Let’s get it right this time.

A guest essay by Georgia. Republished with permission.

When 9/11 happened I was nine. Our parents told us what had happened but nobody bothered to explain it in terms a child could understand. We knew that some people flew a plane into a building, we knew that lots of people in a place called New York had died, and that was bad, and we knew that it had something to do with a place called Afghanistan. Nobody tried to explain that terrorism’s main goal is to spread fear among the people beyond the immediate victims of the attack, that it hopes to provoke a backlash so severe from the attacked society and government that more sympathy is generated for the terrorist’s cause. Nobody tried to explain what Islam was, what an Arab was, what a Pashtun was. Nobody tried to explain how an entire people are not responsible for the acts of their government, or the acts of a small group of people within their borders. And nobody tried to explain that terrorism has no religion, that the hijackers had as much claim to the Qur’an as the KKK has to the crosses they set on fire. I really think I could have comprehended all that at age nine, if someone had tried to find the words to explain it to me.

The adults in our lives failed us morally at that moment. We absorbed the racism and fear that was filtering down to us in an odd distorted form from the media, from the things we overheard grown-ups saying. We became mini-jingoists, parroting words we didn’t understand, and not one person, not even in the bluest of blue states, Massachusetts, had the moral courage to set us straight. I remember a friend of mine saying that when he grew up he wanted to “blow up Afghanistan,” and my father making an uncomfortable face and sort of dithering before delivering a lukewarm disapproval and changing the subject. I believe that my generation’s soul still bears the marks of that moral failing, and the world is a much worse place because of it.

Now I am an adult, and there are a lot of children in my life who are around the same age as I was back in 2001. I don’t know how much they will be hearing about what has happened in Paris, and I don’t know exactly how I am going to respond to the questions they have. But I do know that I am going to go into school on Monday with a determination not to repeat the silence, the cowardice, the atavistic nationalism that failed my generation. I would ask that my friends, especially those who interact with children, but even those who do not, make a conscious choice to spread love and understanding this week. Educate yourself with the facts, assuage the fears of those around you, stand up to racism, and do not be silent. Let’s get it right this time.

Justice for all, no matter the cost

If any part of our governmental system should always be fully and generously funded, it is our judiciary, from bottom to top. Everyone accused of a crime, large or small, should have the right to access meaningful and prompt justice. That shouldn’t depend on their income or their geographic location.

gavel

The dismantling of the country’s public defender system to save money and coerce speedy pleas has made a mockery of the phrase “justice system.” It’s similarly disturbing to me when I hear about places across our country (and even in Massachusetts) where states are moving to “consolidate” their court systems, not for the sake of improving the justice system but for the sake of cutting costs. I believe nobody should be denied true justice and a fair procedure simply because they lack the funds for bail or for a qualified attorney or because they live far away from courts.

I also believe nobody should be rushed and badgered into pleading out on something they didn’t do simply because the courts and public defenders are overloaded. If our justice system is overloaded, we need to expand it and properly fund it. Yes that means hiring more people and buying or building more facilities. But a legitimate and fair justice system, with justice for all, doesn’t necessarily come cheap. Our judiciary should be the last place in government we make cuts or try to under-fund.

If you were in a position of being charged with a crime you didn’t commit and you didn’t have the resources for expensive attorneys, you know you wouldn’t want to be railroaded through a cash-strapped court system. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to anyone else, either — by funding our courts properly and ensuring they have the capacity to deliver true justice.

Protecting children and students by empowering them

Promoting the rights of children, youth, and students is vitally important for keeping them safe. We’ve seen the footage this week from Spring Valley High School of a girl being body-slammed and seriously injured by a police officer in her school — an all-too-common occurrence. While this itself is a grave abuse (➚) and clearly one escalated by racism and misogynoir (learn more➚), one additional element we need to be aware of is how many schools (including in Massachusetts) have adopted policies that may limit our ability to find out about these incidents in future.

Such measures include monitoring students’ internet communications on campus and restricting or confiscating cell phones. While some of this is ostensibly to reduce distractions, its secondary (and I hope unintended!) effect is to reduce the ability of students to record authority figures or otherwise get the word out about abuses or inappropriate behaviors by adults who are supposed to be keeping them safe.

This doesn’t just apply to inappropriate uses of physical force to contain situations, but also to other types of abuse. There have been more than enough institutional sex abuse scandals erupting in recent years to learn from. These often occurred in eras where children and youth were neither respected nor readily empowered to document illegal actions (of any kind) by adults in positions of power. We now know that young people are endangered when they are unable to advocate for themselves against powerful adults or institutions and are unable to prove what is happening.

It would be a serious mistake to move toward policies that prioritize omnipresent surveillance and policing while deprioritizing student rights and student privacy. Such an approach doesn’t foster a culture of being willing to constructively stand up to authority or institutions when there are abuses or illegal activity. (And reportedly, a student who tried to intervene physically in this case to protect his or her classmate from abuse was also disciplined by the school, which should raise some similar questions too.)

