, but he insists that his past is irrelevant to what he’s doing now. “Everyone can do what I do. No money in the world can give you the feeling you get when you’re saving a human from drowning. I can’t explain it to you because it’s something insane. Giving a baby back to their mother after pulling them from the water, that is something I’ll never forget. People if they want to do something — know one thing — don’t think that you will get something back, but you’ll get peace with yourself. That feeling when you help somebody, this is your reward. You’ll understand, I did something good. Because one day, maybe it’s you who is going to run.”
    [post_title] => 'Saving lives is not a crime': when ordinary people sacrifice everything in the name of humanity
    [post_excerpt] => Tyrants have always used vulnerable populations as pawns in their games with one another. But there have always been people willing to sacrifice their bodies and voices for others. 
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‘Saving lives is not a crime’: when ordinary people sacrifice everything in the name of humanity

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    [post_content] => Is racist the new four-letter word?

On Wednesday night at a rally in North Carolina, President Trump falsely claimed that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia who became a U.S. citizen when she was a child, was a supporter of Al Qaeda. Then he stood and watched as his supporters chanted “Send her back! Send her back! Send her back..!” That rally capped several days of Trump’s well-publicized incitement against the four junior congresswomen known as the Squad — Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Presley, and Ilhan Omar — who have been vociferously critical of President Trump and his policies.

“If they don’t love [America],” said the president, “tell them to leave it.”

In their coverage of this story, legacy media outlets ranging from The New York Times to CNN finally embraced the term “racist” to describe the president’s words. Their use of this word became a story in itself, with Trump supporters denying the president’s words were racist. “It’s not racist to say love it or leave it,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. He added: “A Somali refugee embracing Trump would not have been asked to go back.”

 



Even if one were to agree with Graham that “send her back” was not necessarily racist, one would be hard-pressed to reconcile the core right to freedom of expression in a democracy with the idea that an immigrant who exercised that right by criticizing the president's policies should be deported.

Other Republican representatives were clearly uncomfortable with the “send her back” chant, but they didn’t want to label the president a racist, so they split the difference: The crowd was wrong, said Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), but the president “didn’t have a racist bone in his body.” Emmer did not comment on the fact that the president stood silently for 13 seconds as the crowd he’d been working into a frenzy for the previous quarter of an hour chanted rhythmically.

Trump is, of course, notorious for his misogyny. But besides their gender, the four Democratic representatives he attacked are also all people of color. Bernie Sanders shares the same political views, but Trump did not single him out. Sanders is, of course, a white man. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi — who has a testy relationship with the Squad — successfully pushed through a House resolution to condemn Trump for his racist comments, overriding Republican objections and a parliamentary ruling that deemed the term an insult and thus not allowed.

The partisan argument over what constitutes racism is the driving force behind the reluctance of legacy media outlets to use the term. Editors are afraid that if they label someone a racist, the media outlet will no longer be considered an objective source of information. There is a whole separate argument over whether or not objectivity is possible or desirable in these troubled times. When, for example, The New York Times published a controversial profile of a white supremacist that made him sound like an ordinary guy who loved his family but happened to hold some extremist views, critics charged that the paper had lent credibility to a Nazi by presenting a humanizing portrait in the pages of the country’s most prestigious newspaper.

One expert argued that using the term "racist" was counter-productive because it made the person accused of racism defensive, and that the ensuing argument over whether or not the term was appropriate deflected attention from meaningful and substantive policy discussions.

