Monthly Archives: January 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worth saving or burn it all down?

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

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

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

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

Rebuilding systems with equity at their core

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more here:

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

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

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

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

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

Read more: The Death of the Death Penalty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See the article here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Jonathan V. Last spelled out on Mondayits complicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Can Democrats Abolish the Filibusterand Should They? - The Bulwark

As the Iowa Legislature again considers ending tenure at Iowas public universities, two UI professors reiterate the benefits of tenure as listed by the American Association of University Professors.

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

But some things dont change. The opening of the Iowa legislative session sees the introduction of a bill by Senator Brad Zaun proposing the abolition of tenure at our states public universities. To date, this years version has advanced from the House education subcommittee to the full committee. Chapters of the American Association of University Professors at all three of Iowas state universities oppose the bill. AAUPs reasons for opposing it remain much as they were four years ago. Here they are as published in February 2017, the top 10 ways tenure benefits students and all Iowans:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the No. 1 reason tenure benefits students and all Iowans: Tenure is indispensable to academic freedom. It allows professors the independence to do the best work they are capable of doing without fear that they will be fired for their opinions or conclusions.

Lois Cox, Clinical Professor of Law Emerita, University of Iowa, Katherine Tachau, Professor of History Emerita, University of Iowa for the AAUP chapters at The University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and The University of Northern Iowa

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Guest Opinion | Top 10 ways tenure benefits students and all Iowans - UI The Daily Iowan

Submitted by DLC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally posted here:

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

By Caroline Mwanga

NEW YORK (IDN) Rejecting the existential threat to humanity that nuclear weapons pose, a wide coalition of faith-based communities from around the world has hailed the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the first international treaty to comprehensively ban nuclear weapons. Over 160 organizations endorsed a joint interfaith statement coordinated by the Faith Communities Concerned About Nuclear Weapons, which include Soka Gakkai International (SGI).

The statement accentuates that the Treaty, which entered into force on January 22, addresses "the disproportionate impact of nuclear weapons on women and indigenous peoples and the importance of victim assistance and healing environmental harms in a ground-breaking way". The endorsees congratulate, celebrate and appreciate the countries that have ratified and signed this important Treaty, as well as all who have worked for nuclear disarmament and abolition for many decades.

The statement emphasizes that the possession, development and threat to use nuclear weapons is immoral and that there are no safe hands for these weapons. Because the accidental or deliberate detonation of a nuclear weapon would cause severe, long-lasting and far-reaching harm on all aspects of our lives and our environment throughout the world.

Further, these technologies are part of structures and systems that bring about great suffering and destruction. The endorsers of the statement therefore "commit to the ethical and strategic necessity of working together for economic and social justice, right relationship with the Earth, and accountability and restoration where there is violence and harm".

(The list of endorsers, being updated regularly, is available here)

They add: "We rejoice at the possibilities of a new world that this Treaty ushers in. At a time when the world desperately needs fresh hope, the TPNW inspires us to continue to work to fully eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons, and to create conditions for peace, justice, and well-being."

The faith communities recognize the legacy of the global hibakusha, survivors whose courage and perseverance serve as inspiration, guidance, and moral foundation in the quest for a world free from nuclear weapons. "This quest will continue until all nuclear weapons are eliminated from our planet."

They also urge all States to join the growing community of States which have rejected nuclear weapons and to sign and ratify the TPNW, or work toward that end by joining the First Meeting of the States Parties planned to take place this year.

In conclusion, the statement looks ahead to the work that must continue: At this historic moment, we must act decisively to strengthen the power of the TPNW upon its entry into force, and to work for peace, cooperation, and common security. [IDN-InDepthNews 23 January 2021]

Photo: The Sun is Laughing by five-year-old Konstantin G., Russia| UNODA Art for Peace 2012 contest.

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

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Faith-Based Communities Greet the Global Ban on Nuclear Weapons - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters

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

Activist Ed Genesis of Kalamazoo was excited to see it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Youth protests at Parliament Square against a new exam rating system which has been introduced in British education system in London, England. (Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto / Getty Images)

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The modern fascist movement relies on Big Tech to reproduceand it knows it.

Before Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even Pinterest banned Donald Trump, the then-president was taking aim at a wonkish target: Section 230, a 1996 provision of the Communications Decency Act that shields tech companies from being sued for the content they host. As he told his base in the lead-up to the fumbled coup attempt on January 6, We have to get rid of Section 230, or youre not going to have a country. Around the same time, Trump vetoed the annual defense spending bill because it didnt repeal 230, and pressured Republican thenSenate majority leader Mitch McConnell to make it a bargaining chip in the stimulus negotiations.

