1,115 karma · joined November 23, 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case...
A RESOLUTION ACKNOWLEDGING THE RACIALLY EXCLUSIONARY PAST OF GOSHEN, INDIANA, AS A 'SUNDOWN TOWN'
WHEREAS the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America and the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. Flag establish liberty and justice for all in this nation;
WHEREAS the U.S. Census reported that the “Negro” population of Goshen in 1890 was 21, but by 1910 it was 2;
WHEREAS historical studies by multiple independent researchers confirm that Goshen was a “sundown town” for approximately the first two-thirds of the 20th century;
WHEREAS such towns excluded—often by social and cultural means, including police profiling—members of non-white racial and ethnic groups, particularly African Americans, from living in said jurisdictions or even being inside the city limits after sundown;
WHEREAS the Goshen City Utility, the Goshen Mayor’s Office, and the Goshen Chamber of Commerce put the City’s exclusionary reputation in writing in a number of publications from the mid-1930s to the late 1970s;
WHEREAS some real-estate developers and residents of Goshen subdivisions used and reinforced restrictive language in property deeds and covenants that kept African Americans from purchasing property and living in those subdivisions for several decades in the 20th century;
WHEREAS there is written, oral, and pictorial documentation that some Goshen residents did not support Goshen’s exclusionary attitudes and practices, but there also is written, oral, and pictorial documentation that a pro-white mentality prevailed among some of Goshen’s citizenry and leadership for many decades in the 20th century;
WHEREAS the Goshen Ministerial Association (GMA) in 1964 issued a public statement expressing dismay regarding residents’ fears of “Negroes” moving to Goshen—and called for open and fair housing;
WHEREAS healthy individuals and healthy communities are able to recognize past mistakes (“sundown town” activities in Goshen were and remain unacceptable and contrary to our U.S. Constitution), admit when they have been wrong, and resolve to make improvements in the future;
WHEREAS Goshen already has made significant progress in promoting racial equality—as symbolized by establishing in 1996 an annual Diversity Day and the Human Relations Commission (which had been part of the GMA), approving in 2000 the placement at Goshen’s City limits of welcoming signage that said “We Promote Tolerance” and “Embracing Diversity,” and instituting in 2004 the Community Relations Commission as part of City government;
WHEREAS the City of Goshen, Goshen Chamber of Commerce, Goshen Community Schools, Goshen College and others are working together to tell the compelling stories (past and present) of our increasingly diverse community—all for the good of Goshen;
AND WHEREAS Goshen residents are justifiably proud of how we seek to work toward the common good of everyone in the community—and in pursuing that goal the City of Goshen would be uncommonly great in acknowledging our community’s “sundown town” past.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2016/01/former-da...
>signs posted at their city limits reading, typically, "Nigger, Don't Let The Sun Go Down On You In ___."[1]
It wasn't just about finding a warm smile to greet you and a place to lay your head. It was about saving your black life by helping make sure you didn't find yourself at night in one of these sundown towns.
It was not / is not just in the southern U.S., as the link below attests.
False. We are there. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
To look at just one example, how long did it take to force Amazon to collect the kind of sales tax that mom and pop shops had to collect from the start?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/rumsfeld...
>5:27pm: Maybe my suicide at this, you now, a successful business man, not a NIGGER, will finally bring some attention to this very serious issue.
Nice intersectionalism there. /s
>Scott, initially, hadn’t wanted to be a mother — and in fact she’d been told she couldn’t be one. A doctor 10 years ago said that complications from a bladder surgery when she was a teen had rendered her infertile. Scott assumed it was true. And when, four years ago, she felt a spark for an old high school friend, she believed that they’d never be more than companions. Scott was working at a Walgreens at the time, giving out so many diabetes medications that she eventually noticed the symptoms in herself: fatigue, sleepiness, hunger. She went to the hospital. She didn’t have diabetes. A doctor told her she was pregnant.
>To churn out products more quickly, she plans to automate aspects of her production processes. Doing that requires a larger studio space with better ventilation, which Ms. Baskin said would be easier to find in California. So this month, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she plans to start a fabrication lab next year.
With rents the way they are, this seems ill-advised. Unless she's planning to take funding. Even then, I'm not sure why she'd want to spend gobs of it on rent.
RADDATZ: You'll be happy. I'll let -- I'll let you talk then.