But as Trump engages increasingly in overt racist incitement, the legacy media are re-examining their editorial policy. Over the past two days, The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and other prominent reporting platforms have all used the term “racist,” to describe the president’s comments. As Maria Bustillos explains in the Columbia Journalism Review: “The language of distance and delicacy is based in good faith; where good faith is absent, delicate language does little more than normalize things like racism and cruelty.” In other words, sometimes going high when others are going low can be counter-productive.
    [post_title] => Why editors are so reluctant to label Donald Trump a racist
    [post_excerpt] => The use of the term "racist" became a story in itself, with Trump supporters denying the president’s words were racist. “It’s not racist to say love it or leave it,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. He added: “A Somali refugee embracing Trump would not have been asked to go back.”
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Why editors are so reluctant to label Donald Trump a racist

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    [post_date] => 2019-07-19 18:03:53
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    [post_content] => The current political climate seems disastrous for the Palestinians. But as recent history shows, the bleakest circumstances can yield great opportunities.

Alongside the dog whistle politics, much of Donald Trump’s public image is a throwback to 1980s New York City culture, with its gaudy society parties, unapologetic misogyny, and predatory real estate practices. His presidency jerks between rhetorical excess and emptiness. From negotiations with North Korea abroad to immigration policy at home, Trump’s actions have cycled between Twitter onslaughts devoid of meaningful content and the implementation of acutely retrograde executive orders. His administration’s recent effort to address conflict in the Middle East by convening the “Peace to Prosperity” conference in Manama, Bahrain, is a further case in point.

At the core of the Trump administration’s economic plans for the Palestinians is a glossy brochure released shortly before the summit itself. Notwithstanding the slick graphics and  the presentation, which makes it look like something a business consulting firm would publish, it is an astonishing study of hollowness and deception. The $50 billion dollar pitch book promotes all sorts of investments, including a desalination plant in Gaza and a transport corridor with the West Bank, but does not even mention the word “occupation” to describe Israel’s control over the occupied Palestinian territories. Particularly galling to Israeli and Palestinian civil society activists was the discovery that the photographs used to illustrate that glossy brochure were from promotional material for the very grassroots peace building initiatives — such as The Bereaved Parents Circle Forum and Olive Oil Without Borders — that the Trump administration had abruptly defunded in recent months.

Live-tweeting from the lobby of Manama’s Four Seasons hotel, where the workshop was held, journalist Jack Moore wrote that he was “was left speechless by the Davos-esque Conflab” he had witnessed during the two-day event. In a widely-circulated Twitter thread, he described a gathering of shady private sector grandees, all male panels, and patronizing U.S. flippancy toward absent Palestinian officials. In his opening speech, Jared Kushner described his vision for an economically vibrant West Bank and Gaza without broaching the political context in which such development might take place. Other participants had spent so little time on the ground in Palestine, that they mispronounced names of well-known places. Meanwhile, the head of FIFA touted the virtues of football as a means of “contribut[ing] to change” in the region. When the numbers were crunched, it was clear that the U.S. government was looking for a way to offload the major costs of economic investment to the Gulf states and private investors, shouldering even less of the paltry amount they now provide in the form of economic assistance in the occupied territories.

This opportunistic spirit of Manama fit with a broader pattern of pushing the Palestinians into a corner. During several interviews in the run up to the Bahrain Summit, Kushner reinforced the approach of excluding the PLO while dismissing fears of American imbalance. Asked if he understood why the Palestinians did not trust him, Kushner responded curtly, “I’m not here to be trusted.” As the Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi has argued, this “neocolonial arrogance” of the U.S. administration is a throwback to the British Mandate and the notion that Palestinians are not quite ready to govern themselves.

Israeli leaders have also promoted this paternalistic view. The former Education Minister and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett, for example, called for the Palestinians to govern themselves “in all aspects barring two elements: overall security responsibility and not being able to allow the return of descents of Palestinian refugees.” When asked whether his vision would provide self-determination for Palestinians, Bennett demurred. “It’s unrealistic…the Stability Plan is only partial self-determination, but in the real world you have to make compromises.”

Since Trump’s election the alignment between the U.S. and Israeli governments has yielded a series of transformative developments that in practice put an end to the two-state solution.