In pursuing their campaign against 230 at the same time that theyre seeking to protect corporations from worker lawsuits related to Covid-19, conservatives have made their agenda painfully clear: Corporate liability is permissible in the tech industry only if it helps them dominate the platforms and capture a sector that has long been the darling of liberals.

It was the so-called Atari Democrats who, deeming tech a source of growth during the economically stagnant 1980s, grew the industry through tax breaks, regulatory loopholes, and the privatization of the formerly public Internet. Today, computational infrastructure has crept into nearly every corner of our lives, enabling media curation, labor control, means testing, resource distribution, and much more. These systems generally employ AIpowerful algorithms that require surveillance and other data to train and inform them. The result is an unprecedented scale and granularity of tracking and control.

This ascent was part of an implicit bargain: Democrats relied on Big Tech for campaign contributions and the partisanship of its elite workforce; in exchange, they gave companies control over the infrastructure on which our civic institutions relied. Then came 2016. The industry that Democrats had spent decades boosting wasnt living up to its unspoken agreement to use its power responsibly. Rebuking tech executives for disseminating misinformation through engagement-driven algorithms, Democrats revisited the terms of their deal. The same Federal law that allowed your companies to grow and thrive, said Democratic Senator and Section 230 author Ron Wyden, gives you absolute legal protection to take action against those who abuse your platforms to damage our democracy. For some, the time had come to break them up.

The US right, meanwhile, was taking a different tack to gain influence over tech infrastructure. Conservatives, joined by some hawkish Democrats and tech titans like Alphabets Eric Schmidt, have been working to align the profit motives of these giant corporations with the interests of the police and US armed forces. At the same time, the global far right is using YouTube and other social media to radicalize people who follow algorithmic recommendations to hate speech and misinformation while countering grassroots efforts to deplatform such dangerous language.

The right in the United States has made a clever calculus. Just the threat of repealing Section 230 restrains tech companies from taking action against online fascists and hate speech. If they were to take incendiary speech off their platforms, not only would fascists troll the firms, but Republicans would push even harder to remove 230 under the banner of anti-conservative bias. And if the right were to go through with its threat and repeal 230, companies would still want to avoid lawsuits from well-funded and well-organized conservatives. In this scenario, tech companies would push their decisions about permissible content into the hands of their top lawyers. Afraid of Republican backlash, they would become de facto editors. In either case, companies would hesitate to expel fascists, especially given the revenue-generating potential of their contentwhich is substantial for engagement-driven platforms, as Harvards Joan Donovan points out.Current Issue

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For now, the far right in the United States has hit a road bump in its attempt to seize tech from the liberals. Not only have thousands of far-right accounts been banned by the most powerful social media platforms, but efforts to move its base to Parler have been contained after the alt social network (underwritten by the powerful Mercer family) was deplatformed by Apple, Google, and Amazon, which has so far successfully invoked Section 230 against Parlers legal claim that it should be reinstated on Amazons web-hosting services. Seeking a stable transfer of power during the violent dusk of the Trump presidency, the owners of US tech platforms have finally heeded the warnings of workers, researchers, and advocates. For years, Black feminist scholars like Sydette Harry and INasah Crockett have documented the way online ad-tech companies like Facebook and YouTube amplify and enable a fascist media ecosystem in which Black women in particular are often hounded off platforms.

That it took this long for Big Tech companies to take fascists seriously enough to remove some of them from social media should serve as a wake-up call: Elites tend to realize the dangers of fascism only when violent flash points hit close to home. It is workers and historically marginalized people who areand always have beenthe anti-fascist front line. If progressives are to ensure that technical systems arent yoked to a far-right agenda, theyll need to stop relying on legislative maneuvering or entreaties to corporations and, together with these frontline actors globally, vie for control over the infrastructure itself.

Reflecting on the dynamics of German National Socialism in 1941, exiled philosopher Herbert Marcuse saw a striking example of the ways in which a highly rationalized and mechanized economy with the utmost efficiency in production can also operate in the interest of totalitarian oppression. Industrial capitalisms tools of efficiency and profit, he argued, can easily serve authoritarian ends.Related Article

The history of IBMs work on the Nazi census presents a chilling lesson. In service of the Nazi regime, IBMs German subsidiary customized its Hollerith punch card systems to allow the government to classify, track, and sort people based on categories like Jewish. Without IBMs proto-computational technology, the Holocausts ghastly efficiency would not have been possible. Indeed, the numbers tattooed on the arms of many Nazi prisoners were their Hollerith codes, which allowed them to be neatly accounted for in the database.

