I called your office at around 10:06 am on Wednesday, November 18 to leave a message for you. When I asked the young woman to read my first sentence back to me, I was cut off. This leaves me with no choice but to publicly make my statement in the hopes that it somehow gets to you.
My statement:
Your position to refuse Syrian refugees is nothing but shameful pandering to small minded people. It reinforces the stereotype that the Republican party is racist at its core. I ask that you reconsider your position and publicly "evolve" on this issue in a manner consistent with basic human decency.
Thank you.
Dr. Neenah Estrella-Luna
East Boston Homeowner
&
Assistant Teaching Professor
Law and Policy
Northeastern University
We find ourselves, yet again, with a special election. I thought I would simply stay out of it this time. No helping with debates. No meeting with candidates. It didn't help that the candidates were largely a similar cast of characters from previous elections. The fact that there are no female candidates for the Democratic party nomination, and only one Latino candidate, is disheartening.
Joe Ruggiero believes in many of the things that I believe in. He answers many questions about policy issues in the way I’d hope a first time candidate would. He’s running for office for reasons that I can identify with. The takeaway from my conversation with him is that he has a deep well of empathy, something I don’t get in some of the other candidates.
Adrian Madaro also believes in many of the things that I believe in. His understanding of public policy as a tool for addressing social problems is indisputable. His vision for East Boston is very clearly articulated and one I can support. He seemed more comfortable with different groups of people than some of the other candidates.
There are many ways to choose a candidate. I will not choose a candidate based on their family history. You could be related to Adolf Hitler or Mother Teresa and that does not make you an inherently good or bad candidate. We cannot control who we are related to. We can only control what we choose to believe in and act upon. Candidates cannot always control who supports them either. I have previously supported candidates despite the fact that a well-known bigot supports that candidate too. While I pay attention to financial contributors, I’m less interested in who supports a candidate than the candidate’s perspective on the role of government in solving social challenges.
The process by which we come to our choices matter as much as the choice itself. In this election cycle, there seemed to be fewer debates and more forums. The forums that I attended were structured in a way that appeared to have prevented most of the antagonistic behavior that turns people off. The small group discussions, the crowd control, and the provision of translation (however awkward) at most of the forums are an incredible improvement compared to years past.
Equally important, and what really helped me make my decision, was that there were better questions asked in this election. The questions focused on policy issues that a state representative would have to deal with. The forums I attended asked direct questions about what a candidate would do and why. This helped with distinguishing candidates on the issues that mattered to me.
How I made my choice
In the end, the primary basis upon which I chose between these two good men was what they (said they) believe is the role of government versus the role of the “market” in solving social problems. I do not believe that government “has all of the answers.” But I also strongly believe that unregulated markets are dangerous to a free and equitable society. I believe that public institutions should play a central role in addressing social and economic problems. So I have a real problem with the blanket statements that “taxes are too high” or “governments shouldn’t tell landlords how much to charge in their rents.”
I simultaneously believe that we should be judicious in the use of different policy tools. What I want for my neighborhood is an elected official who understands that addressing most public problems and social challenges is really complex. And, as a result of that complexity, there is never any tool that should ever be off the table.
My suspicion is that the negative reaction to things like taxes or rent control is based more on the idea of taxes and rent control, not on an actual assessment of specific tax policies or rent control mechanisms. When given the choice, I’m going to have to go with someone who can demonstrate the understanding that there are policy tools, like rent control, and there is the actual policy itself, like regulation on rent increases by properties owned by investment funds. This is the difference between understanding that a wrench is a tool, but you can select between adjustable wrenches, pipe wrenches, and box wrenches depending on the object you need to turn. You might be able to use a plier, but that might not work as well as a wrench.
In the end
So, in this election, I will be supporting Adrian because he seems to understand this.
I hope that East Boston continues this trend of respectful, civic engagement. It feels like this election was done in a way that allows neighbors to make well-supported choices and make different choices and still be neighbors. We did it pretty well this time around. Let’s keep getting better at it.
The decision to not indict Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown left many of us who work to create social justice numb with despair and anger.