The most widely publicized of these developments was the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. With this move, the U.S. indicated that it no longer regarded as legitimate the Palestinians’ claim to East Jerusalem as the putative capital of their future state. The U.S. also closed its consulate in East Jerusalem, which had served Palestinian residents of the occupied territories; and it ordered the Palestinian mission in Washington D.C. to close, ending the official Palestinian diplomatic presence in the U.S. capital.

The U.S. withdrew its funding to UNWRA, the United Nations agency that provides essential services, like education and medical care, to over five million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank. The State Department denied visas to prominent Palestinian figures who had been visiting the U.S. for years — including PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi, who received her PhD from the University of Virginia. In addition to adopting a policy of complete indifference to Israel’s ever-expanding settlement expansion in the West Bank, the U.S. removed the word ‘occupied’ from government documents. When Netanyahu campaigned in the recent national election partly on a promise to annex the West Bank, which Israel has occupied for 52 years, the Trump administration did not even respond, even as it has chosen a permissive attitude towards the growing Israeli call for annexation of the West Bank. In all these ways, the conflict has returned to a pre-Oslo paradigm. The Palestinians are, as it were, stuck back in the 1980s.

Rather than simply lament the circus in Bahrain, the Palestinian leadership must look for a meaningful way to respond to this diplomatic farce. Some Palestinians have argued that since the Oslo Agreement has been fatally violated, the Palestinian Authority should formally be dismantled. Those who oppose this move say it would cause harm to the Palestinian population, and perhaps even lead to the outbreak of violence. Another historical parallel to consider is the PLO’s position following the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. Abandoned by Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat, sidelined in autonomy talks over their future without participation, surrounded by an expanding ring of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians were forced to confront both political efforts at state prevention followed swiftly by the 1982 military intervention in Lebanon and Israeli attempts to defeat the PLO in its Beirut stronghold.

This moment of acute crisis was also an opportunity for Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leadership to rethink the future of the national struggle. After the PLO was forced to retreat from Beirut in 1982, Palestinian political activists in Gaza and the West Bank forced a shift of power away from the exiled leaders, now based in Tunis, and a new reckoning with their demands, culminating in the outbreak of the first Intifada in December 1987. The mass grassroots protest against the then 20-year old occupation led to tangible results: the U.S. finally recognized the PLO; and by the early 1990s the Israelis began to engage with the Palestinian political movement. With that same occupation now extending over five decades, what new opportunities might be seized beyond the fulsome rejection of the Trump administration’s effort to impose what one Palestinian playwright has called a “slumlord’s peace”?

In the summer of 1986, the Palestinian political activist and intellectual Sari Nusseibeh toyed with an idea that might shake up the paradigms of political discussion. Writing in the newspaper Al-Mawqef, he posed a thought experiment about which situation was preferable: “autonomy or annexation with full equal rights [for Palestinians] in Israel?” In his view, freedom through the ballot box would give Palestinians joint control over their own lives and the lives of their Jewish neighbors. He soon appeared on a leading Israeli political talk show alongside one leader of the settler movement, who was startled by Nusseibeh’s argument. Either Palestinians would get a state of their own, or Israel would have a battle for equal rights on its hands. Suddenly, the left-wing Labor Party began invoking fears of a “demographic threat” as a means to accelerate negotiations, while the Israeli representative to the UN noted that “If Palestinians begin to think like this, then we’ve really got something to worry about."

These fears remain highly relevant today. What happens when the political conflict is framed as a conversation about equal rights, access, and citizenship? The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is acutely concerned about the rhetoric shifting in this direction, a fear underscored by the backlash against the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) as a means of pressuring Israel in economic, cultural and diplomatic realms. Recent efforts to criminalize BDS, and to label it anti-Semitic, underscore how far this battle of delegitimization can go.