Nazi Germany isnt a historical anomaly in its use of such computational tools to discipline and oppress its population. South Africas apartheid government also relied on systems of technological efficiency to maintain brutal minority rule. In 1970, it contracted IBM to build the Book of Life, a computerized identity registry linked to the countrys hated passbooks. This system provided pretext for stop-and-frisk-style police domination and harassment and for managing an exploitable, racialized labor force. As one bureaucrat put it, The combination of [passbooks] and a central registry would permit total control of the black population, allowing Native Affairs bureaucrats to allocate the black labour force efficiently while permitting police to locate and identify any individual swiftly and positively.

Hollerith machines and the mainframe computers that powered the Book of Life are a far cry from the powerful computational infrastructure of today. But the modern systems are built on those foundations. They are still codifying and reproducing patterns of racialized and gendered inequality, and they are already use in high-stakes domainsapplied by insurance companies and hospitals to decide who gets health care, by landlords to select good tenants, by cops to predict who is a criminal, and by employers to determine whether or not someone will be a productive worker and then whom to surveil, control, and assess once they are hired.

Just as Big Techs command of the means of surveillance and coercion echo authoritarian histories, labors historical fight against mechanized and automated systems points a way forward, toward militant mass movements demanding ownership and agency over the infrastructure of social control.

In 1912, the Massachusetts state legislature passed a law that reduced weekly hours for women and children. But workers in the textile hub of Lawrence suspected a loophole, and their suspicions were confirmed when the mill corporations speeded up the machines and posted notices that, following January 1, the 54-hour work week would be maximum for both men and women operatives, as labor educator and historian Joyce Kornbluh recounts. In other words, while the mill owners honored the weekly-hour limit set by the legislature, they subverted its intent by speeding up the mechanical looms, which increased workloads and reduced workers take-home pay.

Organized through the Industrial Workers of the World, mill workers went on strike with banners that read, We want bread, and roses, tooa demand for more than subsistence. Reflecting on this bold political scope, labor reporter Mary Heaton Vorse commented at the time, It was the spirit of workers that was dangerous.

Those opposing the workers understood this as well. Militias made up of Harvard students attacked strikers; Congress called hearings; and strike leaders were imprisoned under false charges. Ultimately the workers won increased wages and agreed to return to the mills. But they did not gain power over the mechanized infrastructure of worker control, which made them vulnerable to a counteroffensive. In addition to creating a spy network on the shop floor to identify and root out worker organizing, mill owners implemented additional speedups that displaced workers and nullified the wage increase won during their strike.

This is a lesson the US labor movement of the 1920s and 30s took to heart. They shaped their demands for control over production technologies and linked them to questions of human dignity and political autonomy.

In Southeastern Michigan, workers challenged the terms of Henry Fords wage-effort bargain, in which a $5 wage and other material benefits came at the expense of domination on and off the clock. Fords sociology department would even make unannounced home visits to determine if workers were sufficiently clean and sober. Black workers, newly arrived through the Great Migration, were made especially vulnerable through usurious payment plans for homes that Ford built as industrial growth outpaced housing availability.

As the benefits that workers had traded for autonomy dried up with the Great Depressionduring which two-thirds of the sector was laid offDetroits working class began organizing through the Unemployed Councils, a national initiative of the Communist Party. This was particularly important for Black workers, who were usually the last hired, first fired. The Councils shut down several plants and jumpstarted the first wave of strikes in the auto sector. They made economic and political demands that went well beyond the workplace: They wanted the reinstatement of unemployed workers, health insurance for them and their families, a halt to the Ford home foreclosures, an end to discrimination against Black workers, the abolition of Fords internal security agency, and even the release of the Scottsboro Boys, Black teens who had been framed for rape. These organizers understood that that worker power was a force that could achieve political ends toward justice and equity.

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Inside the plants, workers began experimenting with a series of slowdowns that culminated in the famous 19361937 Flint sit-down strike. They forced the auto industry to recognize their union after shutting down several mother plants, which were indispensable to production. But their fight didnt end there. The camaraderie that developed during the plant occupations emboldened them to make demands over the pace of work and the infrastructure of worker control. On an almost daily basis, they challenged managerial authority through shop steward representation, slowdowns, and strikes. The threat these workers posed to capital accumulation prompted employers, the state, and union bureaucrats to work together to undermine their power. The postwar red scareand the wartime no-strike pledges that laid the ground for itsaw union leadership cutting deals with management as they purged leftwing dissidents. As Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) during this period, said, Labor is not fighting for a larger slice of the national pielabor is fighting for a larger pie. What was good for business was, in Reuthers view, good for workers.