I am angry at the lack of indictment because it happened the night before the Massachusetts governor signed a historic executive order on environmental justice. Instead of being able to celebrate a five year long effort to get this executive order signed, our spirits were dampened by the reminder that as far as we have come, we have so much farther to go. It robbed us of the much needed pause to rejoice in our victories by throwing in our face that the struggle is not over.
I am angry at the lack of indictment because it demonstrates yet again that institutional racism is alive and well. It shows the lengths that people of privilege will go to maintain their privilege.
I am angry at the lack of indictment because it so obviously displays the vigorous resistance to the idea that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect AND that everyone must be held accountable for their actions.
Source: Khalaf, L. (2014). Police Actions Illustrated. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/linakhalaf4/status/502337829218033664
I am angry at the lack of indictment because I detest the manipulation of the law and that our legal institutions are structured in a way that allows the law to be manipulated in order to privilege powerful groups and continue to marginalize others.
I am angry because the lack of indictment is just the most recent in a long line of decisions that continue the oppression and domination of vulnerable groups of people. These include:
Laws that sentence black and brown men to longer jail terms for possessing different forms of the same illegal substance.
Policies that allow higher income women to take time off after birth or adoption but require impoverished women to work in order to receive increasingly less valuable social welfare support.
And I despair because the decision to not indict Darren Wilson is completely unsurprising. Few police officers are ever indicted, much less convicted, for abuse of power.
One must have hope if we are to continue the struggle. What have we accomplished despite the rage against progress so clearly illustrated by the lack of indictment?
Several municipalities and states have passed laws that allow all workers to have access to paid sick time off. That’s good for all of us.
Many municipalities and states around the nation are increasing their minimum wage laws to better support the families of low income workers. That’s especially good for people of color, the elderly, and immigrants.
At least two federal courts have found that law enforcement agencies can be held liable for unlawful detention if they comply with ICE detainers. These “requests” have been the primary way in which undocumented workers have been “caught” and sent for deportation. Some courts have also held that these detainer requests may be unconstitutional.
And here in MA, our governor signed an Executive Order requiring that all executive agencies take seriously the issue of environmental justice, something ACE has been working on for over five years. This opens the door to more vigorous enforcement of environmental laws and a more equitable distribution of environmental benefits.
Those of us who work to bend that arc of history did this. Those who voted for these laws did this. Those who voted for those policymakers did this. Those of us who spent years working days, nights, and weekends did this. Those who spent precious time and money on food, busses, babysitting, and printing posters, buttons, and t-shirts did this. We did this.
We did this.
Yes, it does not look good out there. In fact, it looks bad. But we’ve been here before. And we are not in the same place we were yesterday.
Governor Deval Patrick Signing Environmental Justice Executive Order
There is a Facebook page in my community that is labeled as an open discussion page. It was created in response to what was viewed as suppression of speech on the official pages of the different neighborhood associations. The moderators of the neighborhood associations' pages refused to allow certain conversations because certain topics inevitably degraded into ad hominem attacks, racist or otherwise bigoted rants, and generally reduced participation by many members of the community. In some cases, they even blocked participation from individuals who refused to comply with the rules. Some members of our neighborhood saw this as "censorship" and created the open discussion page.
A quick review of the open discussion page finds a lot of complaints about litter, dog poop, double parking, and other standard complaints of urban living. There are your basic questions from newer residents asking for reviews of local merchants or recommendations for local car repair shops. Unsurprisingly, the majority of content is pretty banal.
But mixed in with these are rants from people who can't stand that the immigrant community they just moved into (or in some cases, lived in their entire lives) is full of immigrants. Or there are tirades from people who are just shocked that the only neighborhood they could find a house or condo they could afford actually has low and moderate income people living right next door. Or diatribes from people who wonder why this neighborhood didn't magically turn into a professional, upper-middle income enclave after they moved in. Sometimes these individuals use veiled or coded language. Sometimes they do not.
I believe that the people who use social media to air their views about "those people" are a minority in my community. I believe that they resort to Facebook because the feeling of social distance appears to protect them from the consequences of their words. At the same time, I also believe that these "open discussion" Facebook pages magnifies their views and makes it look like there are more people in this community who are racist, classist bigots than there really are.
