politics

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The texture of peace

The Vision of Humanity project has just released its latest report on the “texture of peace.”

Using 24 indicators, such as a nation’s level of military expenditure, its relations with neighbors, and the respect for human rights, the report quantifies the different aspects of peacefulness. It measures peacefulness within, as well as between, nations.

Understanding the texture of peace is more useful than saying simply “at war” or “peace is good.” It helps us see that no country is totally peaceful and that degrees of peacefulness can be quantified for comparison among countries or over time. We can also see how the lack of peace has costs beyond acts of violence per se.

The report identifies some of the drivers of peace, such as levels of democracy and transparency, education, and national well being. Their data show that

[t]he most peaceful societies have higher per capita income, high levels of well-being, more freedom, perform better at sustainability, and appear to have a more equitable distribution of social spending (Institute for Economics & Peace, 2010, p. 4).

The study also examines the economic consequences of peace. One remarkable finding for 2010 is that

…had the world been at peace, world economic output might have reached US$62.4 trillion, an increase of 8.5% and easily exceeding the output losses due to the economic crisis of 2008/9… Even a reduction in levels of violence of just 15% would equal the output loss due to the economic crisis (Ibid, p. 51)

I doubt that many people who turn to violence as a solution for conflicts, or any military contractors who benefit from the lack of peace, will read this report and suddenly decide that they’re misguided. But for the rest of us, this study provides some tools to question the direction we’re going, a way to measure progress, and a way to demonstrate the consequences of violence to the economy and the quality of life.

By the way, last year I celebrated ironically the ascension of the US to #83 on the list. It’s not good for anyone that the most powerful nation on earth is ranked among countries with severe poverty, Balkan states, which are still recovering from major conflict, and former Soviet republics. This year the US has dropped to #85.

References

Institute for Economics & Peace (2010). Peace, wealth and human potential. 2010 discussion paper.

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Libraries for netroots activists?

Netroots is a term that describes political activism organized through blogs, wikis, social network services, and other online media. Jerome Armstrong used it first in Netroots for Howard Dean (2002) on MyDD.

The netroots can be a powerful alternative to traditional media and organizations. Often though, the change that activists promote never happens, can’t be sustained, or can’t scale. Netroots talk doesn’t always lead to action.

It may seem to strange to turn to libraries as a solution. Aren’t libraries all about books and old stuff, not the new participatory culture of the net? Aren’t they determinably neutral, both unwilling and unable to engage with the kinds of change activists seek?

In fact, libraries already play a crucial role to support activism of various kinds. And they’re already deeply entangled both with how we go online and with how we find what’s not available there. They’re not only a supplement to the netroots, but a necessary resource to bring netroots activism to life.

If you go to any public library in the US at opening time, you’ll see a group of people waiting to enter. They’re of all ages, ethnicities, and genders, dressed in formal business attire, sports clothes, or old rags. Some may be waiting to check out a book or video, but most are waiting to go online to read their mail, connect with friends, check the news, hunt for a job or apartment, shop, book travel, or do any of the many other functions that reveal how much the net has infiltrated our lives. For them, the library is the face of the net, and the only, or at least the best, way of connecting with it.

Moreover, libraries can provide substantive data, e.g., on the climate, business trends, local history, political processes, art, and more, which is not always available online; text resources, including books, journals, magazines; videos and software; and repositories or archives of local activities. They also offer meeting spaces, and sustainable local points of contact. These resources can expand enormously the knowledge base for netroots activism, something that can turn strongly held views into evidence-based arguments and uncover duplicity in corporate or government bodies.

Libraries also offer reference services, which is important since the deep web holds several orders of magnitude more information than the surface web, and non-web information is much more than that. Libraries also offer instruction on accessing all of these resources, data, and services.

Beyond finding information, libraries increasingly offer opportunities to create and house community-designed or collected resources. For example, a collaboration between Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood and the Newberry Library in Chicago led to a student-curated Puerto Rican history exhibit at the Newberry: Puerto Rican History through the Eyes of Others.

As a means of finding information and tools, a venue for creating resources, a place to learn, and access in the first place, libraries can help turn netroots talk about activism into real action in the world. Of course, most libraries are devoted to principles of open access for all. As a result, what they offer is available to groups large and small, but also to groups on opposing sides of an issue. This means that despite all the power and innovation of the net, much of the action is still, if not increasingly, found in the library.

