Thanking the Miami Dolphins and Mercury Morris for Carl Hart

If you need proof that kids growing up in poverty are wasted potential, there's no better illustration than Dr. Carl Hart. His early life in a poor black neighborhood in Miami made it very likely he would become nothing. But a few flukes sent him out of the 'hood, and the particular timing of his youth squeezed him between Vietnam, crack cocaine, and the first Iraq War.

Before I read his book High Price, I knew Hart had come up poor, but I assumed he was one of the "good" kids whose mothers somehow kept them out of the street, that he had watched "the life" from the sidelines. But that's wrong. Hart was in it just the same as his brothers, male cousins, and friends, and he has the gold teeth to prove it.

The only difference was that he wanted to play sports (first football and then basketball), which kept his smoking and drug use to a social minimum, and he stayed in school with a C average in hope of getting a scholarship. He had an occasional teacher who recognized that he wasn't bad at math. And when he was a senior, with no college basketball scouts in sight, he (almost accidentally) took the U.S. military entrance exam.

Born in 1967, he finished high school in 1985, the year before crack hit it big on the east coast. He spent four years as a supply clerk in the Air Force but got out just a year before the build-up to Desert Storm.

He was finally sent on the way toward his academic career at 18 by the military's discipline and closest-thing-we-have to racial equity, combined with black consciousness-raising from a fellow soldier and the music of Bob Marley and Gil Scott-Heron. Soon Hart was taking college classes during his service years, at first thinking of a business degree, but later changing to psychology. From there on, he found mentors and his way to testing the effects of drugs, starting with rats and later with humans.

Clearly, though, Hart succeeded in spite of what was offered to him by life, not because of it. Though he had an intact family until he was six, his father was alcoholic and abusive. There was a very successful sports franchise in town that his dad loved, and Carl therefore loved the Miami Dolphins, too. The team happened to have its first successful black player around the same time, Mercury Morris, and that provided just enough motivation to the boy.

Hart touches on the ACES matrix (Adverse Childhood Experience Scores), acknowledging that he would have a high score. But he wonders if living in an abusive family, for instance, is the thing that causes life problems later on, or if instead the abuse was caused by the same underlying stimulus -- the stress of racism and poverty -- and that's what causes the outcomes. Maybe protective factors, like a tight-knit extended family, make a difference.

Either way, the outcome that is Hart's life was no foregone conclusion: There was a lot that worked against his chances. He almost got caught stealing some car batteries at 16, which would have resulted in time in the system, but he got lucky in the escape because he could run fast. His sister was shot as an innocent bystander, and if the shooter hadn't been in custody, Hart may have gone after him in revenge. He was in a car when one occupant threatened an innocent passerby with a rifle while the rest of the guys laughed. He smoked pot, drank, had sex, and even fathered a child (which he didn't know about until he was in his late 30s).

Hart makes the case that incarceration of young people for any reason less than pretty extreme violence is not worth it because of the downward spiral it causes, and there's research to bear this out. In the research, two sets of kids who've done crimes are assigned to either jail or alternative sentencing. Even if the kids in the alternative plan had committed a worse crime to start with, they're three times as likely to come out as productive members of society than the kids who serve time (page 133). Prison is a factory for making criminals, not to mention the fact that once you have a record you can't get a legitimate job, live in public housing, get financial aid for college, and are subject to many other punishments that last forever.

They're kids and their brains aren't developed. The case with Hart and his friends in a car with a rifle, threatening a pedestrian, made that clear. In the text of the book, he tries to remember what he was thinking and it's clear there just was no empathy for how it made the victim feel. They knew the guy was scared, but they didn't care if what they were doing was wrong. They were building off each other, having a laugh at his expense. They weren't planning to shoot him, just scare him. But would any person with a normal brain, post-adolescence, do that?

Another thing I learned from the book is that, at least in Miami's black culture, it's considered unmanly for men to masturbate, and that accounts for a lot of the baby daddy thing. You have sex starting as a teenager not only because it feels good: It's to prove you're a man, and there's a lot going on that otherwise undermines your masculinity. You commit petty and not-so-petty crimes with the group for the same reason. It's all about representing yourself as a man and being loyal to the group:

...it boggled my mind that someone would every say no to his boys; for me, cool and its requirement of loyalty to our group always came first. It was the foundation of my values, one of the few things that really meant something to me and structured my social life. Putting those ties at risk, to me, seemed much more dangerous and threatening than anything the system could do to you if you ever got caught. If you stayed cool, you could handle that. If not, you weren't a man and there was nothing much to live for anyway (page 131).

My only fear of Hart's narrative is that it will be used by the Right to point out what they see as an inherent pathology in poor black communities. Look, they might say, every young man was involved in robbery, violence, casual sex and baby daddying, and drugs -- even a smart guy like Carl Hart. They were fatherless and that caused the problem. Oooo, single mothers. Those boys need the military to straighten them out.

Not seeing that these young men were fatherless because of the stress of discrimination and lack of opportunity, and more recently fatherless because of the drug war and incarceration. Hart's male relatives have almost all served time, even the ones who managed to become functioning members of the community.

Having economic opportunities for the adults in kids' lives -- instead of a 20 percent unemployment rate and discrimination that confined them to the lowest-wage jobs even when they could find one -- is a better solution than sentencing them all to boot camp so they can be IED fodder in the war on terrorism.

Related posts:
Quotes from Carl Hart's High Price

Why Not Try Life in a Rat Park?

Why Not Try Life in a Rat Park?

On the heels of news that being poor causes bad decisions, rather than that bad decisions make you poor, comes the revelation that drug addiction isn't what we've long thought it is either.

First, check out this video discussion with neuroscientist Carl Hart. Or you can read about Hart's work here. You know how we all think crack and meth are instantly addicting for just about anyone who tries them? That's completely wrong.

"Eighty to 90 percent of people who use crack and methamphetamine don’t get addicted,” said Dr. Hart, an associate professor of psychology. “And the small number who do become addicted are nothing like the popular caricatures.” 

Hart's experiments focus on offering deferred rewards to addicts:

Dr. Hart brought meth addicts into his laboratory for similar experiments — and the results showed similarly rational decisions. He also found that when he raised the alternative reward to $20, every single addict, of meth and crack alike, chose the cash. They knew they wouldn’t receive it until the experiment ended weeks later, but they were still willing to pass up an immediate high.

Which came first, Hart asks -- the drug use or the lack of opportunities, which left no vision of a future? In that circumstance, why not take drugs that make life fun for a while? As the Times story put it, Hart's own "cousins became destitute crack addicts living in a shed, but they’d dropped out of school and had been unemployed long before crack came along."

According to Hart, “the key factor is the environment, whether you’re talking about humans or rats. The rats that keep pressing the lever for cocaine are the ones who are stressed out because they’ve been raised in solitary conditions and have no other options. But when you enrich their environment, and give them access to sweets and let them play with other rats, they stop pressing the lever.”

Which calls to mind the experiments of Bruce Alexander. Alexander hypothesized that lab rats weren't naturally drug-seeking, as had been shown in other experiments -- it was the nature of their miserable, isolated existences in tiny cages that made them self-anesthetize. So he built a perfect rat paradise to see whether they still went for the drugs. His park was

spacious, with plenty of intellectual stimulus and other rats to play with. He moved heroin-addicted rats into the park and found that the compulsive behavior abated to the point of disappearance -- in other words, whatever "rewiring" had taken place could be unwired by the improvement of their living conditions.

Alexander's key conclusions would have startling effects if translated into public policy related to drug abuse and poverty itself:

Addiction is more a social problem than an individual problem. When socially integrated societies are fragmented by internal or external forces, addiction of all sorts increases dramatically, becoming almost universal in extremely fragmented societies.

Addiction arises in fragmented societies because people use it as a way of adapting to extreme social dislocation. As a form of adaptation, addiction is neither a disease that can be cured nor a moral error that can be corrected by punishment and education.

Yet another reason to decriminalize all drugs and deal with the true addicts through treatment, paid for with the savings from not arresting and jailing so much of the population. And to increase the minimum wage or have guaranteed minimum incomes. What could it hurt to try these options? The current state of poverty and hopelessness hasn't worked so far.

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If you prefer your social science reading in comics instead of text, check out Rat Pack by Stuart McMillen, who explains Alexander's work in visual form with lots of details on the how the experiment was conducted.

Quotes from Carl Hart's High Price

There's so much good stuff in Carl Hart's book High Price, as I've already said, but I wanted to include just a handful of other quotes, ranging from his thoughts about growing up to how to treat drug addiction.

You may have already heard about the research that finds children of poor parents hear far fewer words by age 5 than do children of professionals (only 616 total words vs. 2,153). But Hart points out some additional findings from that work:

…families headed by professionals -- whether black or white -- spent more time encouraging their children, explaining the world to them, and listening to and responding specifically to their questions. For every discouraging word or "No!" there were about five words of praise or encouragement. Verbal interactions were mainly pleasant, enjoyable, or neutral. In the working class homes, there were also more "attaboys" than prohibitions, though the ratio was smaller. But in the families on welfare, children heard two "noes" or "don'ts" for every positive expression. Their verbal experience overall was much more punitive. (pages 30-31)

Generally, the two divergent parenting styles are called "concerted cultivation" (professional class) and "the accomplishment of natural growth" (working class and poor).

The middle-class way was not, as some might expect, superior all around. The working-class children were often happier and better behaved. They were much closer to their extended families and were full of energy. They mostly did as they were told. They knew how to entertain themselves and were rarely bored. They were more adept at relationships.

The middle-class youth, however, were much more prepared for school and far better situated to deal with adult authorities. (page 36)

On why education wasn't valued in his family or community:

Because their opportunities had been limited, because the people they knew who were educated hadn't actually been allowed to move up in management or become anything better paid than a high school teacher or licensed practical nurse, [the adults in his life] saw a focus on academic achievement as a distraction, one that would more likely lead to disappointment and bitterness than it would to real success. They'd never seen academic success genuinely rewarded. (pages 54-55)

On his experiences with teachers and the schools, starting in first grade. This was in the earliest years of Florida's desegregation by busing, and Hart was one of four or five black kids in his first grade class in a white, working class school:

Although we started our day with Miss Rose…, for much of the time, all the black boys in my class would be sent to the "portable." This was a small, supposedly temporary outbuilding at the back of the main school. Inside, it looked like a playroom with blocks, trains, and other toys. But most of our time there was spent in small groups, being drilled with flash cards on basic skills like letters and numbers. We were sent there because we had "learning difficulties."

Soon, though, I was bored out of my mind. Despite the fact that my parents never read to me as a child, I did know my ABCs and 123s. My older sisters had taught me about letters and numbers [plus he had been to preschool and watched lots of Sesame Street]. But the school assumed that because I was black, I must be behind. So, off to the trailer I went. (page 56)

In high school,

Rather than challenging me to learn, they gave up, figuring that it didn't matter because I was just one more nameless black kid who would never go to college anyway. And of course, given an easier option and no reason to challenge themselves, almost any teenager -- and most adults, too -- will take it.