I choose not to participate on this page. Occasionally, I see a thread because a friend will comment or like something and it shows up in my feed. I generally ignore it because I don't really need to proof that there are people who don't know how to engage in civil discourse. I don't need further confirmation that some people believe that racism is only about black versus white. I certainly don't need any more evidence that we still have some work to do to foster an inclusive sense of community in my neighborhood.
Those of use who are frequently the targets of intolerance become sensitive to the coded language of prejudice. Those of us who are not often (or ever) discriminated against, but who empathize and are allies in cause of social justice, are similarly alert to the many covert ways biased views are expressed. You are never sure whether a comment or post is intending to be racist, sexist, or classist. It's like when you are a person of color, you are never sure that when you are seated at the back of the restaurant whether it is because that is where the next available table was or whether that's where they always seat the people like you. The constant uncertainty about the intentions of other people can be overwhelming. If you've never lived like this, it may be hard to understand how your words could come to mean anything other than what you believe you intended to say. And the misunderstandings grow to a point that it makes community building difficult or impossible. Once we've all thoroughly offended each other, it is that much harder to trust each other.
I understand the desire for an unmoderated space where neighbors can talk about whatever they want to talk about. However, in diverse communities, there is both diverse communication styles and a lack of common experience. Without a sincere commitment to understanding each other, and without the tools necessary to do so, open discussion pages only appear to amplify retrograde views by the very few bigots in my neighborhood or contribute to the distrust between neighbors.
When I talk about gentrification, I am specifically talking about the systematic displacement of low income people, who are – in the modern era – mostly people of color or immigrants. When I talk about gentrification, I am specifically talking about the displacement of people who are vulnerable because they are politically, socially, or economically insecure and marginalized.
I want to start off by stating that not all revitalization or redevelopment results in displacement. For years, there was a lot of debate in the scholarly community about whether the negative impacts of gentrification do in fact happen. And there was conflicting evidence because displacement seemed to be found in one place but not another. However, recent research suggests not all gentrification is alike. Most importantly, the kind of gentrification that I am most concerned about – the kind that involves displacement – happens most often where there is the kind of large scale developments that we see in Chinatown, Dudley, and also in East Boston. By the way, that’s not to say that the displacement that has happened in South End isn’t real but that there are clearly different mechanisms at work there. Just like you can break your leg by falling off a ladder or by getting into a car accident, there are different ways that displacement can occur.
Now, it just so happens that the same people who are at risk of displacement through “revitalization” or “redevelopment” are also the people who live with and fight against environmental injustice.
Historically, the focus on environmental injustice involved the siting of noxious or polluting facilities – hazardous waste sites, trash transfer stations, power plants, large scale hog farms in rural areas. In this conception of environmental injustice, the injustice occurs through disproportionate environmental exposures of some kind. This way of thinking about environmental injustice allows us to easily see how activities that create pollution and other safety hazards become environmental justice issues.
It is why, for example, residents and business owners in Dudley Square are legitimately concerned about the redevelopment of Ferdinand Building and nearby abandoned properties. Not only does "successful" redevelopment raise the specter of increased car traffic and its attendant pollution and safety risks, but it also raises the risk of gentrification and displacement. Dudley Square residents and small businesses have every reason to be skeptical. These large scale redevelopments, all of which are subsidized by our tax dollars, have rarely resulted in an improvement in the quality of life or opportunity for low income communities or communities of color where these developments are targeted.
However, in the face of climate change, the disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards operate a little differently. When we talk about who is vulnerable to the negative impacts to climate change, some people would like to argue that it is everyone. OK, that is technically correct, in the same way that it is technically correct that I am also vulnerable to dying from the flu. Except that the real risk of my dying from the flu is pretty small. And that is because I have really good health insurance, I am wealthy enough to be able to eat a healthy diet, and I am privileged enough to have the time to exercise – which full disclosure since my husband may be in the audience, I really don’t do to the extent I probably should. But I still have great health insurance, which is one form of resilience.