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Technologies to improve the quality of life

Gary McDarby was one of many very impressive people I met during my stay in Ireland during 2007-08. If you watch this short video, I think you’ll understand why.

It’s amazing how he manages to introduce several important projects in a short time, including Camara, SMART, and the Computer Clubhouse.

Prepare yourself for some tears.

Gary writes:

as many of you know, on the 7th of August 2009 Stuart Mangan and Robert Stringer passed away. I had been working with Stuart on technologies to help improve his quality of life (he had suffered a severe spinal injury in 2008) and Robert Stringer had been taking a holiday after volunteering with Camara in Tanzania when he was killed. In a strange twist of fate they died on the same day.

I have been giving a series of talks on these events with the sole of intention of trying to create something positive out of what was a very sad and challenging time. First and foremost I want to pay tribute to these two wonderful young men.

Recently I gave an IGNITE talk in the Science Gallery on what happened. It’s a short, 5 minute format which is quite a challenge to do, especially if the subject matter is non trivial.

I wanted to try and create something meaningful in this short format so it could be passed around in the viral ways we are all so used to. Its by no means perfect but please feel free to pass it on. The talk is here:

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Dorothy Height, Unsung Heroine of Civil Rights

Dorothy Height, a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements died on Tuesday at age 98. Her obituary in the New York TImes is a tribute to a courageous and powerful figure in American history, who did enough to fill several ordinary lifetimes:

Dorothy Height, Unsung Heroine of Civil Rights Era, Is Dead at 98 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.

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Outside lies magic, Part 1

Gesa Kirsch recently pointed me to John R. Stilgoe’s, Outside lies magic: Regaining history and awareness in everyday places. It’s a refreshing call for becoming more aware of the ordinary world around us. Stilgoe urges us not only to walk or cycle more, but also to use the advantages of those modes of transport to see the world that we usually ignore.

I finished the book, and am writing now, in the antipode of his call to walk and observe. I’m cramped in an airplane seat near the end of a four and a half hour flight. Stilgoe would say that I should still take the opportunity to observe, to learn, and to make sense of my surrounding, but instead I’m counting down the minutes until we land.

The chapters—Beginnings, Lines, Mall, Strips, Interstate, Enclosures, Main Street, Stops, Endings—lie somewhere between prose poems, history lessons, and sermons about the everyday. They remind me of John McDermott’s summary that John Dewey “believed that ordinary experience is seeded with possibilities for surprises and possibilities for enhancement if we but allow it to bathe over us in its own terms” (1973/1981, p. x).

To appreciate the book, you need to follow Stilgoe as he discovers nature, history, urban planning, ethics, social class, and more through cracks in the pavement, vegetation, telephone poles, roadside motels, angle parking, and other seemingly forgettable objects. The real point is not his own findings, but the demonstration that slowing down to look can open up worlds of understanding.

He shows the value of a camera, despite the lament that “ordinary American landscape strikes almost no one as photogenic” (p. 179). He recognizes the dread of causal photography (‘why are you photographing that vacant lot?’), but ties it to “deepening ignorance” (p. 181). This ignorance makes asking directions dangerous: People question us back, ‘Why do you want to know?’

Stilgoe says, “discovering the bits and pieces of peculiar, idiosyncratic importance in ordinary metropolitan landscape scrapes away the deep veneer of programmed learning” (p. 184). Unprogrammed exercise and discovery leads to a unified whole that reorients the mind and the body together. Someone else may own the real estate, but “the explorer owns the landscape” (p. 187).

Stilgoe’s prescription is simple:

Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention.
So read this book, then go.
Go without purpose.
Go for the going.

See Outside lies magic, Part 2.

References

  • McDermott, John J. (1981). The philosophy of John Dewey: Two volumes in one. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Originally published 1973)
  • Stilgoe, John R. (1998). Outside lies magic: Regaining history and awareness in everyday places. New York: Walker.
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Immigration jails and the pretense of social justice

It’s great to learn that some Haitian earthquake survivors have now been released from jail, but why were they there in the first place, and why did it take so long to release them?

This leads to some larger questions: If there had been a similar disaster in Toronto, can you imagine that the Marines would have rounded up White survivors and stuck them in a jail in New York for two months? Why did it take so long to grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to people from Haiti, following a series of hurricanes and the latest earthquake? Why is that even now TPS is stringently restricted to those in very recent continuous residence (CR) and continuous physical presence (CPP)?