His high school schedule consisted of two or three hours of basketball practice, three hours of vo-tech classes from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m., followed by a job in the afternoon, for which he got school credit. "One-third of the time I spent in supposedly educational programming consisted of classes like parking patrol." (page 107)

He points out that all three of our most recent presidents used marijuana and two used cocaine:

Their drug use was inconsequential -- in large part because they all avoided legal consequences from it. If Barack Obama had come up in a time when the drug war was being waged as intensely as it is now, we probably would never have heard of him. A single arrest could have precluded student loans, resulted in jail time, and completely ruined his life, posing a far greater threat to him than the drugs themselves did… (page 122)

Even after his first years in the Air Force,

I was so lacking in the mainstream form of what academics call "cultural capital"--the kind accumulated in the United States by growing up in the white middle or upper class -- that I made some mistakes that I now cringe to think about. Cultural capital is the knowledge of the way a culture…really operates. It's knowing the things that "everyone knows" in that class or place and the things that everyone automatically assumes that other people know. (page 178)

He points out that this lack of cultural capital is what leads poor young people to fall for shady for-profit colleges. Hart, for instance, almost enrolled in an expensive correspondence course, and later almost signed up for a women's studies course because he thought it would teach him how to get women to do what he wanted (!).

Ignorance feels shameful; attempts to hide it can prevent learning and perpetuate the problem. When you publicly illustrate that you don't know what "everyone" knows, it can be intensely embarrassing. Many of the difficulties faced by people who try to move from the hood into the mainstream involve the lack of these types of knowledge, which marks them as outsiders and can lead to repeated humiliating experiences. (page 179)

He refers to Gil Scott-Heron's song "Home Is Where the Hatred Is," which is about a man who uses drugs to relieve his pain and alienation (page 181). A line from the song that has always stuck with me is:

You keep saying kick it, quit it,
Kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it.
God, but did you ever try?

In the live version of the song from the album "It's Your World," the refrain becomes:

Why don't you stop using drugs?

That's easy for you to say.
That's easy for you to say.
That's easy for you to say.
That's easy, easy, easy.

Hart looks back on his upbringing within

the southern culture of honor that doesn't allow even the slightest dis, like a stepped-on shoe or dirty look, to go unchallenged… The motives of young men who engage in these types of potentially fatal interactions over slights to honor are frequently portrayed as irrational overreactions. But these types of altercations that seem to have such petty origins are by far the leading motivation for deadly violence -- contributing to significantly more crimes than the pharmacological effects of drugs. In their influential study of homicides in Detroit, Martin Daly and Margo Wilson concluded that the young men involved, far from being irrational, "may be acting as shrewd calculators of the probable costs and benefits of alternative courses of action." (page 183)

…such crimes take place overwhelmingly among young men who have little to lose, with few resources and limited future prospects. This type of behavior had characterized male youth in my neighborhood long before crack cocaine was even invented. (page 184)

Once crack came in, the change meant upheaval in established drug sales territories and power groupings. It wasn't the nature of the drug itself, but rather the addition of a new drug that caused the violence. And for people with no opportunities, selling drugs seems like a good option.

While the risks of selling crack may not, on the surface, seem worth the low salary ultimately earned, to many young men it seemed the best of a bad lot. At fast-food chains or in similar low-level jobs, these youth would have to wear dorky uniforms and submit themselves to often demeaning treatment from (typically) white bosses and customers, with rigid hours and little apparent chance for advancement. Selling crack, however, offered a choice of hours, the opportunity to work with friends, and visible routes to success… The potential glory made the risk of prison and death seem worth taking. (pages 187-188)

On the differential treatment of crack vs. powdered cocaine (disparate sentence lengths were 100:1 for a long time and are still 18:1) and stepped-up enforcement in black communities:

…in Los Angeles, for example -- a city of nearly 4 million people -- at the peak of the crack epidemic, not a single white person was arrested on federal crack cocaine charges, even though whites in the cities used and sold crack. (page 191)

After reading historical documents that demonstrated the racism that underlies the demonization of drugs like cocaine, Hart began to realize there was more going on.

…I'd always assumed that the legal status of a particular drug was determined primarily by its pharmacology. However, I found that there was actually no sound, pharmacologically rational reason behind why alcohol and tobacco were legal, and cocaine and marijuana were not. It was mainly about history and social reasons, about choosing the drug dangers that would be highlighted to spur public concern and those that would be ignored…. Bans on drugs were inevitably preceded by hysterical coverage filled with scare stories about drug use by despised minorities, often immigrants and the poor. (page 242)

And I learned that withdrawal from opioids is not as bad as I have been taught:

The symptoms usually begin about twelve to sixteen hours after the last heroin dose and look something like a case of the 24-hour, or intestinal, flu. Most of us have experienced these symptoms at some point in our lives: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, aches, pains, and a general sense of misery. While this condition is most unpleasant, rarely is it life-threatening or accurately depicted in films that suggest the sufferer is on the verge of death. (page 264)

Why didn't crack (or meth, for that matter) ravage the suburbs or afflict large percentages of middle or upper class youth?

Money has a way of insulating people from consequences. In addition, it carries with it more reasons for abstaining -- there are things a high-socioeconomic-status person has to do that are incompatible with being intoxicated. Becoming an addict is tantamount to disavowing one's social niche. (page 271)

There is now a whole body of literature showing that providing alternative reinforcers [to crack users] improves addiction treatment outcomes. It is far more effective than using punitive measures like incarceration… (page 272)

And what about treatment with those alternative reinforcers, which is the focus of Hart's research?

Fifty-eight percent of participants in the contingency management group [with alternative reinforcement] completed the 24-week outpatient treatment -- compared to just 11 percent in the 12-step group. In terms of abstinence, 68 percent achieved at least eight weeks cocaine-free, versus just 11 percent in the 12-step condition. (page 274)

In Portugal, where drugs have been decriminalized for the past decade, a panel reviews the cases of users thought to have a health problem. If treatment is recommended but doesn't stick, repeat offenders can get noncriminal punishments like having their driver's license revoked or being prohibited from areas where drug sales are known to happen.

As a result, "The number of drug-induced deaths has dropped, as have overall rates of drug use, especially among young people (15-24 years old)" (page 325). And Portugal has greatly decreased spending on prosecution and imprisonment, of course.

Overdose Deaths Outdistance Cars and Guns

Because I live in a somewhat populous urban area with all of the usual problems humans are heir to, I haven't fully realized the out-sized effect the opioid crisis has had in less-populated areas of the United States. But the other day I heard this fact from Vox, and it made me take notice:

In one year, drug overdoses killed more Americans than the Vietnam War did.

That's based on 2016 data, and the number is 65,000 human beings.

For reference, two of the usual horrible statistics I follow are the number of people killed by cars and the number killed by guns. Both of those have usually been between 30,000 and 40,000 people a year these days.


Gun and vehicle death graph data through 2014, from the Violence Policy Center.
 
During the past decade, overdose deaths have swept past those other two major killers, reaching a number almost equal to the two combined.

Vox puts those numbers into more historical context:

In comparison, more than 58,000 US soldiers died in the entire Vietnam War, nearly 55,000 Americans died of car crashes at the peak of such deaths in 1972, more than 43,000 died due to HIV/AIDS during that epidemic's peak in 1995, and nearly 40,000 died of guns during the peak of those deaths in 1993.

Currently, opioid drugs are killing more people per year than our worst non-disease killers (and HIV) at their worst moments in history. Vox reports that the most recent numbers, which are not yet fully released, show "...there was a 19 percent increase between 2015 and 2016 alone, which would be the largest known increase in drug overdose deaths for any single year yet. Although it’s hard to say for certain, ‘the problem has continued to worsen in 2017.’”



What happens when we take those gun and vehicle death stats from the Violence Policy Center and lay them onto the Vox overdose graph? (With some gun and vehicle data added for 2015 and 2016 that I gathered from a couple of other sources):



Red = overdoses; blue = vehicles; purple = guns. 

From this we see vehicle-related deaths dropped off a lot after the 2008 economic crisis, when the number of miles driven per year also dropped; and that they are on their way to recovering to pre-recession levels. Gun deaths are very slowly creeping up, mostly from suicides, which account for about two-thirds of the total. Both of these totals, however, are significantly lower than their death tolls at their peaks (1972 for vehicles, 1993 for guns, though both of those were taken from a significantly lower population).

With all that said, the divergence of the overdose line from the other two lines is startling, and as I said, it's getting close to the combined total of the other two. Maybe it will match their total in 2017 unless vehicle drivers have a really bang-up year.
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A couple of reminders:

• solving the drug crisis isn't about punitiveness, and not even totally about treatment as it's normally construed; it's about the social conditions that make drugs a logical choice for people. 
• opioid overdoses are usually caused by combining the opioid with alcohol, rather than from the opioid itself. This fact is almost never mentioned and if users knew it, maybe fewer of them would die.

Past posts related to drug addiction:

• Chasing the Scream about the book of that title by Johan Hari
• Heroin madness in the Star Tribune
• Thanking Mercury Morris and the Miami Dolphins for Carl Hart
• Quotes from Carl Hart's High Price
• Our rat park is not a suburb

Heroin Madness in the Star Tribune

One of the many things I learned from Carl Hart is that repeated drug panics, like Reefer Madness, are always exaggerated. So now I automatically suspect anything I see that seems to be trying to scare me.

Such as today's Star Tribune front page:


Oh, scary men of color are poisoning our precious white young people in the heartland!

This graphic from an inside page carries on the scare tactics:


Pipeline of death! And catch how this graphic looks like a traditional medical illustration of a heart, using red and blue, with arrows similar to those used to indicate blood flow in the veins and arteries.

When I first saw this map, juxtaposed with the word "pipeline," I thought the story would be about the Keystone XL pipeline -- something that actually could poison the heartland -- but no, it's just the continuation of the drug story.

Aside from Carl Hart's point that most heroin overdoses result not from the heroin but the combination of heroin and another depressant, such as alcohol, it's important to remember that classifying drugs as illegal makes them more dangerous.

According to Neill Franklin, a longtime Baltimore undercover narc and now head of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP):

...alcohol is far more dangerous than all the other drugs we have out there. Alcohol eats you from the inside out. Heroin doesn’t do that. Cocaine doesn’t do that that. People think it does, but it doesn’t. It’s the cutting agents that are used that cause you the health issues. If you get pure heroin—no adulterants, baby laxatives, and things like that—you’ll live just as long as anybody else. 

And this:

Q: So there’s actually an increase in violence after every drug bust? A: Yes, that’s exactly right. There’s also an increase in overdoses. People overdose because their dealer got arrested and they have to go to a new dealer. With their old dealer, he always mixes it the same way, so they know what the potency is. Suddenly, though, they’re buying from this new guy and have no idea how potent it is. Too much and they’re dead.

Even the Star Tribune story admits the big upswing in heroin use was caused by a crackdown on a safer drug:

The new heroin boom has its roots in a successful anti-drug campaign that, starting seven or eight years ago, began to restrict the availability of popular prescription opiates such as oxycodone. The Sinaloa cartel...saw an opportunity and filled the gap. Mexico’s heroin production has doubled since 2005, according to the U.S. Justice Department, and Mexico now ranks No. 2 in the world behind Afghanistan in poppy production.

And, finally, remember this from Neill Franklin:

Q: As a cop, did you have more trouble with people on drugs or people on alcohol? A: It was always alcohol. Alcohol and violence go hand-in-hand. As a cop on the street, in my entire career, I never had an altercation with someone on weed alone. Domestic violence calls, it’s always alcohol. Weed, man, they’re the most docile folks. 