In the face of these developments, advocates for an equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must continue to push for a values-centered approach where the language of rights and equality for Arabs and Jews remains at the center of political discourse. Trump himself was quick to dispose of the two-state paradigm in his first meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, telling reporters he was not wedded to the idea of territorial partition. But rather than promote an equitable alterative, his administration has tipped the scales firmly in one direction. To reverse this sense of defeat, a reorientation of the parameters of debate is in order. Rather than haggle over the crumbs of economic peace, there needs to be a clear demand for meaningful sovereignty and citizenship—along with the means of leveraging that equitable future—in whatever political constellation might eventually emerge.

A return to the 1980s can evoke retrograde politics, but it is also an opportunity to interrogate the political imaginaries that took hold at the end of the Cold War, and to imagine alternative paths not taken. Could contemporary developments offer a chance to rethink the Palestinian future, moving away from territorial division and statist demands? Are there lessons to be learnt from Nusseibeh’s earlier calls for annexation alongside Netanyahu’s promise of implementing a more restrictive version? Might this crisis provide a viable way for Palestinians to firmly back out of the narrow Israeli and American corner? The current political landscape might appear calamitous, but Trump and Netanyahu will not last forever. Even as the foolhardy mandarins like Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and David Friedman demand Palestinian surrender, the threat of being vanquished can also be redirected in bracing new directions.

 

 

 

 

 

 
    [post_title] => Back to the future: How Palestine can pull itself out of the 1980s
    [post_excerpt] => Pushed into a corner by U.S. and Israeli policy and the indifference of Arab leaders, Palestinian leadership is in a moment of acute crisis. But the calamitous political landscape also presents an opportunity for creative new paradigms.
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Back to the future: How Palestine can pull itself out of the 1980s

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    [post_date] => 2019-07-03 15:35:33
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    [post_content] => An unlikely partnership between politically opposed billionaires raises questions about the role money plays in ...  everything.

Perhaps the most surprising news this week is the unlikely partnership between two billionaires who represent opposite sides of the political spectrum. George Soros, the billionaire known for his liberalism, is partnering with the far-right Charles Koch to fund a Washington think tank that will promote a non-interventionist foreign policy. 

Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, describes his reaction to the announcement in  an op-ed for the Boston Globe:

"The depth of this heresy can only be appreciated by recognizing the meretricious power that nourishes Washington’s think-tank ecosystem… In foreign policy, all major Washington think tanks promote interventionist dogma: the United States faces threats everywhere, it must therefore be present everywhere, and “present” includes maintaining more than 800 foreign military bases and spending trillions of dollars on endless confrontations with foreign countries.” 

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, as it will be known, will be led by a number of critics of American foreign policy, including Trita Parsi, the former president of the National Iranian American Council. Parsi said:

“It shows how important ending endless war is if they’re willing to put aside their differences and get together on this project. We are going to challenge the basis of American foreign policy in a way that has not been done in at least the last quarter-century.”

One of the loudest critics of billionaires bearing liberal gifts is Anand Giridharadas. In his book Winners Take All: the elite charade of changing the world, the former McKinsey consultant turned social critic attempts to answer the question: “What is the relationship between the extraordinary elite generosity of our time, which is real, and the extraordinary elite hoarding of our time?” Giridharadas’s conclusion: that elite generosity is a partner of elite hoarding. The billionaires’ partnership raises the issue of the role of money in, well, just about everything, explains Kelsey Piper in an article for Vox.  Institutional pushback against “endless war” feels like a relief and a welcome change in Washington, D.C., but one should temper one’s reaction with a healthy skepticism of billionaires who want to shape the world.  [post_title] => The problem with billionaires bearing liberal gifts [post_excerpt] => George Soros and Charles Koch would seem to be the most unlikely of partners, but the two billionaires have found synergy in their newly launched think tank. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => the-problem-with-billionaires-bearing-liberal-gifts [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=1191 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

The problem with billionaires bearing liberal gifts

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    [post_date] => 2019-06-27 15:09:19
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    [post_content] => Two of the leading candidates for the Democratic party's nomination unveiled plans to deal with the student debt crisis — and were met with a chorus of critics.

On Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed eliminating all student debt, to the tune of $1.6 trillion. Sanders also wants to make public universities, community colleges, and trade schools all tuition-free. With his proposal, Sanders has one-upped Elizabeth Warren, his main opponent for the Democratic party nomination. Warren’s proposal is for a tiered loan forgiveness plan — up to $50,000 based on household income.

But while student debt is an enormous burden for both individuals and the economy, critics have nonetheless objected to the plans put forward by both Sanders and Warren. Kevin Carey, who directs the education policy program at New America, the Washington, D.C. think tank, writes in the New York Times that the plans fail to account for the largest cause of student debt in the United States — i.e., graduate and professional school programs. Adam Looney, a Brookings fellow cited in The Wall Street Journal, says that Warren’s plan would benefit higher earners. Matt Bruenig, a policy analyst who founded the People’s Policy Project, grapples with some of the inconsistencies in the plans; but he does not see any potential benefits.

However, as author and documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor reminds us in The Guardian, the call for student debt forgiveness began with grassroots organizing. The Debt Collective, an organization she co-founded, organized student strikes that resulted in the cancellation of more than $1 billion in debt acquired by people who attended fraudulent for-profit colleges. Nor is the Brookings Institute’s analysis the last word on “fairness”: Taylor cites research by sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom and economist Darrick Hamilton, which shows that student debt disproportionately affects women and people of color. Debt forgiveness could help close the racial wealth gap.

Meanwhile, more than 150,000 victims of deceptive practices by for-profit colleges are suing the Department of Education for failing to deliver on debt relief that is already guaranteed by existing laws.

In other news:

Is your vacation ethical? Writing in Yes Magazine, travel writer Bani Amor asks how we can decolonize vacations. Read more. Why is a 40-year veteran of the environmental movement feeling hopeful? Read the op-ed. Meet the big-name brands that want to buy back your old clothing to reuse and recycle. Read more. [post_title] => Searching for a way to rescue the American dream [post_excerpt] => Senators Warren and Sanders, both candidates for the Democratic party nomination, have unveiled concrete plans that would address the prohibitive financial burden of higher education [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => searching-for-a-way-to-rescue-the-american-dream [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:15:14 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=1173 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

Searching for a way to rescue the American dream

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    [post_date] => 2019-06-26 16:59:51
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    [post_content] => We've changed our name and expanded our mission, but our ethos remains the same

In 2017 a group of journalists and academics with expertise in authoritarianism launched a Medium blog called The Anti-Nihilist Institute. Over the ensuing months they wrote sharp analysis about the historical and social context of anti-democratic forces, and published thought provoking interviews with experts in the field. With a rapidly growing readership of thoughtful people seeking new thinking about critical issues, the founders decided to migrate the Medium blog to its own, dedicated website.

We are delighted to announce that the launch of our new website comes with a new name — The Conversationalist.

The name reflects our expanded mission, which is to bring together thoughtful writers who are experts in a variety of fields to provide new insights into critical issues. Over the past half year we have published thought provoking articles on diverse topics that range from the role of art in times of political despair to a new way of thinking about how to treat opioid addicts. The thread that links these many ideas together is one of creative new approaches to the urgent issues of our times, from social inequality to the stale thinking that underlies political stagnation. We invite you, our readers, to contribute to this conversation: share our articles on social media, comment on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, and send us your ideas for new topics to write about here.

We look forward to playing a role in supporting an ongoing conversation about how to make our society  more inclusive, healthy, environmentally sustainable, and thoughtful.
    [post_title] => The Conversationalist: a new name and an expanded mission
    [post_excerpt] => The thread that links these many ideas together is the intention to inspire creative new approaches to the urgent issues of our times, from social inequality to the stale thinking that underlies political stagnation. 
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The Conversationalist: a new name and an expanded mission