This did not turn out to be true. The narrowing of organized labors focus took militant action off the table and reduced the site of worker struggle from politics and power to negotiating contracts around pay and benefitswith few ways to push back when these were violated. Carl Keithly, a Chevrolet factory worker under United Auto Workers at this time, summarized the cost: The company will cut your wages, knock out your seniority and your vacations, and there will be no way to protest outside of quitting your job. There will be nothing left at the plant but wage cuts and speedup.

In the face of increasing automation, this was a serious misstep for labor. As scholar and autoworker James Boggs stated, A new force had now entered the picture, a force which the union had given up its claim to control when in 1948 it yielded to management the sole right to run production as it saw fit. Management began introducing automation at a rapid rate. Boggs, writing in the early 1960s, went on to remark that today the workers are doing in eight hours the actual physical work they used to do in 12.

Automation was just one aspect of US employers reassertion of control. Sociologists Joshua Murray and Michael Schwartz show that after the UAWs conciliatory turn, US automakers decoupled their production process, stockpiling parts in every plant so that workers at one particular plant would be unable to fully disrupt operations again. Moreover, as a global economic crisis took hold in the 1970s, employers invested in systems of technical management and automation in order to recover profitability, further entrenching mechanisms of worker control and immiseration. This strategy didnt return the US to manufacturing leadership. Instead, it helped elevate tech as a sector in its own right.

Today, the app-based precarity (or gig) economy, enabled by large-scale AI systems, has led to an increasingly dire situation, in which workers livelihoods are dictated by opaque algorithms calibrated to extract as much profit from them as possible. This is compounded by US-based gig companies self-serving legislative maneuvering and dissembling marketing, which as legal scholar Veena Dubal argues, has already rolled back US labor protection to create a low-rights category of app-based workers who lack basic protections, like an hourly wage floor or health insurance. But this isnt confined to app-based workers. Across all job categories, workers are being hired, surveilled, controlled, and assessed by opaque algorithmic systems tuned to maximize employers objectives. A startup called Argyle is even selling a service that claims to create a kind of worker credit score by aggregating workers employment records across jobs along with other data. The company sells this to businesses for use in hiring, as well as to insurers and lenders.Related Article

Its not surprising then that weve seen a surge of labor action, particularly among workers most subject to these systems. Amazon warehouse workers, whose labor is controlled by a punishing algorithmic productivity rate, have organized across Europe and the United States, carrying signs reading, We are not robots. Striking Instacart workers have also opposed the companys black box app, which sets workers pay via an unintelligible model that mathwashes their exploitation. In a similar vein, the All India Gig Workers Union recently demanded that app-based delivery company Swiggy stop algorithmic manipulation of ratings and incentives payout.

Those suffering under Big Tech know the source of their pain and are not fooled by marketing about flexibility and entrepreneurship. These workers have broadened the terrain of labor struggle to include the technical infrastructure that dictates their livelihoods, something that heralds a return to the militancy of the 1920s and 30s.

People outside of the workplace but whose tastes and opportunities are increasingly directed by algorithms have also registered dissent. These efforts often combine strategic litigation, protest, and legislative campaigns. Protesters have pushed forand in some cases wonbans and moratoria on the use of facial recognition in the United States. Students in the UK rallied under the slogan fuck the algorithm and successfully sued the British government for using racist software that determined student rankings during Covid-19. And in Canada, after years of struggle, the Block Sidewalk campaign forced Google to abandon its plan to develop a smart surveillant city on the Toronto waterfront.

The growing worker uprisings and community-based opposition movements present an organic coalition that progressives would do well to acknowledge and support, especially when their demands involve issues of control and ownership of technical systems. Amazon warehouse workers in Poland, who are fighting not only for a reduction in the grueling pace of work but for access to the data and algorithms that set it, are making a claim to the conditions of their labor and to the systems that mediate it. Similarly, organized white-collar tech workers are fighting for the right to refuse unethical work and the ability to shape their companies decisions on issues like climate change or whether or not they should partner with the US military. Importantly, many of these efforts go beyond the scope of the workplace or workers immediate material conditions. Aims shared by tech workers and community organizers in the United States have animated the movement, putting those directly affected by technologies of social control, like people experiencing surveillance and tracking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in coalition with workers refusing to create such technologies.

Were not likely to get much help from the mainstream of the Democratic Party in claiming a tech infrastructure for the people. Failing to situate congressional reform efforts within a broader strategy for building power, establishment liberals have a record of losing even their piecemeal initiatives to the right.