Reefer Madness: Visual Proof of Its Racist Underpinnings

The early 20th century moral panic about drugs, which led to making them illegal, had unintended consequences (as discussed by Johann Hari and described in this earlier post about his book). As Hari and other writers, including Dr. Carl Hart, have said, there was a clear racialized component to the moral panic incited by media and thought leaders of the day. Hart particularly talks about a 1914 New York Times article that described Negro cocaine fiends who were immune to pain yet somehow had improved marksmanship.

The movie Reefer Madness, which opened in 1936, was part of turning opinion against marijuana. I've never seen the film, so I don't know if the film itself makes a racialized argument against drugs. But check out this poster, which was recently reprinted from wood carvings made at the time to promote the movie:


While it wasn't uncommon to portray or describe Satan as black in other settings (such as the Salem witch trials), this visual representation is an overt rendering of the essential white male Southern fear: a big black man carrying off a pure white woman for his own uses. Not to mention the handy verbal reminders of SIN and DEGRADATION. The pointy ears are pretty much an afterthought.

When it was just white people that were using cocaine (at their dentists or in their Coca Cola) or marijuana or opioids in the early 20th century, no one thought much about it. But once black or Latino users were mentioned, "something had to be done about it" and we veered onto the path toward the drug war and our current situation.

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The Reefer Madness poster was recently printed at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, using plates they just acquired from a long-defunct Cincinnati printer.

Chasing the Scream

Journalist Johan Hari knows all the arguments against decriminalizing or legalizing drugs. He even agreed with a lot of them. In his book Chasing the Scream, he thoroughly examines them and comes out on the side of Carl Hart, Bruce Alexander, Portugal, and Uruguay: prohibition doesn't work, addiction is not what we have been told it is, and there is a better way.

So many things to learn! For instance:

• physical dependency is the least of the problem with drugs like heroin
• the U.S. drug war's roots in the early 20th century go back not just to racism (Negro cocaine fiends, Mexican reefer madness, Chinese opium dens) but class hatred and fear of contamination and communism
• the drug war was furthered by criminal elements that wanted drugs to be illegal so they could profit in the underworld economy
• a famous (infamous) member of Congress was a heroin addict... who ended up getting his drugs supplied by the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics
• when drugs (or alcohol) are made illegal, the strength of the substances goes up because sellers need more bang for the buck to compensate for the risks. The most popular alcoholic drink was beer before Prohibition, but soon it was whiskey; the legal, low doses of cocaine and opium that were in drinks and nostrums through the 1910s were replaced by heroin and other high-dose drugs after the Narcotics Act of 1914

The obvious solution, it appears to me, is to completely decriminalize drugs and provide prescriptions to addicts (within a universal health care system), in order to undercut the illegal suppliers -- whose businesses are based in violence -- and prevent for-profit corporations from muscling in to promote drugs the way they promote beer. This is being done in Switzerland with great success, and has been tried out in parts of the U.K. as well.

Remember what happened right after the U.S. ended alcohol prohibition? All those Capone-style gang wars went away, and the next wave of real gang problems rose up as the U.S. escalated under the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

Professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University has shown that the murder rate has dramatically increased twice in U.S. history -- and both times were during periods when prohibition was dramatically stepped up. The first is from 1920 to 1933... [the] second is from 1970 to 1990, when the prohibition on drugs dramatically escalated... By the mid-1980s, the... right-wing icon Milton Friedman calculated that it caused an additional ten thousand murders a year in the United States. That's the equivalent of more than three 9/11s every single year (page 81).

As police have found, you can't arrest your way out of drug trafficking. Not only does the crime not decrease, "Whenever [the police] force arrested gang members, it appeared to actually cause an increase in violence, especially homicides" (page 91).

Contrast that with the European and American examples where addicts have been provided the drugs they crave through clean clinics. They stop stealing to pay for their habits. They stop dying from disease and overdose, often get jobs and return to their families, and, most amazingly, even gradually stop using as they are no longer treated like pariahs.

One of Hari's key points is that humans generally take pleasure in intoxication, but the roughly 10 percent of people who become habituated to drugs are filling a hole in their lives, often from abuse of one kind or another. His description of Billie Holiday's childhood is a good example. Treating addicts like lepers is the opposite of what we need to do to end their use of drugs, he argues. To top it off, many addicts find some form of community and identity with other drug users, making it even harder to stop.

Chasing the Scream is full of evidence about what does and doesn't work when it comes to drugs. Hari spent time in northern Mexico with people whose families have been destroyed by the cartels, with former dealers and enforcers and cops who've come to believe the drug war must end.
The book is quite an achievement, journalistically. Hari has placed the original recordings from years of interviews online to back up his conclusions.

A lot of it is painful to read, but the hardest chapter of all was the one about Sheriff Joe Arpaio's methods in Arizona. I knew a bit about this; I'd heard he makes inmates wear cartoonish black-and-white striped jumpsuits, eat only baloney sandwiches, and live in tents. Dehumanizing, yes, but I hadn't realized the depths of Apaio's inhumanity and its negative consequences.

Hari spent time with a group of women prisoners serving drug sentences, who work daily in 110° heat on a chain gang. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke go unacknowledged and untreated. They then return to their living quarters, which Arpaio has referred to as his "concentration camp." These are the tents I'd heard about, unheated in winter and uncooled in summer, donated by the military (some from the Korean war). They get two meals of slop a day, "a brownish gloop of unspecified meat that Arpaio boasted to a reporter contained 'rotten' lumps, and costs at most 40 cents a meal" (page 107). As in a Dickensian debtors' prison, you can get better food from people on the outside if you have any people on the outside. During visiting hours, you can't touch anyone --  not even your kids -- and you're handcuffed to a table the whole time.

There is a properly built air-conditioned prison near Tent City, but Joe Arpaio has thrown these prisoners out of it and turned it into an animal shelter. Now dogs and cats relax in cool rooms while addicts ache in the heat and dust storms outside. The animals, he believes, deserve it (page 109).

It gets worse. In an Arizona state prison (not one of Arpaio's), Hari found out about a woman who was literally cooked alive. Imprisoned because she traded sex for meth, she was diagnosed as bipolar and appointed a guardian because she wasn't competent.  But the guards decided her suicide attempt was manipulation rather than a cry for help, so they put her in an outdoor cage in the desert on a 106° day. It was supposed to be used for no more than two hours at a time.

She asked for water, and they mocked her. When she finally collapsed, soiled in her own feces, she died with first-degree burns from the ground beneath her. After the guards called an ambulance, the paramedics were unable to get an accurate temperature because their thermometers only go to 108°.  Even her eyes had dried out.

Many of the guards who put her in the cage and left her there while she was dying are still working as guards today.

This is what happens in our country: in our names, in the name of the drug war. It's time to end it and base public policy on established facts about what works and doesn't work to make drug use even less important than alcohol use today.

Or Does It Explode?

Following up on recent and not-so-recent mentions of guard labor, this from Richard Florida on intentional homicide rates in cities around the world.

What correlates with higher murder rates?

• Income inequality (also the culprit when it comes to guard labor)
• Gender inequality 
• A high score on the "macho index"

The latter two are hallmarks of honor culture as well, which makes sense. As Steven Pinker pointed out in The Better Angels of Our Nature, the New England states, which have murder levels almost as low as Europe's, see just as many people killed in robberies as the Southern states. It's killings that start from arguments and maintaining honor (as described by Carl Hart when talking about his upbringing) that make much of the South more violent than much of the North.

Florida closes with this:

It's important to remember that correlation does not equal causation, but, overall, it is certainly intriguing to note that inequality, rather than poverty, appears to be associated with higher levels of violence — and that pride and machismo appear to be significant factors as well. Not surprisingly, the more that proud people are reminded of how powerless they are, the more likely they are to explode.

Front Page News, for Real

What a front page in today's Star Tribune!

Not even counting the story about how Target's recent data breach indicates a much wider problem or the one recounting a divided open hearing about allowing copper mining in the wilds of northern Minnesota, there were three stories that made me exclaim in dismay:

• Climate risk is critical, U.N. warns (from the New York Times)
• A first for schools: Random drug tests
• Cuts in federal rent aid are squeezing Minnesota's poor

Climate risk

It's simple: If nations keep dragging their feet about reducing carbon emissions for another 15 years, "the problem [will be] virtually impossible to solve with current technologies." The only way to fix it would be to suck huge amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and store it underground… "But it is unclear whether such technologies will ever exist at the necessary scale, and even if they do, the approach would likely be wildly expensive compared with taking steps now to slow emissions."

And get this: "The report said that governments of the world were still spending far more money to subsidize fossil fuels than to accelerate the shift to cleaner energy."

The slight decrease in U.S. emissions over the past eight years was rightly pegged as a result of outsourcing our carbon emissions, along with the manufacturing of the goods we use, to China and other developing countries. And our increased use of less carbon-emitting natural gas (while we ship our coal overseas.)

It doesn't matter what country burns it, guys. It's all one atmosphere, and one world.

Drug testing in Duluth schools

Infected by the drug war and bad example set in Scott Walker's Wisconsin, just across the border, Duluth schools are considering random drug tests for their students. They'll only be able to require them of students who take part in voluntary aspects of school: sports, clubs, and parking in the school's lot because earlier court decisions have ruled out taking away students' rights completely.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Especially since research shows this type of testing has no effect on student drug use. "But a positive school environment? That cut down on the share of students who started smoking cigarettes and using marijuana, according to research published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs." A positive school environment: isn't that the opposite of what you get by mistrusting your students and randomly testing them for drugs?

Superior, Duluth's Wisconsin neighbor, has been doing random drug tests since 2006. "The district has seen a surge in the number of students expelled…" Which gives the lie to a Duluth official who claimed the tests would be used to "get help for the students who need it."

As Chuck Samuelson of the Minnesota ACLU pointed out, testing only kids who participate in voluntary activities discourages participation in things that might be keeping them in school. It makes me think of Carl Hart's participation in basketball. If his school had been doing drug testing, would he have dropped out of basketball, or quit using recreational marijuana? Who knows, but it's stupid to force the choice.

Duluth officials claim they're "highly invested in creating positive climates" in their schools, with "responsive classrooms" and other programs. They believe drug testing will "amplify those efforts," despite the research that shows otherwise.

And they seem to have an unrealistic idea of the financial (not to mention the human) cost of the proposed program: They're budgeting $5,040 a year, despite the fact that Superior's program costs $30,000.

The story ends with this quote from a school official: "Whether its's something to do with drugs, academics or another area, our job is to take good care of these kids."

This is the wrong way to do that.

Cuts to rental aid

First, let's all remember: Getting a Section 8 housing voucher already meant spending an average five to seven years on a waiting list. And the mean household income of a Section 8 recipient is only $13,564 (not much more than the annual cost of a market-rate two-bedroom apartment in the Twin Cities).

So the program should be increased, not cut. But no. Now over 10 percent of the existing vouchers will be eliminated. Because of the sequester, people like Brittannea Stevenson, a Walmart cashier who finally got a voucher after two years on the waiting list in Mankato, had her voucher revoked just as she was finding an apartment.

Others, like Vicki Parchman, who lives with her adult son and 13-year-old grandson, are told their apartments are too large, so they'll have to pay the difference or move out. In her case, that's $325 more a month. Families with children are scrambling to get into one-bedroom apartments, leaving the parents to sleep in the living room, if they're lucky enough to find a place at all. And often it means changing buildings and neighborhoods, and thus their kids' schools. I'm sure that will improve educational outcomes.