Secretary Clinton, I want to talk about a new terrorist tool used in the Paris attacks, encryption. FBI Director James Comey says terrorists can hold secret communications which law enforcement cannot get to, even with a court order.
You've talked a lot about bringing tech leaders and government officials together, but Apple CEO Tim Cook said removing encryption tools from our products altogether would only hurt law-abiding citizens who rely on us to protect their data. So would you force him to give law enforcement a key to encrypted technology by making it law?
CLINTON: I would not want to go to that point. I would hope that, given the extraordinary capacities that the tech community has and the legitimate needs and questions from law enforcement, that there could be a Manhattan-like project, something that would bring the government and the tech communities together to see they're not adversaries, they've got to be partners.
It doesn't do anybody any good if terrorists can move toward encrypted communication that no law enforcement agency can break into before or after. There must be some way. I don't know enough about the technology, Martha, to be able to say what it is, but I have a lot of confidence in our tech experts.
And maybe the back door is the wrong door, and I understand what Apple and others are saying about that. But I also understand, when a law enforcement official charged with the responsibility of preventing attacks -- to go back to our early questions, how do we prevent attacks -- well, if we can't know what someone is planning, we are going to have to rely on the neighbor or, you know, the member of the mosque or the teacher, somebody to see something.
CLINTON: I just think there's got to be a way, and I would hope that our tech companies would work with government to figure that out. Otherwise, law enforcement is blind -- blind before, blind during, and, unfortunately, in many instances, blind after.
So we always have to balance liberty and security, privacy and safety, but I know that law enforcement needs the tools to keep us safe. And that's what i hope, there can be some understanding and cooperation to achieve.
RADDATZ: And Governor O'Malley, where do you draw the line between national security and personal security?
O'MALLEY: I believe that we should never give up our privacy; never should give up our freedoms in exchange for a promise of security. We need to figure this out together. We need a collaborative approach. We need new leadership.
The way that things work in the modern era is actually to gather people around the table and figure these things out. The federal government should have to get warrants. That's not some sort of passe you know, antique sort of principle that safeguards our freedoms.
But at the same time with new technologies I believe that the people creating these projects -- I mean these products also have an obligation to come together with law enforcement to figure these things out; true to our American principles and values.
My friend Kashif, who is a doctor in Maryland; back to this issue of our danger as a democracy of turning against ourselves. He was putting his 10 and 12-year-old boys to bed the other night. And he is a proud American Muslim. And one of his little boys said to him, "Dad, what happens if Donald Trump wins and we have to move out of our homes?" These are very, very real issues. this is a clear and present danger in our politics within.
We need to speak to what unites us as a people; freedom of worship, freedom of religion, freedom of expression. And we should never be convinced to give up those freedoms in exchange for a promise of greater security; especially from someone as untried and as incompetent as Donald Trump.
RADDATZ: Thank you, Governor O'Malley.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/19/3r...
Consider: -Recruiting-wise, tech is clearly in the ascendancy, from the kids who genuinely want to code to the MBA types who eschew Wall Street for SOMA.
-Media-wise, tech captures a huge share of mind. Consider the hagiography of Steve Jobs.
-Policy-wise, privacy and the Overton Window. Allegations like PRISM. Censorship. Social media's role in political upheavals from the Arab Spring to ISIS recruitment.
For all these reasons it's not only shocking when people find out about tech's corruption. That corruption also matters immensely to the direction in which the world moves.
It may be time to change strategy. Is it the politicians holding the purse strings of the Army Corps of Engineers? It may be time to light a fire under their asses. Panicked constituents can do that.
>But the agreement could be an inflection point in human history: the moment at which, because of a huge shift in global economic policy, the inexorable rise in planet-warming carbon emissions that started during the Industrial Revolution began to level out and eventually decline.
So, is this really cause for celebration? This last paragraph reads as though there's no agency here. We agreed to half of what's necessary. Not to mention VW-type sleights of hand that mean we're not doing what we've said we would do in the past, when things were less dire.
-I wonder how they are dealing with the motorbike ban. Seems like quite the obstacle in a city like Lagos.
-I am fascinated by how other countries seem to be importing Black Friday from the U.S. to their shores. The U.K. is doing it too, I understand. I get the retailers' motivations, but I hope these societies never find themselves in the position of America's extreme affinity for it. To me it's a sad spectacle.