So, when we talk about who is really vulnerable to the storm surge, flooding, and heat waves that we can expect here in Boston as our climate continues to change over the next few decades – it is the people who are least resilient who are really the most vulnerable. It is those who are politically, socially, and economically marginalized and insecure. The people who do not have good health insurance. The people who have to work several jobs to feed and clothe their families. The people who do not have access to fresh food, and even if they did, do not have adequate time to prepare a healthy meal.
How are these things – climate change, environmental justice, and gentrification – connected?
In East Boston, we have a weird thing going. We have a lot of abandoned waterfront land. And our entrepreneurial city government is eyeing that land as the next big redevelopment. Now, to be clear, I have yet to meet anyone in East Boston who doesn’t want something to happen on all of that abandoned land. It is ugly. It is dangerous. And it prevents us from having access to the water. So, of course we want that land developed. But we also want it developed responsibly, we want it developed in a way that does not increase the hazards that residents are already exposed to, and we want it developed in a way that does not displace current residents or make it difficult for the kind of diversity we have now to be maintained in the future.
But, what we see happening is that, the large scale developments, over 900 units of new housing, that are expected to fetch $3000 per month for 2 bedrooms are already impacting the rents. And not a single one of these developments has even been built yet. But, between February 2012 through February 2013, rents have increased 31% in East Boston, faster than any other neighborhood (although North Dorchester comes in close at 29%). And I can tell you stories of people that I know personally – young, college educated people – who have had to move out of the neighborhood to find an affordable place to live.
Now, the fact that the rents increased in this way even before these large scale developments have even rented their first apartment is not the weird part. The weird part is that all of these proposed developments that are pushing up rents are all located in the riskiest location: right on the waterfront. These developments are premised on the economic value of the waterfront; on the waterfront as an environmental amenity. And at the same, we are putting market and luxury rate housing right where sea level rise is happening. Or to put it another way, we are building housing, that is marketed for people who have the greatest ability to leave, in the place of highest risk to storm surge and flooding.
What makes this weird is that we can predict what is likely to occur. Wealthier folks, most probably young people – because this is not family housing being built – will move in. A superstorm Sandy type event or bigger happens. Their car, conveniently located in the basement level parking garage, is flooded out. They will have to survive on the island that East Boston will turn back into in the next big storm event for who knows how long.
Will you be surprised when these folks, who have the resources to leave their rented apartment, actually do? I won’t. And what will then happen? Will rents go down? Will maintenance fall off? Will it become abandoned? And what happens to the rest of my community? This is what we don’t know. We could know if we put the time and effort to find out, but we don’t.
My concern is that if these large scale developments are not built so that they are both resilient to climate change AND so that they build on the strong sense of community that exists in East Boston, we will have ironically created the potential for the kind of gentrification that may result in displacement in the short term, but in the long term leads to abandonment.
So, last night I performed an experiment. I wanted to test out whether Robert Axelrod's use of game theory in explaining the evolution of cooperation worked in the modern world of social media.
Axelrod has successfully shown that how we structure interactions with each other determine how effectively cooperation develops. Cooperation is viewed pretty expansively. I particularly like the description of the "Live and Let Live" phenomenon that existed in trench warfare during WWI.
The standard situation in game theory is the Prisoner's Dilemma.* The upshot of the game is that both parties benefit from mutual cooperation (e.g. live and let live) but one party could do better by exploiting or abusing the other. Repeated experiments have shown that all parties do better in the long run by cooperating, but each individual has the short term incentive to exploit the other. Axelrod provides four "suggestions" for promoting and sustaining cooperation, or non-exploitative, behavior.
Don't be envious. Axelrod argues that you shouldn't compare how well you are doing to how well someone else is doing. Instead, you should compare how well someone else could be doing in your shoes. The main lesson here is that you do not have to do better than others to do well for yourself.
Be nice. Here, Axelrod asserts that your default behavior should be to cooperate, especially if you are going to interact with that other person again. What's most important about this is that always starting off in the adversarial position creates an environment in which cooperation becomes a losing strategy. If you start off fighting, you'll be fighting all of the time.
Reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. The strategy that works best in the Prisoner's Dilemma is called Tit for Tat. Basically, it means that when other people are nice, be nice right back at them. But when they exploit or abuse you, you punish them. When they start cooperating again, you forgive. How much forgiveness you give depends on the environment. The willingness to forgive is itself exploitable unless you use a one to one reward/punishment strategy.