Richelle Richardson, developmentally disabled and receiving $800 a month in disability payments, is being told she'll have to pay $200 more a month in rent. Her current place lets her 15-year-old attend what's considered the best high school in Minneapolis, and it's near a bus line and grocery store.

These are often the same people who have been hit by Head Start cuts, food stamp cuts, and the termination of long-term unemployment benefits.

What effect will this have on homelessness, which we're all so "committed" to ending? Where are these folks going to live?

____

These were all front-page stories. But when I went to the Star Tribune website to find links, the only stories that I found on the home page were the ones about Target and the mining hearing. I had to search the site to find the Section 8 and Duluth drug stories, and could only locate the climate change story by using Google. Even putting a unique bit of text from the Times story in quotes in the Strib's search engine didn't find the story.

A good example of how a physical newspaper is a completely different thing from a news website.

The Answer Is in the Same Edition

The Star Tribune's front-page story from Sunday's paper, Race Drives School Labels, Discipline, showed something is very wrong with how some kids are classified and treated in the schools of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The percent of black kids labeled as EBD (emotional or behavioral disorder) is strongly out of proportion, compared to national averages.

The pattern, as exemplified in St. Paul is this: white kids are more likely to be labeled autistic (24 percent of enrollment, but two-thirds of the autistic) while black kids are EBD (30 percent of enrollment but two-thirds of the EBD).

And get this:

...about 23 percent of white students with autism are at their grade level on standardized tests compared with 4 to 8 percent of black EBD students, even though most EBD students have average IQs or better. The difference, she said, is the focus on discipline in EBD classrooms and the lack of rigorous instruction.

EBD has a vague, subjective, and even illogical definition according to the story:

Marked by range of behaviors that can include depression, physical aggression, frequent anxiety, self-mutilation, intimidation, failing to express emotion, or inappropriate laughter.

So depression, anxiety, self-mutilation, and failing to express emotion are classed with physical aggression and intimidation? Does that make any sense?

From the story, it sounds like St. Paul is taking aggressive action to reverse its placement of EBD students, bringing them back to mainstream classrooms. It's not going well, according to teachers who have complained to their supervisors and the school board. Which makes sense, if, as was mentioned in one example, 11 EBD kids suddenly get put in a single mainstream classroom. Whose idea was that?

Ironically, there was a brief story in the same edition's Variety section called Help for Antisocial Kids. Condensed from an L.A. Times story, the recommendations were directly applicable to our local schools' situation:

Scientists studying the degree to which brain function, parental involvement and environment determine antisocial outbursts in children have found that social support and intervention can successfully moderate misbehavior.

Researchers at the University of Michigan studied the amygdala — the part of the brain that processes fear and impulsive reactions — for clues about extreme behavior in children.

The amygdala is associated with aggressive behavior, anxiety disorders and depression. Once that region of the brain is stimulated, they found, some people become anxious and overreact to perceived threats.

If the child is not getting help from others — family, neighbors or professional — then the link between the amygdala and anxious behavior is stronger.

The tendency to overreact can be altered by a child’s environment, and the same researchers found in another study that impulsive kids are at higher risk of engaging in antisocial behavior if they live in ‘dangerous’ neighborhoods.

The Michigan scientists used neurogenetics, which combines genetics, neuroscience and psychology, to understand the propensity to extreme behavior. They also drew a distinction between normal childhood misbehavior and serious behavioral issues that will persist into adolescence....

“The results of this test aren’t really meaningful until age 3 or 3 1/2,” said researcher Luke Hyde. “Before that, many of these behaviors are fairly common and don’t predict anything. But after age 3, if children are still behaving in these ways, their behavior is more likely to escalate in the following years rather than improve.”

Hyde found that even children who regularly exhibited antisocial behavior did well when parents or others intervened by spending time with their children, using timeouts instead of physical punishment and rewarding good behavior.

Like all things worth doing in schools, using these findings to help kids would cost more money than is currently being spent on the equivalent of rubber rooms.

___

This is what I get for writing a blog post a day ahead of time: Today's Star Tribune contained a counterpoint commentary to the EBD story by a retired Minneapolis science teacher. Bill Holden argues that black boys are labeled EBD because they're more likely to grow up in an honor culture where violence is needed to maintain "respect." And that when there are just a few kids in a class with that acculturation, peer norms can correct it, but when 40 percent of a class comes from that background, there's no chance the other students can have an effect. Holden also noted the presence of the "help for antisocial kids" article in the same issue.

I wish I could hear what Carl Hart has to say about Holden's point.

Twitter in November: Refugees, Protests, Shootings...Synthesis

It’s that time of the month again. No, not that time! Twitter time, I mean. I had to switch my method of creating this archive, unfortunately, so the format is a little different.

The month ended with Thanksgiving and the terrorist shooting at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, which followed rapidly on the heels of the white supremacist shooting in Minneapolis, the ISIS attacks on Paris, Beirut, and other cities, and the subsequent Right Wing backlash against allowing Syrian immigrants into the U.S. Whew. These issues are so intermixed that I can’t separate them.

Right now, there’s dry tinder everywhere and conservatives are throwing matches, one after the other. Never know which one might start a fire.
David Roberts

"Black lives matt...."
"ALL LIVES MATTER"
*syrians show up*
"What?!!! Fuck! No!!!"
mike mulloy

It legit does not register for most of white society that black Americans live under threat of white terrorism every day.
Bree Newsome

Heck, if we allow Syrian refugees in, there’s a chance Americans might get shot with guns! We know that’s unacceptable.
David Roberts

As GOP incites fear of Syrian refugees, white terrorists have:
―Shot up Planned Parenthood
―Stalked mosque w/ rifles
―Shot black protesters
David Harris-Gershon

Please don't COMPLAIN that police did NOT take a life [in Colorado]. I get racial frustration around the Planned Parenthood shooter. But the absence of death is good.
Phillip Atiba Goff

Ever since the Soviet Union fell, U.S. conservatives have craved an Enemy grand enough to absorb all their fear & rage. They think they’ve found it!
David Roberts

"Let me kill people to prove I am pro-life" just seems like a badly thought out plan.
Michele ‏@inthefade

All the white people asking Muslims to "do more to stop ISIS": What are you doing to stop white men and boys from shooting up schools?
Son of Baldwin

[Responding to the white supremacist shootings of five BLM protestors in Minneapolis] If this is what happens when #BlackLivesMatter protests...what happens when they start winning?
Phillip Atiba Goff

Caught this stat from Chris Hayes tonight.
CHRIS HAYES
Travis Starkey

Rather than a religious litmus test for refugees, why not an intelligence and logic test for presidential nominees?
emily dreyfuss

We spend WAY too much time talking about the Holocaust and not nearly enough about the ~20 years leading up to it.
L Gordon Cooper

Striking how little impact the fact that the Paris attackers were neither Syrian nor refugees is having on the Syrian refugee debate.
Matthew Yglesias

The actual truth with refugees is the same as with all terrorism, and everything in general: there’s no such thing as zero risk.
Christopher Hayes

Harry Truman wrote this in his diary about the Red Scare. It is appropriate today as Congress acts against refugees:


Yousef Munayyer

One reason Jewish refugees were kept out [of the U.S.] was the argument that they included Nazi & Communist infiltrators in their midst.
Jeet Heer

Oh, well, that’s nice. We’re all patting each other on the back about how we regret Japanese internment. *Even as we turn away refugees.* Sure is easy to condemn and lament xenophobia that’s safely in the past, isn’t it? Just like it’s easy to condemn & lament the hysteria that led to the IraqWar. Even as we wallow in nearly identical hysteria all over again. Would be cool if maybe we could avoid some of these things *prospectively* rather than lamenting them retrospectively. Reactionary credo: Sure, those previous episodes of racist xenophobia were lamentable. But this one's justified!

Weird thing about racist xenophobes is they never seem aware of just how precisely they sound like all the previous racist xenophobes. All this has happened before. And we always end up ashamed & embarrassed in retrospect that we let racist xenophobes have such power.
David Roberts

We don't want to take innocent refugees in cause of fear, but we sell guns? Smart.
Jamie Kilstein

The asymmetry, in asymmetrical warfare, is that the little guy can only really damage the big guy by getting him angry enough to self-injure.
William Gibson

This is the kind of moment that offers a kind of clarity about how certain terrible things in the past could have happened.
Adam Serwer

Thank god we're not letting in lots of Syrians, we wouldn't want an influx of fluent Arabic speakers who could work for the FBI & hate ISIS.
Jon Schwarz

Might seem obvious, but: fear makes people more conservative, which is why conservatives are always, always pushing fear. Stands to reason that the single best thing you can do in the name of progress & sanity is refuse to be afraid. Also funny: the language xenophobes use to describe the allegedly unique dangers of X group of immigrants … is always the same! They’re just not like us. They have different values. They refuse to learn the language. They only understand violence. Etc. Always the same.
David Roberts ‏

Every time the U.S. is given the opportunity to ACT as a Christian nation, the US proves it is no Christian nation.
Paul Thomas

Seriously, pull yourselves together, everyone. Freaking out in the face or orphan toddlers is unbecoming of a great nation.
Christopher Hayes

As Jon Haidt said, conservatives place great moral weight on *purity*, while liberals don’t. Definitely informs this debate over refugees.
David Roberts

BREAKING: Texas will not accept any Syrian refugees & I demand the U.S. act similarly. Security comes first.
Greg Abbott [governor of Texas]

AWonderfulXmasGrimes replied to Abbott’s tweet:
As Jesus said, “Fuck desperate people, it’s not my responsibility to help them, they’re on their own.”

A REAL Christian fundamentalist would be living on the street, feeding hookers and thieves. You're just an asshole with a bible.
Saladin Ahmed

ISIS in Paris: attacks humankind. ISIS in Beirut: attacks Hezbolla area. Look for the discourse analysis. – Michel Foucault
Allan Patrick

Mosque burnings aren't a 'response.' I saw our Arab community center torched by bigots TWICE as a kid in the 80s. Before Paris. Before 9/11. Bigots don't burn mosques in response to terrorist attacks. They use attacks as an excuse to do what they do: make a violent show of hatred.
Saladin Ahmed

White supremacist terrorism is much more common & much more of a threat in U.S. than Islamic terrorism. Just not framed as such in MSM narrative. African-Americans came out of 200+ years of BRUTAL slavery, prepared to make peace in exchange for 40 acres, a mule & voting rights. Whites said no, subjected blacks to another 150 years of Jim Crow versions 1 & 2, systematically forcing blacks into a state of perpetual poverty, criminalization, imprisonment & political alienation. That is the reality. Not the current narrative perpetuated by an oligarchy which inherited its wealth from the profits of slavery.
Bree Newsome

Then there are all of the election and debate tweets, especially about you-know-who:

I can’t think of anything jihadi terrorists would love more than a thin-skinned, hyper-defensive, impulsive president like Trump.
David Roberts

Ted Cruz's resemblance to Joseph McCarthy never fails to creep me out. I mean, like, literal resemblance.
jelani cobb

Ummm. Ben, the reason the U.S. become an economic power was slavery and you, sir, would have been a slave. Because you are BLACK.
roxane gay

Trump wants to close mosques because the best way to defend America is to do shit that is completely unAmerican.
Frank Conniff

The right wing can't decide whether young people are savages for not knowing Aristotle or idiots for wanting to study philosophy.
Saladin Ahmed