In immediate terms, while we always hope these things won’t happen in our schools, if they do happen, it’s much better that we know about them quickly so we can stop them and act against those responsible. For that to happen, students must feel comfortable about coming forward and be empowered to do so. Part of a safe learning environment is not just taking a “public safety in schools” approach but also ensuring students can advocate for themselves when something isn’t right.

In the bigger picture, I believe that the latter approach – respecting the rights of young people and protecting their ability to blow the whistle on abuses of power without fearing recrimination – also helps promote a generally more engaged and empowered civic attitude for a lifetime. Part of our education system should be to encourage people to defend each other and themselves from abuses of power wherever it may occur. It should never be to teach our children that they are powerless to stop injustice, illegal activity, or abuse.

Russell Simmons’ RushCard leaves vulnerable flat broke

Guest essay by Heather R. Andrews: Broken promises as a prepaid debit card pitched, with hip-hop cred, to poor consumers breaks down.

Def Jam co-founder and RushCard promoter Russell Simmons.

Def Jam co-founder and RushCard promoter Russell Simmons.

October 12th, 2015 marked the beginning of what can only be described as a nightmare for customers of a prepaid debit card service called “RushCard,” which has been heavily promoted by early hip-hop mogul Russell “Uncle Rush” Simmons.

Customers often arrange for their paychecks to be deposited directly to the card accounts. Now, due to a “software upgrade in the transaction processing system” – also described as a “glitch” or a “conversion” – customers have been experiencing a $0 balance on their cards or had no access to their funds.

For many of this particular card’s customers, being locked out of their account for days means they are not able to pay bills or buy essentials such as diapers, medicine, or food. Some customers are left with no other options and have resorted to crowdfunding.

Slowly the story has been percolating into mainstream media, but only minimally and very late. Lack of coverage, along with form letter style responses from Russell Simmons and RushCard employees, have only added to customers’ desperate frustration.

Customers have been instructed to send Simmons himself direct messages via Twitter to resolve their issues. Many customers created Twitter accounts to voice their concerns, receive assistance from any source available, and to DM Russell Simmons — as directed.

I have been tracking and boosting these messages for several days on Twitter. Card holders are tweeting about late fees, repossessions, utility disconnections. Along with the stories came pleas for Russell Simmons to do something. As of yet, no one is reporting that they have been assisted by Simmons or anyone on his team.

Simmons did issue an apology last Wednesday. In part:

“I want to personally reassure you that your funds are safe and that we are addressing every issue as quickly as possible. I deeply apologize for the hardship this is causing and give you my solemn commitment that we will fix these problems.”

 
As of yesterday, on day 9, customers were still waiting for Russell Simmons to fix those problems. Meanwhile, those funds remained unavailable for immediate use on bills and necessities.

So where did this problem come from? Not the technical problem, but rather the problem of a service with such a vulnerable consumer base that could ill afford a “glitch.”

RushCard/UniRush, a financial services company and one of the first providers of prepaid debit cards, was founded in 2003 by Russell Simmons, one of the co-founders of Def Jam Recordings and numerous other business ventures. By 2011, on the strength of claims that the card would financially empower its customers and promote financial literacy, UniRush had amassed a reported 1.5 million customers.

UniRush’s success has not been without its issues already. Even before this most recent problem, RushCard has come under fire for its high fees, bad customer service, and predatory marketing strategies.

Moreover, Simmons used his image and influence to appeal to the Black community. His target market specifically was “underbanked Americans.” The underbanked are low-income individuals and families with limited access to banking services by geographic location, credit history, discrimination, or other factors. These consumers were drawn in by UniRush promising no credit checks, $5.00 credits, designer logos, and the ability to receive direct deposits up to 2 days earlier. For the poorest Americans, already saddled with consumer debt and struggling to make ends meet, these little things could make a difference, however briefly. Read more

What did Auchincloss mean by “Millennial Mecca” remark?

Editor’s note: This is more or less a purely local post about politics in Newton MA (where we record our weekly radio show), but it has broader implications for both eastern Mass and other parts of the country where a similar pattern is playing out.

Newton highlighted within Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Credit: Justin H. Petrosek - Wikipedia)

Newton highlighted within Middlesex County, Massachusetts. Credit: Justin H. Petrosek – Wikipedia)

At the Newton Ward 2 At-Large forum, citywide aldermanic candidate Jake Auchincloss said, some 44 minutes in:

“I don’t hear a lot of demand for us becoming a Millennial mecca. […] That’s not where the voters I spoke to chose to live. They chose to live in Newton, which is the Garden City and which has a special comparative advantage in Greater Boston of being bucolic, of having fabulous schools and safe streets, and that’s the priority.”

 
Maybe other voters won’t hear it the way I did, but: This is, without question, the most troubling (even disturbing, actually) thing I have yet heard from Jake over the course of this campaign.

It would be one thing to contrast Newton in general terms with other slightly more urban communities, some of which he cited by name. But it’s quite another to imply that those communities have bad schools or unsafe streets or no green spaces, and to further imply by specific word choice that this is all because ‘Millennials’ live there in large numbers. As if ‘Millennials’ are destroying the Greater Boston area like locusts and must be kept at bay from Newton.