Don't try to outsmart other people. People respond to your behavior. If good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished, as Axelrod says, "...your own behavior is likely to be echoed back to you."
I have become curious about whether the structure of social media promotes cooperation or exploitation. People have written that at the same time that social media allows people to connect across space (think about friends or family across the world that you regularly interact with on Facebook), it also engenders a form of social distance that allows people to say things in social media that they would not say in a face to face situation.
In the next posting, I will describe the experiment and my lessons learned.
*In this game, two burglars are caught at the scene of the crime and interrogated separately. If both burglars cooperate with each other and keep their mouths shut, they would each spend only 1 year in jail. However, if one decides not to cooperate and implicates the other, he will not go to jail at all.
Some time ago, Snap Judgment, one of my favorite NPR programs, had a show about Daryl Davis who befriended a few KKK Grand Wizards. Through simply trying to understand how they could hate him before they knew him as an individual, he managed to convince at least three to give up their robes.
I admire this.
Recently, I saw a TEDx talk by Ash Beckham whose message was that your hard isn't any harder than anyone else's hard. Your hard may be disclosing that you are gay, or being an undocumented immigrant, or fearing hordes undocumented gay immigrants moving into your neighborhood. But, as she says, there is no harder. There is just hard.
I admire this.
And even today, I happened upon an RSA video of Brene Brown brilliantly explaining the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy acknowledges, but also disconnects one from others. Empathy requires connecting with the feelings of the other.
I admire this as well.
I also read an article about Mandela written upon the event of his death. The author recounted the story of Mandela looking after and keeping clean a fellow prisoner suffering from a stomach illness. The message in the article is that it is insufficient to remember. What is demanded of all of us is to act to facilitate social justice and honor the dignity of other human beings. And, of course, to forgive.
This I admire and want to emulate.
And as someone who teaches and works at the intersection of social relations, community development, law and policy, and public health, I encourage engaging in respectful discourse that allows empathy to develop. I read about it, especially in relation to race/ ethnicity, gender, and class. I write about it. I participate in lots of activities that demand facilitating this exact thing. I do research that requires that I put myself in a non-judgmental position (and I am pretty good at this). And, as a college professor, I teach it at every level and every opportunity.
And yet, openness, empathy, and forgiveness are difficult to practice outside of my "work." I can listen to a participant in one of my studies talk about how a specific group that I belong to are "the problem" in society. I can analyze this and relate it to a variety of theories that situate such reactions in ethnocentrism, political manipulation, mass media hysteria or some combination therein. And I can even encourage everyone I work with to remember that "those people" are human beings and not caricatures of false consciousness. But I cannot handle intolerance outside of this.
So, there is this woman in my neighborhood. And she just says the most gawd-awful things, mostly about Latino immigrants. It doesn't take a whole lot of training in the subtle code language of xenophobia or regular reading in social theories of othering to see her behavior, especially online, as too closely aligned with folks who have landed in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence files.
And I know from my own training, ongoing engagement with development in social theory, and field research that her behavior is likely the result of fear and loss. Fear of people who she doesn't know or understand. Loss of standing in a community that has changed before her eyes. Fear of change, generally. Loss of a community that she once knew and that is not so slowly fading into the past.
But, to be frank, I can not let her behavior go unchallenged. She may very well be a nice person otherwise, but her statements and behavior in certain spaces are simply unacceptable While I can understand why she may act the way she does, I do not empathize with it.
I think this is the case because I associate these fears and this sense of loss with an undeserved sense of entitlement. I cannot give quarter to someone who wants to tell me, or people like me, whether I am entitled to be actively involved in this place that I have chosen to call my home. This is my community and you cannot tell me otherwise.
And so, I continue to work on promoting discourse, understanding, empathy, and forgiveness. But I do not confuse understanding with acceptance. I cannot tolerate intolerance, even when I understand where it is coming from. I believe that people should held accountable for their actions, especially with the words they use in social media. But I do hope that someone in this neighborhood is able to continue to engage in meaningful dialogue with this woman, at least for her sake. At this stage in my life, I cannot.