Military waste is virtually never questioned in these debates. But the perilous danger of "wasting money" sending a kid to college ...
David Roberts

America elected a Black man twice and white people have responded by enthusiastically supporting a fascist. You need to pay attention.
r. @Are0h

I think part of the GOP establishment’s angst is that it’s discovering how little GOP voters care about economic conservatism.
David Roberts

Trump is more upset by a film of cheering Jersey Muslims that doesn't exist than he is by a film a black kid being murdered that does exist.
Frank Conniff

The media has no idea how to deal with Donald Trump's constant lying. This is true of the whole U.S. political system. Trump (nay, the entire GOP) is forcing media to choose between faux-objectivity & fealty to facts. No longer possible to maintain both. If media insists on truth, they will be branded an enemy of the Right (and thus part of the Left). If they don’t, they are useless. So …?
David Roberts

Fingering Trump for being racist won't work because a huge swath of America is really, really OK with racism. It's that simple.
Jared Keller

"When fascism comes to America it'll be very phenomenal and very, very classy." - Upton Sinclair
elias isquith

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a meme and carrying a Sinclair Lewis quote.
Chris Steller

[In response to the news that Chris Christie called for more leniency toward white drug abusers.] It is characteristic of conservatives to find empathy ONLY on issues that directly affect their lives.
David Roberts

There was also the report by Deaton and Case about how white middle-aged people are dying at unexpected rates:

One thing to consider about the rise of heroin/opiate addiction as a campaign issue and the recent paper on rise of mortality for middle-aged white people: We tend to think of the causality of drug addiction and misery running in one direction: addiction causes hopelessness, joblessness, misery, despair, etc... But Carl Hart has been arguing for a long time that the causality runs in the other direction: hopelessness, joblessness, misery, despair, lack of opportunity *cause* addiction problems. The drugs are the symptom. The Deaton/Case paper would seem to support this thesis, since we're seeing spikes in a variety of types or mortality among a particularly. Also, would've been great to see all of this outpouring of compassion and treatment-centered policy during the Crack Years. The politics of the crack years were viciously punitive dehumanizing: longer sentences, "crack babies" and "super predators" etc.
Christopher Hayes ‏

"Middle aged white men are dying"
"Do we blame capitalism? Giant corporations screwing their employees?"
"Nah! It's Fucking feminists!"
Jamie Kilstein

Notice in the debate over the cause of rising white death rates no one is looking for the white gene that explains the racial gap in health?
Dorothy Roberts

Finally, there was a critical mass of tweets about climate change and related environment subjects, just as the big talks were about to get underway in Paris:

Beijing is so smoggy that 1,500 angry people came together to form this pair of lungs with their bodies:


Bill McKibben

If you greenies are trumping up climate change as a trojan horse to dismantle capitalism, all I can say is well played.
Matt Bruenig

Some of the most efficient public transit goes to airports. Because we need to help the well-off and burn more jet fuel. Win-win. #sarcasm
Free Public Transit

The most eco-friendly clothes are the ones already in your closet.
Ensia

Russia, U.S., will run out of money before Islam runs out of believers. Why not stop wasting oil on cars instead of bombing children?
Free Public Transit

It is looking increasingly difficult to keep climate change under 2˚C. But it is still possible...just barely. What's so incredibly frustrating is that scientists have been raising the climate alarm for over 30 years, and were ignored (or undermined). We haven't completely run out of time to solve the climate problem. But we have run out of time to sit on our ass. The good news? Recent advances in renewables & agriculture, reductions in deforestation, etc. give us good tools to address climate change. But now, after squandering 30+ years, we have to mount an all-out effort to reduce emissions across the board to avoid disaster. Large scale renewable transitions, massive efficiency gains, aggressive deforestation reductions, negative emissions, etc. Need 'em all now. This would have been much easier if we had heeded the warnings 30+ years ago, and kept up with Carter-era energy policies. Blew 3 decades.
Jon Foley

Capitalism. Spending money we don't have, to bomb people we don't know, to fuel cars we don't need, to ruin a planet we don't deserve.
Free Public Transit

The Glamour of Automobiles:


Ken Avidor

[Decreasing greenhouse gas emissions] is all about increasing the relative cost of carbon fuels, whether through: (1) taxing carbon, (2) making alternatives cheaper, or (3) increasing the reputational costs of extracting and burning carbon. I still think (1) and (2) are what will mostly get us there, but I underestimated the role of (3).
Jon Foley

Driving is the best way to get around. It better be, since the cost is loss of the biosphere.
Free Public Transit

And then there’s the run of the rest of my usual favorite topics and bits of humor:

When people say that there's no "I" in team, they're overlooking the fact that there's an "m" and an "e."
Mouthful of Platinum

Some people use race to distract from class or vice versa: doesn't mean they really want to do anything about either one. When people use one thing to distract from another, often they don't actually want to talk about either.
David Kaib

I’m all for action on mental illness. But involuntary institutionalization is a much greater intrusion on freedom than reasonable gun limits.
David Frum

I really hate this idea that basic civil rights are a luxury, a form of state welfare, to be yanked as soon as things get dangerous. Civil rights makes us *safer*. Especially in times of fear & danger. Seems like Americans used to have a better handle on that. It’s especially bizarre that the allegedly libertarian Right Wing seems to care only about the one part of the Bill of Rights that makes us LESS safe. If you concede that more surveillance, police powers, & military adventurism increase safety, they become politically inevitable. The key is not to concede that in the first place, because it's not f'ing true.
David Roberts

And who is the FBI devoting the most resources to tracking & infiltrating? Animal rights groups who have killed no one.
David Roberts

Congestion, unaffordable housing are outcomes of not planning for success, says Richard Florida. “Too many people want to live in the resurgent urban cores of technology hubs and they are bidding up the price of housing."
jennifer keesmaat

I'm again reminded when people complain about people being "PC," they're usually just whining about others not being racist a-holes like them.
Parker Molloy

We're not only in a second gilded age, we're sliding back to Victorian times, when your best shot at a decent life was marrying into money.
Andray

According to the Brennan Center, as many Americans have criminal records as college diplomas.
The Marshall Project

Thankful for family, friends, and a vision of justice. For everyone who marches, and everyone who turns their heart towards truth.
Phillip Atiba Goff

Seems to me one of the main problems of modernity is it has freed people from various unfair & malign frameworks but hasn’t provided NEW frameworks with the same richness of meaning & purpose. That’s why fundamentalism keeps flailing its way back.
David Roberts

The tragedy of sexist straight men is that they crave intimacy from the very people they see as less than human. How horrible, and how sad.
Laurie Penny

Research shows integration happens more effectively when immigrants settle in common districts. For me, I grew up in a Dutch community. It's counterintuitive, but true. Community networks drive success, which in turn drives broader participation and integration in society.
jennifer keesmaat

Tufts professor Steve Cohen: "My guess is that testing improves education the same way that bombing promotes democracy."
Nikhil Goyal

Remember, losing privilege is not oppression. #sixwordstory
Amy ‏@AmyStephen

Coates: "The best part of writing is to educate yourself. I don’t want to be anybody’s expert. I came in to learn."
Nikhil Goyal

Asked my 84-year-old friend Idelle for her top advice about raising kids.
1. Encourage their interests.
2. Trust them.
Paul Graham

Great moments in "essential character of the neighborhood”:


William Lindeke

If you're sympathetic to the weak, it's activist journalism. If you're sympathetic to the powerful, it's objective journalism.
David Rankin

Bloomberg: Share of pharma growth due to price increases on existing products = 80%.
Atul Gawande

I want to see a venn diagram of people who hate "safe spaces" because the "outside world isn't safe" and people who fear immigration.
psy? ‏@sarahjeong

I wonder what's going on in the alternate universe where George W. Bush didn't invade Iraq in response to a terror attack it had nothing to do with.
Tom Tomorrow

Last year, the value of civil asset forfeitures by police exceeded the value of all burglaries in the U.S.
Radley Balko

The cruelest trick the racists try to pull is to convince the world racism doesn't exist.
Deborah Roseman

Bree Newsome replied to Deborah Roseman,
#FunFact: Slave owners accused abolitionists of being the real racists who wanted to enslave white people

"We spend more money treating chronic pain than we spend treating cancer, diabetes and heart disease combined."
MinnPost

1. Struck again by how conservatives approach foreign policy almost *entirely* based on what feels emotionally satisfactory.
2. Not only do they neglect empirical analysis of what has happened & what might happen, but they condemn such analysis as weakness.
3. They condemn the effort to understand the parties & forces at play - the effort to understand *in & of itself* - as weakness.
4. They condemn Obama’s aversion to force even though Obama been bombing ISIS for months. Why? Because he’s not making them *feel* it.
5. It’s not the actual bombing they want, it’s the martial rhetoric, the flag-filled chyrons, the Bush-with-a-megaphone feeling.
6. They want him to say the right words, to call enemies the right names, to beat his chest, to show that America es mas macho
7. Whether war - the last one, the next one - "works" is neither here nor there. It’s working if it’s making them *feel* the right way.
8. It is foreign policy as carried out by an insecure, hormone-ridden teenage boy; everything’s about who burned who, who came out on top.
David Roberts

The happiest people live reality-adjacent.
Aparna Nancherla

There is always money for war, prisons and cops. There is never money for food, housing and health care.
David Kaib

I really hate the phrase "god-given potential."
Nikhil Goyal

Look, the very business of Wall Street is to extract that which it did not produce, come on.
Matt Bruenig

Gun violence since 1968 has killed more Americans than all the wars in all of U.S. history combined.
Demos

1.4 Million: Americans who died in all Wars fought since 1776.
1.4 Million: Americans who died via household Guns since 1968
Neil deGrasse Tyson

Art is unpredictable, messy, invites interpretation. It's bound to disappoint political people who care about purity and message discipline.
James Poniewozik

Undercover Israeli troops raid hospital, kill Palestinian.
Reuters Top News

Responding to Reuters: Why is it a 'raid,' and not an attack? Would it be a 'raid' if 30 armed Palestinians stormed an Israeli hospital and opened fire?
Saladin Ahmed

Until people’s condemning of anti-black oppressive forces is as vociferous as their condemning of black people’s RESPONSES to it, I'm not interested
Charles M. Blow

If people got as mad about racism as they do "PC culture,” things would be pretty rad.
Jamie Kilstein

I can't tell you how many disengaged students of color I've spoken with who've told me that "school felt like jail" to them.
Nikhil Goyal

Remember: until it was hijacked by warmongers in the 1950s, Veteran's Day was called Armistice Day, and it celebrated the END of war. 'Military families' is one of the most politically hijacked phrases in existence. My dad & uncle were soldiers. They were both VERY antiwar.
Saladin Ahmed

I wish Obama was 50% as effective as the GOP likes to claim he is.
Greg Koenig

Kinda think the tidy mythology that’s grown up around the civil rights movement has misled lots of folks about how social movements work.
David Roberts

In the Netherlands, the older you get, the more you ride bikes.
William Lindeke

Praise God. Because God's ego is so fragile he needs to be told constantly that he's awesome.
almightygod

Women start by leaning in, but quickly realize that they’re leaning into the immovable wall of structural sexism.
The Nation

"Teaching is not about delivering content. It's about creating the context for youth to want to learn it." – Professor Christopher Emdin
Jen Overley

I’ve said it many times and still think it’s true: America has never properly grappled w/ the disaster of the Bush years. One odd aspect of the Bush years was that the major disasters ended up occluding many, many minor disasters.
David Roberts

Jeet Heer responded:
The minor disasters of the Bush years would be major scandals in a normal presidency.