In addition to leading the charge against Section 230, Republican members of Congress Jim Jordan, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley spent much of 2020 working to appropriate and warp progressives antitrust agenda to combat techs alleged anti-conservative bias. In reality, the far right has been using algorithmic targeting and social media to create a powerful propaganda arm that bypasses more responsible media. Indeed, the role that social media played in helping coordinate the recent coup attempt on the Capitol speaks to the centrality of these platforms to the fascist agenda and to Big Techs historical permissiveness and perverse business incentives. And its not just in the US; Facebook was used to fan a genocide of the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar and similar dynamics are visible now in Ethiopia.

The US far right has fashioned a compelling if fatuous narrative for its growing base: The Big Tech oligarchs, as Cotton calls them, are liberal gatekeepers driving conservatives out of business and curbing their freedom of speech. The recent enforcement of terms of service for a handful of English-speaking accounts will further fuel this narrative, even if this move follows years of inaction on similar accounts around the globe, as scholar Jillian York points out.

Establishment Democrats remain unable to counter this narrative. Hamstrung by their allegiance to large corporate donors and reticent to reclaim the interests of their once more working-class base, they are easily neutralized in their legislative efforts to reform tech. And Bidens willingness to consider Big Tech insiders to key cabinet positions does not signal a change.

Facing the consequences of punitive technologies of social control, workers and social movements are beginning to reject meek unionism and the conciliatory reforms of the Democratic Party. In the process, they are building a progressive flank in the battle for control of algorithms, data, and the computational systems. These coalitions are also claiming ownership of the imaginative horizon, including the right to dismantle, reject, and rebuild technical infrastructures. And theyre recognizing themselves as political actors, pushing institutions to meet social obligations. This is something typified by progressive teachers unions, who have not only fought the use of tracking and ed-tech surveillance but are also bargaining for the common good.

Tech workers, too, are forming unions and coalitions that unite those building technologies of social controlor, refusing to build themwith the communities harmed by them. Adrienne Williams, an Amazon delivery driver and organizer, expressed this when she called on drivers and engineers to design the algorithmically generated driving routes together. As she told Vice, Our routes [in the San Francisco Bay Area] are designed by employees in Seattle. Theyre so dangerous and inefficient. You could fix this immediately if the drivers just had someone to talk to. Here we see the progressive wing fight to determine who gets to shape, or be shaped by, tech. It is one of our best hopes for combatting a fascist takeover of computational systems of control.Related Article

While Section 230 certainly needs improvement, reform alone will neither reduce concentrated platform power nor address the capitalist incentives that propelled Big Tech companies to provide propaganda tools for fascists around the world. Meanwhile, it is also clear that the fight against a brute repeal of Section 230, which would be disastrous for sex workers and other marginalized populations, will only be won as part of a broader and more militant fight. It will require the kind of nuanced understanding of techs unevenly distributed harms and consequences that does not come from the executive offices of tech companies or the halls of Congress.

The progressive tech agenda must be international, and will emerge through supporting and drawing connections between sex workers whove opposed the harmful effects of SESTA/FOSTA, the 2018 amendment to Section 230 that made online platforms liable for content promoting sex work; elite tech workers, like those at Kickstarter whove contested their employers capitulation to fascist trolls; low-paid tech workers objecting to algorithmic exploitation; frontline workers who, in the model of Los Angeles safety councils, are demanding access to data about their lives and health; Amazon workers whove formed international organizations; Coupang e-commerce workers in South Korea who sent messages of solidarity to e-commerce workers elsewhere; tenants whove fought landlords use of assessment and surveillance technologies; and other communities and organizers resisting carceral infrastructure of control and domination. These, among others, are the protagonists shaping a more socially just tech infrastructure, and it is their struggle that regulation efforts should work to bolster.

The neoliberal bargain is fraying, and if we dont vie for control over the algorithms, data, and infrastructure that are shaping our lives, we face a grim future. It is time to rally behind a militant strategy that recognizes the danger of leaving US tech capitalists at the helm of systems of social control while far-right authoritarians jockey for access. A new and historic bloc is possible. Militant workers, engaged social movements, progressive politicians, radical lawyers, and critical researchers will find that achieving their demands for control willindeed, mustradically change the tech ecosystem. Contesting for power against those who have it is never easy, but the path forward is clear: Fuck the algorithms, dismantle the tech monopolies, and build infrastructures of care and justice where these systems of social control once stood.

Originally posted here:

These Machines Wont Kill Fascism: Toward a Militant Progressive Vision for Tech - The Nation