Can you imagine the blowback if a candidate for citywide office said during a debate that Newton shouldn’t become a “mecca for the elderly” or a “mecca for baby boomers”? He would rightly finish in last place and never be heard from again.

But this discrimination is an easy political move because adult Millennials are not a major voting force in Newton right now for the simple reason that almost none of us can afford to live in Newton. No wonder he didn’t “hear a lot” from young people who have been priced out of their home city. They’re not here to be able to tell him what they want. Read more

Black Life in Retrograde

black-to-gray-gradient

The morning the news broke about the massacre in Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal, I was driving. Having been unemployed since early April I’d tried to make my money by ridesharing. I found it difficult and I never was able to make the ends solidly meet, but made more than I would have on unemployment. Like most mornings, I did my best to be awake and alert at five a.m. in order to catch rides to the airport. Like most mornings, I made my own coffee and turned on NPR. These activities always made me feel more in control, more put together, better at adulting. I heard the news shortly before my first ride, and I was numb.

I was so numb, that I drove nearly an hour north from my home while listening to James Blake’s “Retrograde” on repeat. Something about the melancholy music that buzzes with such heavy vibrations hypnotized me. These lyrics sunk into me for an hour:

Is this darkness of the dawn?
And your friends are gone
When you friends won’t come
So show me where you fit
So show me where you fit
I’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong
Ignore everybody else,
We’re alone now
We’re alone now
We’re alone now

 
The song is about finding love, but I clung to the emotion of darkness. I felt like we were truly at war with white supremacy. People are gone and we’re so alone here. If you asked me about that hour, I couldn’t tell you anything. All I remember was feeling cold; totally focused on moving forward with the sky full of blushing peach tones of the rising sun. I felt alert, yet dead, completely hollowed out, filling myself with this song.

I spent the later half of that day and the entire next day inside, crying, on the couch repeatedly asking ‘why’. And: Where are we allowed to be human? Where can we feel safe from slaughter?

I didn’t listen to it again for 11 weeks.

Now it makes me cry. It makes me feel despair. If I can get through a listen without tears I feel strong.

The reaction to the tragic killing of two reporters in Virginia in August truly seared this despair into my being. Read more

Don’t “change politics.” Change government, structurally.

The original Progressive Era, from the 1890s to the 1930s, wasn’t just about specific policies. It was partly about fundamentally altering the form of government. Activists amended the U.S. Constitution five times (including direct election of Senators and women’s suffrage), rewrote state constitutions, and passed countless laws that changed the way our local, state, and federal government systems functioned. The initiative and referendum, for example, was a major structural change at a time of highly unresponsive legislative government in many states.

Nearly every state today (with the exception of a few like Massachusetts) has a formal process to initiate a constitutional convention, but many of these states have not held major conventions since the Progressive Era. It is worth recalling that the conventions held nearly a century ago in many places (including Massachusetts) were integral in giving more people the vote, among other vital changes to the organization and forms of our democracy.

But perhaps as importantly, those constitutional conventions also gave those new voters more powerful ways to use that vote, in ways that could again change their structures of government and laws — but directly. Now, unfortunately, far too many citizens are regularly too discouraged to exercise that power (or aren’t even aware they can), leaving it to a minority of citizens.

In response to this disaffection, too many politicians simply say they want to “change politics.” More candidates should say they want to “change government” — literally. Change how it works. I agree that too many candidates make unrealistic promises to voters. But more candidates don’t even promise to try to shift what’s possible. We need our elected leaders not just to leave us better policies than when they entered office, but also better governments – structurally.

Even many modern progressive activists have narrowed their horizons, particularly after so many years of conservatives successfully dominating ballot initiatives on deeply conservative laws and constitutional provisions, from social issues to extreme limitations on taxation and spending. There are, however, so many huge systemic left-leaning changes we could undertake if we organized for hardheaded, serious constitutional reform in the states. After all, before the conservative revolution rolled them back, many of the Progressive Era state constitutions baked in social and economic guarantees often found in other countries today. The right to a living wage for example. Imagine the rights to housing, education, and environmental public safety we could be guaranteeing today, if we were working on major constitutional overhauls as a mass movement.

As long as we’re pushing “voter registration” as a big solution, we might as well let new people know they can vote for literal systems change. That’s a more exciting pitch for turnout than “register to vote and pin all of your hopes and dreams on one of two flawed humans trying their best!”

The U.S. Constitution also allows us to call for a constitutional convention to propose federal amendments for the states to consider. We’ve never used one. If two thirds of state legislatures petitioned Congress, it would authorize a national convention to submit amendments back to the states. Congress could also authorize both a national drafting convention and state ratifying conventions to accelerate debate and votes on proposals.

It is entirely within the power of an organized people in most states to call for state and national drafting conventions. We must be prepared to help organize not just amendment campaigns but actual constitutional conventions in our states (and possibly federally) if we are to have any hope of achieving a second progressive era with far-reaching social democratic gains and broad social inclusion for all the American people.