Worth repeating: Speed kills.


Streetsblog Network

If there’s anything 4 a.m. has taught me, it’s that there’s A LOT to worry about.
Rainbow Rowell

Being black in America means a constant barrage of enraging news coupled with constant admonitions to not demonstrate anger. Meanwhile, old white dudes get front-page coverage for whining about how people deliver holiday greetings. They are allowed endless anger.
David Roberts

I think to balance out all the first-person shooter games, there should be at least a couple first-person innocent victim games.
Aparna Nancherla

The term "modern-day slavery" feels like it implies that slavery stopped at some point & started up again later. Slavery never stopped.
The Slaves Singing

Here's your weekly reminder that "playing devil's advocate" is unnecessary because the Prince of Darkness doesn't actually need you, Bob.
Ashley C. Ford

When I was a young reporter, I felt like people LOVED to talk about paying your dues. Like, you couldn't do anything REAL until then. It seemed like "pay your dues" was something you told people when you wanted them to shut up/calm down until they lost interest in trying.
Rainbow Rowell

Why is "pedestrian" a pejorative as an adjective? While "driven" is generally positive?
Chris Steller

Thousands of frat bros riot in Berkeley, because Halloween; miraculously, no tear gas was deployed & nobody beaten. I'm not advocating use of tear gas/batons against frat brothers, just think it's interesting that they're only used when the riot is political. Riot over Halloween & it's "those kids'll settle down eventually." Riot after police murder someone & it's "dangerous anarchist criminals."
‏@OaklandElle

Of course #Halloween candy razor blade scare was just another 80s-era punishment for moms entering workforce. Like preschool santanic cults.
Meghan Daum

If you are looking for utopia, you will always be disappointed.
Ta-Nehisi Coates

April Came and Went

April went by really quickly. Seems as though I was just working on the March Twitter round-up. But here we are, another month, and still alive under the Turnip.

There was a wide range of thought about current policies and general destruction from above, both domestically and internationally:

The administration attacks the crime approach of NYC — America's safest large city — then invites admitted killer, Philippine President Duterte, to White House.
Preet Bharara‏

I have been to interpretive dance performances which contain more detail on the tax code.
Justin Wolfers‏

It's clear that Sessions' real beef with New York City is that a thriving, safe, multiracial society is against everything he stands for.
Ned Resnikoff‏

It's weird the active campaign to make America white through mass deportation and racial terror isn't a more central issue in our politics.
sean.‏ @SeanMcElwee

Internet users deserve no privacy, but lobbyists visiting the White House do. #thruthelookingglass
Lessig‏

Imagine having the constitutional responsibility to hold a dangerously flailing President in check and completely, utterly blowing it. [With photo of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell]
Schooley‏ @Rschooley

The cost of Betsy DeVos’s security detail: $1 million per month.
adam harris‏ @AdamHSays

About half (47%) of Latinos say they are worried that they or someone they know might be deported.
@PewHispanic

This GOP only knows how to break things and go nuclear and that's increasingly not looking like a metaphor.
Joe Hill‏

The war on terror has created more terrorists. That's the sad reality. We can't bomb away a barbaric ideology.
Linda Sarsour‏

It cost $314M to drop that bomb. We could have funded the National Endowment for the Arts for two years with that money. #ArtNotBombs
@KennyCoble

Just 6% of Americans think ISPs should be able to sell browsing history. 93.4% of House Republicans voted for that.
@MEPFuller

Americans need to take a long look in the mirror and consider our stance on war. To the detriment of social programs and peoples' well beings, we build the largest arsenal by ludicrous degrees. We barely blink when the largest bombs are dropped, while civilians are massacred. It's not even a major item in the news anymore. Our media is set up to glorify acts of aggression, to never question their goals or logic, but to drool over military hardware. Meanwhile our culture, our shows, our movies and video games, further than glorification. We teach children that war is a game. The military industrial complex has been so completely absorbed by culture that you can't tell anymore where one ends and other begins. This isn't the kind of country I want to live in. I'm tired of blood on my hands. This machine has to change.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

Trump White House:
-Assad is literally worse than Hitler
-His victims are not welcome here
Zach Wahls

It's a strange ethic that drops bombs to honor the dead while denying help to the living.
Rev. Dr. Barber‏

Syria strike is to foreign policy as Carrier deal (remember that?) was to trade policy: impresses the rubes, but basically meaningless.
Paul Krugman‏

I'm tired of people who evoke emotions to stoke fears of refugees with innuendos but dismiss emotions when it compels compassion for them.
Ayman Mohyeldin‏

It's a lot easier to convince people they're in danger than it is to convince them that they're safe.
Ryan Dow‏

Military Industrial Complex has this country trained like a dog. Missiles launch and the anthem plays and every pundit salivates and salutes.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

somehow i stay surprised by elite fetishization of state violence
Mazel Tov Cocktail‏ @AdamSerwer

Wagging the dog won't distract us from your war on US democracy. Bombing Syria won't distract us from your Syrian refugee ban.
Heather C. McGhee‏

What matters is making more U.S. veterans so that we can tearfully honor their service while not giving them medicine or housing.
William K. Wolfrum‏

There's a reason defense takes lion's share of the federal budget while citizens suffer. Turn on your TV and bask in military fetishization. We can't get experts on TV about poverty or education, but lob a few missiles and watch the retired military brass drool over war.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

Watching mostly positive coverage of the Syria attack on the Fail To Learn The Lessons of History Channel.
Frank Conniff‏

i hate how weaponized native names are in the military. black hawk, tomahawk, mowhawk shawnee, choctaw, chinook, apache, cayuse, ute, etc
christie‏ @sapsikwala

1. Authorizing airstrikes has earned Trump a good amount of praise.
2. Trump will reliably do anything that yields applause.
Jamelle Bouie

It is possible to disagree about what to do in Syria, or even not to know how you feel. It is not possible to believe we're in good hands.
Mark Harris‏

OUT: debating whether the US should be the world's policeman
IN: debating whether the US should be the world's drunk, racist policeman
David Klion‏

The Stupidest part about Trump and DAPL and #KeystoneXL is that IF it were REALLY about jobs, renewable energy creates more jobs than oil.
BigIndianGyasi‏

Plus a few specifically on Neil Gorsuch rising to the Supreme Court:

This is the second time Republicans have lost the national popular vote, won the presidency, then reshaped the Court. And reshaped it in a way that has opened the door to sweeping assaults on voting rights and voter access.
Jamelle Bouie

If you ever see Neil Gorsuch be sure to say.
"Hi, Merrick Garland!"
He'll say, "I'm not Merrick Garland."
And you say, "You should be!"
LOLGOP‏

The twist: The filibuster was finally killed for the nominee of a president who lost the popular vote and is polling at 40% or lower.
Dave Weigel‏

When McConnell deprived President Obama of a vote on Garland, it was a nuclear option. The rest is fallout.
@RepAdamSchiff

Republicans furrowing their brows and decrying partisanship after 8 years of treating President Obama like a home invader is rich indeed.
@JoyAnnReid

There was, of course, general angst about our so-called president and his family:

Wonder how the number of Trump's most frequently used words would compare to the number of words understood by dogs.
Tom Tomorrow

I still see liberal/left people say all the time how they think Ivanka or Melania is ugly. Their beauty is not their inherent worth, guys. Ivanka is flouting anti-nepotism laws and making money off of the White House. That's what matters. Not her shiny hair and pencil skirts.
Erika Heidewald

Trump has met with an average of two CEOs a day, not counting those he golfs with.
Shadow Cabinet‏

Here's the poster I designed for tonight's Signs of Resistance protest poster show, benefitting the ACLU:


Carolyn Porter‏ @porterfolio

Winning makes you more accountable to the American people, not less.
Evan McMullin‏ (retweeting Trump when he bragged yet again about winning the Electoral College

1 Trump Mar-A-Lago visit = *5 years* of Presidential salary.
So far Trump has blown *35 years* of presidential salaries on Mar-A-Lago trips.
Adam Khan‏ @Khanoisseur

It would have been so much cheaper if we just got Donald Trump a tutor rather than making him president.
Dean Baker‏

Obama walked on ice and never fell.
Trump is falling flat on his face over the Easter Egg Roll.
Hemant Mehta

In prepping the book, what I've learned is that Donald Trump isn't a political conservative but a cultural one. The divide is vast. Cultural conservatives don't care about policy. They just want shows of strength and actions that oppose progressivism. It doesn't matter if it's interventionism or corporate welfare, they want someone to oppose anything that makes life better for liberals. Trump is a mascot, a figure that upsets liberals. That fact is way more important than any policies or philosophies he could hold. The divide has been there for years and was given credence by the GOP using the Tea Party movement to their advantage while not address its concerns. Trump supporters' main concern is cultural representation for whites and rural voters, It has nothing to do with policy or doctrine.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

Huge thanks to @PissedModernism for featuring my Red, White and Blue piece:

nicole a phillips‏ @typographHer

Trump's not even playing chess. He's cheating at Candyland and the mainstream media is all "How amazing, he can count and knows all his colors!"
Sarah Kendzior‏

Is anyone truly shocked Trump doesn't ask for consent in any area of his life?
Aparna Nancherla‏

We have to say out loud that the President of the United States is an unhinged dumbass. We're in extreme danger.
@prisonculture

Must suppress the existential horror. Must suppress the existential horror. Must suppress the existential horror. Must suppress the existent
Tom Tomorrow‏

Bears repeating that we got here because Donald Trump is incapable of watching a partisan propaganda network and recognizing the lies.
Jared Yates Sexton‏

Media: "Hillary's messaging was too focused on how bad Trump would be."
Also media: "How come nobody told us how bad Trump would be?"
The Resisterhood‏

So, where are the pieces full of sympathy for the communities that didn't vote for Trump that are suffering as a result of his election?
Mikki Kendall‏ @Karnythia

Income inequality does not explain the rise of Trumpism/populism. Geographic inequality + racism does.
Richard Florida‏

Lawyers for the President of the United States say that you assume a "risk of injury" by protesting at a Trump rally. That's dictator talk.
A Cat Named Bitches‏

Here is why Trump voters should be held accountable: he is doing what he advertised. They just thought his cruelty wouldn't touch them.
Jamil Smith‏

It was a month of marches (about Trump's tax, science, and finally climate change), but most of these are from the science march:

Re: #ScienceMarch
Science is good. But like religion, it has to address historical harms it's done to oppress oppressed communities.
BigIndianGyasi‏

Ask the GOP about Climate Change: "I'm not a scientist!"
But when it comes to women's choices, they're all doctors.
Ricky Davila‏ @TheRickyDavila

"Flint is what happens when we dismiss science. Flint is what happens when we dismiss experts." — @MonaHannaA
Ayana Elizabeth J.‏ @ayanaeliza

I like science policy how I like my isotopes. Stable.
Anna Cutmore‏ @Cutmore4

What we are all in some sense marching for is a desire to not be bossed around by monopolists and political autocrats.
Matt Stoller‏

There were quite a number critiquing capitalism and especially income and wealth inequality:

The U.S. trade deficit is actually smaller than it looks. Almost half of it might just be tax havens.
Noah Smith‏ @Noahpinion