More than three dozen Haitian earthquake survivors were released from Florida immigration jails on Thursday after more than two months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

via Quake Survivors Freed From Immigration Jails – NYTimes.com.

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Coffee Party USA

I met recently with someone who’s played a major role in starting Coffee Party USA. It’s a promising idea, one which provides at least some counter to the vicious, self-serving, and dogmatic rhetoric we hear so often in other arenas. I’ll be interested to see how it develops.

Coffee Party USA includes online forums and Facebook. On Saturday, the First National Coffee Day was launched in 350+ coffee shops in 44 States. The group

…aims to reinvigorate the public sphere, drawing from diverse backgrounds and diverse perspectives, …[believing] that faithful deliberation from multiple vantage points is the best way to achieve the common good…

We are 100% grassroots. No lobbyists here. No pundits. And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement. We are a spontaneous and collective expression of our desire to forge a culture of civic engagement that is solution-oriented, not blame-oriented.

We demand a government that responds to the needs of the majority of its citizens as expressed by our votes and by our voices; NOT corporate interests as expressed by misleading advertisements and campaign contributions.

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Will there at last be a public option for health care?

Finally, the Democrats are stepping up to offer a real alternative to the Republican’s do-nothing approach and their own save-the-insurance-companies approach.

On March 9, Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Fla., introduced a bill (H.R. 4789 — the Public Option Act, or the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act) which would make it possible for any US citizen or permanent resident to buy into Medicare.

Grayson said,

Obviously, America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that. But it’s just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice. A lot of people don’t want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive. We deserve to have a real alternative.”

The bill would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish enrollment periods, coverage guidelines, and premiums for the program. Because premiums would be equal to cost, the program would pay for itself.

“The government spent billions of dollars creating a Medicare network of providers that is only open to one-eighth of the population. That’s like saying, ‘Only people 65 and over can use federal highways.’ It is a waste of a very valuable resource and it is not fair. This idea is simple, it makes sense, and it deserves an up-or-down vote,” Congressman Grayson said.

I signed the petition calling for at least a vote on Grayson’s proposal. If you agree, sign it too and to urge Speaker Pelosi to allow that vote.

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International Violence Against Women Act

The International Violence Against Women Act was re-introduced in Congress on February 4. It’s one step in the effort to end violence against women and girls across the globe, supported by organizations such as Amnesty International USA,  Women Thrive Worldwide, the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and the International Rescue Committee.

This violence is a global human rights, health, and economic problem. It’s a barrier to addressing poverty, HIV/AIDS, and conflict. One out of every three women worldwide has been physically or sexually abused during her lifetime, with rates much higher in some countries. The abuse ranges from rape to domestic violence and acid burnings to dowry deaths and “honor” killings.

A small, but useful action is to urge Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Act.

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Juanita Goggins

[Note: This post was written five months ago, but I must have forgotten to click “publish”. I’d like to have it on the blog, even though her death is now old news, if only to help record a courageous life.]

I was saddened to learn about the lonely death of Juanita Goggins, a great leader and educator. Her life is a reminder of both the possibilities we have and the great challenges we still face around race in America.

Goggins was the daughter of a sharecropper in rural South Carolina, the youngest of 10 children, and the only one to earn a four-year college degree, from what was then all-black South Carolina State College. She taught in South Carolina’s segregated schools, and then went on to a number of major achievements.

In 1972, she became the first black woman to represent the state as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Two years later, she became the first black woman appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the first black woman elected to the South Carolina Legislature. She was responsible for funding sickle-cell anemia testing in county health departments and sponsored key legislation on school funding, kindergarten, and class size.

One indication of the world she had to navigate was the Orangeburg Massacre. In February, 1968, students from Goggins’s alma mater attempted to bowl at Charlotte’s only bowling alley. The owner refused. Tensions rose and two days later violence erupted. The Orangeburg Massacre resulted in injury to 28 students and the death of three.

Sadly, by the early 1980’s, Goggins had developed mental illness and in later life became increasingly reclusive. She froze to death at age 75, living alone in a rented house not far from the Statehouse in Charlotte, where she had served.

See Once-revered lawmaker freezes to death alone (Associated Press, March 10, 2010).