Remember: The college wage premium is rising because high school wages are falling, NOT because college wages are rising.
Jeff Spross‏

It's time for Democrats to run on expanding Social Security, Medicare-for-all, childcare and green infrastructure:


sean.‏ @SeanMcElwee

America lacks any creative public policy initiatives because its money is permanently wrapped up in unequal wealth.
Langdon Winner‏

The lifecycle of a typical person's peak labor market value and peak family expenses line up very poorly.
Matthew Yglesias‏

Incomes for D.C families overall have risen, but in the two poorest wards they've fallen. We concentrate poverty.
Rachel Cohen

When I view the trust fund "rich kids of Instagram" I'm always amazed by the abstinence, the rewarded patience.
Mike Konczal‏ @rortybomb

Since 1952, corporate profits have risen dramatically while corporate tax revenues have plummeted:


Economic Policy Institute

Where there is extreme poverty, there is extreme violence.
@FeministaJones

I was reading an essay in The American Conservative (or National Review?) the other day arguing airlines and cable companies are why people hate capitalism. There are a lot of bigger, better reasons to hate capitalism but none of them are as petty and annoying as having to talk to Verizon support which seems to exist mostly as a bajillion-dollar rejoinder to the idea of the efficiency of the market.
Gene Demby‏

Blood-boiling: 2016 Wall St. bonus pool could pay all 3.2 million fast food workers $15/hour with $776 million left.
@BillMoyersHQ

If the current medical market had to deal with polio, "we'd never have a polio vaccine. Instead we'd have iron lungs in seven colors with iPhone apps.”
igorvolsky‏ (quoting an NPR story on how the U.S. health system became big business)

Funny how we never call tax breaks for having kids for middle to upper class people "welfare." Or mortgage tax breaks "subsidized housing."
Heidi‏ @laflaneuse

Trump is weak. So let's see a powerful Democratic articulation of a new approach to trade, a new support of small biz, a new trust busting! The people who wanted to drain the swamp still want that. So let's take corruption seriously, propose changing how we fund campaigns, lead!
Zephyr Teachout‏

People who see the world through class lens and people who see it through identity lens are both so valuable right now. Play together. And please stop fighting each other while an authoritarian buffoon eats your country. You each see something worth seeing. Play together.
Anand Giridharadas‏

Maybe if we broaden the definition of national security to include health of our people, planet, etc. we can "find the money" as in wartime.
Stephanie Kelton‏

Nominal average hourly wages would have been $3.22 higher in March if wages had grown at prerecession levels:


@EconomicPolicy

The free market hates places where it's hard to make a buck; rural areas can expect to be increasingly abandoned in free market country
@palan57

Hard to have a second job when the first one won't tell you what your schedule is for the next week until the night before.
Julie Erick‏

This month’s tweets about racism include a sidebar on Asians as the “model minority,” plus the usual white supremacy, and everything that flows from it:

"I voted for Obama twice" is the new "I have a black friend.”
Imani Gandy

Communities of color have gone without sufficient press coverage for eons. Where was all the consternation about “media bubbles” then?
Jamil Smith‏

When you talk about the Civil War being about money, not slavery, you can't just leave out that slaves were the source of the money.
Ashley C. Ford

I don't want to hear how black folks selling weed should find other careers when white folks make middle class wages doing the same thing. Weed shouldn't be legalized unless it's done in ways that create pathways to opportunity for those who've been in this economy informally.
Samuel Sinyangwe‏

Revitalization of poor places should focus first on creating wealth for existing residents. Prosperity shouldn't only be an invasive import.
Rik Adamski‏

You can't be anti-participation trophies and pro-Confederate statues. They are the world's biggest participation trophies.
Larry Beyince‏ @DragonflyJonez

Complainy white guys: people used to be able to take a joke.
Everyone else: people used to *have* to take the joke. Big difference.
Melissa Torres‏ @agoodlibrarian

Historian Eric Foner: "All the major questions before us — racism, rights, citizenship, democracy, terrorism — are Reconstruction questions."
Timothy P. McCarthy‏ @DrTPM

For white celebrities to see/discuss problems with representation, they'd have to acknowledge the systems that led to their rise are racist. As a society, and in every industry, we are so obsessed with the idea of meritocracy and rising on your own talent/hard work/merits etc.
Nicole Chung

U.S. preoccupation with morality of drug use enables racist drug policies, Dr. Carl Hart says at Johns Hopkins University.
The Hub‏ @HubJHU

White people opposing diverse representation is akin to a narcissist saying, "Why do other people need mirrors? They can just look at me!"
Foz Meadows‏

They complained Obama went to Harvard, but he was the same year as Gorsuch. They complained he golfed, but Trump golfs more. It was racism.
Kaivan Shroff‏

"We'll get to Civil Rights after we defeat banks" doesn't sound any better than "We'll campaign against lynching after we get the vote.”
Mikki Kendall‏ @Karnythia

White America: Asian Americans aren't a rhetorical device you can use to denigrate Black people. #YourModelMinority believes #BlackLivesMatter
Mark Tseng-Putterman‏

Protip: When reading right-wing pundits, remember that "I admire Asian people" nearly always translates as "I despise black people.”
Jeff Yang

"Other ethnic minorities have done well!" is an idiotic argument against "anti-black racism foundational to America" aka white supremacy.
Wesley Lowery‏

Racism is based in denial. Projection is another element: "You're a racist for pointing out my racism." This is why the oppressed should define racism.
Barbara Arnwine‏ @barbs73

The difference between Black Americans and black immigrants from other countries is DuBois' double consciousness. African Americans have been forced for generations to consider how whites see them in how they maneuver the world, not black immigrants. Blacks in Nigeria do not think of themselves vis-a-vis the white gaze. They are forced to learn it in the US, but do not internalize it. If Black Americans talk about how US whites see us as all the same, it has little resonance for immigrants with little double consciousness. For black immigrants, especially from Africa, there is a process of learning how whites see you and deciding to consider in future social action. The development of a double consciousness is passed down across generations for Black Americans through ethnic socialization in the US. A double consciousness is very much a US phenomenon and shouldn't be taken for granted as the only way to be black in the world.
Chinyere Osuji‏

The thing some people WILL NOT understand is that avoiding the word "racism" won't make racists listen. Nothing will. You can't reason with it. Bigotry at its core is *irrational*. They got there thru fear; nothing to do with logic. It's a panic attack... that harms others. What we ought to do with bigots? Put them in the societal equivalent of a "calm-down" room. What we actually do? Put them in political office.
N. K. Jemisin‏

I largely ignore popular discourse about Black people's relationships, families, etc. How can you [participate in the discourse] when antiblackness is rampant? A strange nation that invented an entire fake disease to explain why we'd run away from slavery (drapetomania) honestly has nothing to say. There's no conversation about how the current regime's immigration policies affect Black immigrants, especially Black Muslims.
Ebony Elizabeth

do y'all remember in-depth stories checking in with black voters every week while obama was in office?
Mazel Tov Cocktail‏ @AdamSerwer

White people admonishing black people to be colorblind is like the walking telling those shackled to the ground to ignore the restraint.
Charles M. Blow

It's not that I have to talk about race. It is that I have to talk about power. And in talking about power, I then have to talk about race.
Angela Dye, PhD‏ @ejuc8or

As of 4/1/17 police have killed 303 people in the US. News coverage has decreased. The violence has not #WhyIResist.
Samuel Sinyangwe

Myth: Racism declines with time.
Reality: Racism adjusts, falls and rises in line with prevailing political norms.
Khaled Beydoun

If white America is in ‘crisis,’ what have black Americans been living through?
Gene Demby‏

I tried not to pay attention to the Kendall Jenner/Pepsi ad thing, but a few tweets got through, nonetheless:

The Pepsi ad is not "wrong." It's dead right as a archetype of how many white folx view justice. Purchaseble. Accessible.
BigIndianGyasi‏

*smiling black man approaches cops with gift of Pepsi*
Subsequent headline: No Charges Against Officers Who Thought Pepsi Can Was Gun
Jason Miller

Just occurred to me that the Trumps and the Kardashians are the exact same kind of people.
Robert O. Simonson‏

There was another set of tweets specifically about the travesty of United Airlines dragging a passenger off an airplane:

White people talking about "compliance" [with authority] is like ringer at the shell game talking about their winnings. The game only works that way for you.
jay smooth‏

Fascism doesn't look like jackboots dragging a man off a plane. It looks like people defending it.
@EmilyGorcenski

Take note of the people in your life who think that guy "should've just got off the plane.”
These are the people who report their neighbors.
so-called "simon"‏ @stillwellgray

Imagine sitting down at a restaurant, paying for meal up front, then being told to leave the table so an employee can eat your meal instead.
Matt McDermott‏

RE: United Airlines but also much more: our nation's airports and transit systems = a petri dish for cultivating compliance, indifference to state violence. It's visible in the actions of Customs and Border Patrol, in the absurdity of security theater protocols, the power-tripping of many TSA personnel. We queue up, willingly, to have our bodies scanned, touched and searched, we're crammed into ever more contorted spaces - and we accept it all.
Moreover, these spaces = murky ecology of both public institutions and private enterprises, with huge subsidies yet relying on low-wage workers. Unsurprisingly (and terrifyingly), they're also where we see ever-increasing limit-testing of respect for legality and basic rights claims, which take advantage of both dubious public/private structures and, even more importantly, a cultivated ethos of exhaustion and alienation.
I know we like to imagine we're all going to resist "Fascism" when it shows up but when TSA or CBP pulls someone out of line in front of you to take away for questioning, pretty much all of us have been disciplined instead to be busy being pissed about taking off our shoes. And even so, many responses to the video of this man being brutalized are about accepting the frame, the terms of system, seeing it as outlier, an excess. "They went too far" "Why do they overbook" "Why didn't they offer more money" "I will boycott United.”
Sure, these make some sense, but the blunt reality is that, legally speaking, they can do pretty much ALL of this and, normatively speaking, our years of acceptance of runaway security culture (and other trends) means that we've cosigned their doing it. Namely: what many decry as exceptional behavior (by state, corporations, and bystanders) in these specific spaces (airports, transit) are in fact de rigueur parts of life in countless other spaces in the U.S., signally with regards to policing and control in marginalized communities. Violent disciplining of people simply moving from point A to B isn't just for planes and in terminals: it's for buses, schools, and sidewalks too.
Patrick Blanchfield‏

we make glorious flying machines that can cross seas and mountains — and then leave insufferable bigoted shitheads in charge of who can fly
Saladin Ahmed‏

I just want someone from United to explain the phrase "refused to volunteer" to me.
Alt-Thin Brown‏ @jteeDC

There were just a few about education:

Amazing how homework defenders get away with saying “Maybe no academic benefit, but homework teaches self-discipline, responsibility, time management…” Zero research support. In 12+ yrs I've been unable to find a single study that supports this folk wisdom about homework having nonacademic advantages.
Alfie Kohn‏

Merit pay is offensive. It is driven by belief student learning is mostly about effort and within teacher control. Both are false.
Paul Thomas‏ @plthomasEdD

The Charter Paradox: Charters claim "We need to be relieved of bureaucracy, have professional autonomy to INNOVATE!" If that is true, JUST GIVE THAT TO ALL PUBLIC SCHOOLS!!!
Paul Thomas‏ @plthomasEdD

Don't arm school police.
ACLU National

And a small set specifically about climate change:

The question that climate change skeptics and deniers can never answer is: Why not just be on the safe side?
Robert O. Simonson‏

Global warming doubt among Americans has fallen to a record low 15%, as temperatures climb.
Brookings

Today, for the first time since the lights came on, the UK has gone 24 hours without coal-fired generation.
Bill McKibben

The globe hasn't had a cool month in 628 months:


Climate Central

In 2016 alone, US solar created more new jobs (51,000) than there are coal miners still working in the US (50,200).
David Roberts

As usual, I flagged quite a few tweets about livable, sustainable cities:

Thousands of years creating cities for PEOPLE; last 80 for cars and destroying the "people" in cities. Walk, bike, use public transit. People first.
G_Penalosa‏

Simple solution: make buses fare-free and respond to demand. Why is it not being done? Because too many powerful people profit from sprawl.
Free Public Transit‏

Drivers are like 2-year-olds on every level. "Make roads smooth so I can smash them again with my car! Smash smash!!"
Father Sonn‏ @mikesonn

Inconvenient parking is inherent to walkable urbanism; unwalkability to ultra-convenient parking. Both can be mitigated, but not eliminated.
Rik Adamski‏

How do place-making and walkability go together? Window transparency: 70–90% glass at street level makes pedestrians feel much safer.
@saintpaulbike

Giving examples of road diets throughout the country. Business jumps 30%, noise drops 70%, crashes drop by half. Seattle has done over 40 road diets to date. Has found that the more diets they do, the more neighborhoods want them.
@saintpaulbike

Enhanced crosswalks are eight times more visible than parallel lines:


@saintpaulbike

Stop proclaiming support for things like equity or safe walking or biking if you aren't going to make the real harder choices to support it. At a certain point, which doesn't take very long, you really aren't for those things if you don't change current practices. Period.
Heidi‏ @laflaneuse

"Parking influences the way cities look and how people travel around them, more powerfully than almost anything else."
Strong Towns‏

I think you all know how I feel about home values and the city's role. But I'll say it again: THE CITY OWES YOU NOTHING ON YOUR INVESTMENT.
Father Sonn‏ @mikesonn

Safety is achieved not by removing "marginal" people (except the few who are dangerous) but by attracting many different kinds of people.
Rik Adamski‏

Cities mandating that stores charge shoppers 25¢ for each bag but not a penny for parking is an interesting climate action priority.
Alex Steffen

Demanding ample free parking in intense urban places is as unreasonable as demanding booming nightlife in the country and must be called out.
Rik Adamski‏

When people have transportation choice, they will discover the subsidy of cars too much burden.
Free Public Transit‏

We don't build the way we do in the US because it's inherently "more affordable." If it were, the rest of the world would build this way, too.
Rik Adamski‏

Traditional towns feel good to people, not because of nostalgia, but because they derive from millennia of trial and error (i.e. ancestral wisdom).
Rik Adamski‏

Cars are like cigarettes. Our kids and grandkids will be shocked that so many lives were taken by them, and that we enabled it at every step.
Christina Morrison

For all the buzz over "first mile/last mile" strategy, transit works best when it can be reached on foot.
TransitCenter‏

Human birthrate must fall, and fast. Make cities car-free, educate all children, improve child health. But capitalism is busy with oil wars.
Free Public Transit‏

Again: move people, not vehicles:


21st Century City‏ @urbanthoughts11

This month, there were enough tweets about women to warrant their own section:

Summary of the hashtag #ThingsOnlyChristianWomenHear: "Christianity teaches that men are in control of everything except their own sexual desires."
Adam Gaylord‏ @AuthorGaylord

Dress modestly because men are too weak. Also men are in charge of you because they are spiritually superior #ThingsOnlyChristianWomenHear
Stephanie Long‏ @Stephanielong85

These [lost] retail jobs — in clothing and apparel, department store, etc — are disproportionately held by women, and women of color in particular. The political salience of an industry is tied to how that particular kind of work is raced and gendered. A jobs crisis that hits women, and black women in particular, will not inspire the same national attention as one that hits white men. You won't have politicians barnstorming the country promising to reopen [all the closed] malls and department stores. And this is beyond the fact that the perceived worth of those jobs — what we think laborers can expect in compensation — is also tied to this. (See the incredulity and outrage in some quarters at the idea that a fast food worker deserves a living wage.)
Jamelle Bouie

Over 11,766 women have been killed in domestic-violence homicides since 9/11.
The Nation‏

Teach yourself not to be obsessed with your daughter's sexuality. Even when it's cloaked in religion it's creepy as fuck.
(((MissysaurusRex)))‏ @missykaybm [replying to a tweet that read, “Teach your daughters to keep their virginity until marriage. Even on products it's written 'do not purchase if seal is broken’.”

I have literally never heard a woman refer to anyone as a "beta." Only men’s rights activists do that.
@peatonx

Unequal pay leaves many low-income African American women without a ladder to economic security. #EqualPayDay:


@MomsRising

Street harassment goes beyond sexual abuse. Its a systematic effort to keep women off the streets, limit their access and deny agency.
Trisha Shetty‏

I am so much more likely to buy goods from a company that treats its workers well, than a company that touts feminism in its marketing.
Ashley C. Ford

It was a month of outrage and defensiveness about the nature of free speech:

Free speech is NOT anybody gets to say anything any time. To watch so-called smart people act as if it is = embarrassing. In the US wealth determines who gets to speak and whose speech matters. THAT is the damned problem, not hate-monger Coulter being shut down.
Paul Thomas‏

You know who goes around saying you have a moral obligation to engage with people behind podiums? People behind podiums.
Angus Johnston‏ @studentactivism

Please remember that right-wing outrage at "intolerance" is entirely disingenuous and serves only to guilt people into allowing them back in.
Vex, Night Creature‏ @andreuswolf

Racism is not a "viewpoint that deserves to be heard." How many times must this be said?
roxane gay

And, last of all, the best of the rest:

Never underestimate where you will encounter genius: my cashier at Cub [supermarket] made lyrics about my groceries while ringing me up (in two languages).
Carolyn Porter‏ @porterfolio

OG range map for American Bison:


William Lindeke‏

More young Republicans know a millionaire (28%) than even one Muslim (22%). Fascinating stats on political sorting.
Brian Klaas

[In the] Audit of North Carolina’s 2016 vote, they found 1 fraudulent vote would've been prevented by voter ID law. Out of 4.8 million cast. Voter ID laws are the real fraud.
George Takei

On this day in 1886, the New York Times declared the fight for the 8-hour work day "un-American" and said it would lead to gambling and debauchery.
Nat Sowinski‏

Use of "politically incorrect": a smug way to imply the problem is with those who are offended, not with the offensiveness of the comment/behavior itself.
Alfie Kohn‏

Why numbers are sometimes better than words.
What people think you say “almost certainly,” “probably,” or “highly unlikely”:


Max Roser

cancer ain't a damn battle it's biology
Xeni Jardin

When you've harmed someone you really can never go wrong with the "listen, apologize, and listen some more" strategy.
wikipedia brown‏ @eveewing

75% of the US STEM workforce is white. 49% of the workforce is white men. White men are 31% of US population.
Dr. Chanda @IBJIYONGI

If the world were a 100 people, over 2 centuries. As we muck around in our daily tribulations, good perspective:


jennifer keesmaat

Obtaining a #voterID requires financial resources — disposable cash low-income workers just don't have. #RestoreTheVRA:


Democracy Awakening‏

As far as I can tell, a "snowflake" is just anyone you're mad at online who spells better than you.
Molly Hodgdon‏ @Manglewood

Have I mentioned my theory that Amelia Bedelia is secretly an anarchist performance artist intent on slowly destroying the Rogers' sanity?
Maggie Koerth-Baker

I think kindness is often confused with niceness. Niceness gets us nothing - kindness is about how we connect with people. Just my 2 cents.
Leslie Mac‏

Textile artist Magda Sayeg transforms urban landscapes by decorating everyday objects with colorful knit and crochet works:


@womensart1

In general, I'm a staunch believer that just because I had it more difficult than someone else, that doesn't mean they need that hazing.
Ebony Elizabeth

Honestly, if that guy thinks his [Wall Street] bull statue represents "freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love," he's really lost.
Robert O. Simonson‏

New York Times columnists now include two white men named David, a climate change denier, a man who supports banning abortion and zero women of color.
sean.‏ @SeanMcElwee

I think that I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a WHAT THE HELL IS THAT:


Darryn King‏

You can't start teaching slavery in 1619, or begin mentioning Native peoples and First Nations in 1492. Disservice. You have to start earlier.
You must teach:
1) There were viable African kingdoms that people were taken from, and
2) Native peoples had rendered the Americas habitable.
For instance, enslaved Africans actually came with agricultural skills and trades. Humanity *came from Africa.* Those were ironworking cultures.
And the so-called "breadbasket of America" had supported agricultural civilization that "mysteriously collapsed" (from new disease epidemics).
Teaching that the Americas were empty lands, and that the Africans brought here in chains to work them were stupid really isn't what happened. Native peoples and First Nations had been on these continents for at least 14,000 years. Africans were on ours since the human species began. It's revisionist history to pretend that humans who had been just fine since the dawn of time were improved by that violence. Miseducation.
None of these places were empty before they were conquered. Neither were they dysfunctional; otherwise, there would've been no one *there.* The mistake is to assume that what we became after disastrous encounters with conquerers, settlers, and slavers is what we have been always.
If you teach that, you're part of the problem. Because you're not teaching what actually happened, and why. You cannot teach those initial encounters the way that we were taught them - that European imperial victories were totally assured. Late medieval and early modern Europe was NOT (!!!) Europe of the late 18th, 19th, and early 20th century. The scales weren't that unbalanced yet.
Ebony Elizabeth

The most daring thing to do with your life is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Kurt Vonnegut‏

Your perspective is not the truth.
Daily Zen‏

There are two distinct stories. Manufacturing share has been been declining for 50 yrs. That's automation. The plunge from 2000-2007 was trade.
Dean Baker

Christianity died when "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?" replaced "Do you belong to the saving community of Jesus?" Christian faith is personal not individualistic, public not privatistic. It means you belong to a community and there are expectations of you.
Renita Weems‏ @somethingwithin

We win the war of ideals every time if we ground it in peace, love, education and equality.
BigIndianGyasi

Y'all get mad about SINGLE PAYER? For 10% the price of Iraq War, every American could have platinum health care. Wake up.
Mike Cernovich

Jessie Newbery (1864-1948), Scottish Arts and Crafts movement artist and embroiderer, known as one of the 'Glasgow Girls’:


@womensart1

“I think that the biggest thing people need to embrace is discomfort.” —Roxanne Gay
Poets & Writers‏

I guess what I'm saying is that precarity + cults of personality has created a CLUSTER of what it means to be a "valuable" academic. And the anxiety and fear and competition this breeds means less emotional energy available to just focus on nurturing our own research.
Dr. Lucia Lorenzi‏ @empathywarrior

Pro-tip: Rikers Island bears the name of Richard Riker, the city recorder who sent blacks back to slavery in the south without fair trial.
Mara Gay‏

Nice eyelashes!


Faces in Things‏

"What I see is a society on the verge of collapse," said one of my international colleagues recently. They're not wrong. Either power will be shared, or this nation won't survive. We really are at a "change or die" moment. The crisis is here.
Ebony Elizabeth‏