And I’ve been here soaking it all in. Several thousand men, women, and children in downtown Detroit, and we can scarcely get a mention from the mainstream press, while the Tea Party continues to soak up bandwidth. I’d say “amazing” but of course it isn’t.
For those of you nearby I am presenting at a workshop on spatial inequality tomorrow (Friday) at 10am. The title of the workshop is “Borders, Buildings & Bounding: Cross Cutting Solutions to Displacement & Devaluation of Communities of Color.” I’ll be speaking about spatial inequality and its different forms, focusing on a dynamic called “municipal underbounding.”
In other news this week President Obama rolled out a new Fatherhood Initiative. I talked about it like a dog on NPR.
Well…not really like a dog. I’ve too much respect for dogs.
Thank you for getting that perspective out there on the NPR segment. I just KNEW I was going to hear others there prattle on and on with that dreaded phrase, “personal responsibility” — ugh! I remember Bill Clinton getting up in front of black audiences and using that phrase a lot too. And now with Obama using it so much, within the micro-focused argument that it represents so well, I agree with that point you made on NPR — it's an economic problem; that's a term used by the powerful, to avoid the real oppression being inflicted on the weak. *SMH*
Fiona McGillivray, before she passed away prematurely in 2008, published an outstanding book, Privileging Industry: The Comparative Politics of Trade and Industrial Policy (Princeton 2004). Though her book's purpose is “to explain which industrial groups receive preferential treatment through the redistributive effect of trade and industrial policy,” if one were to replace “industrial groups” with minority ethnic, or cultural, or socioeconomic groups, one might find that her theoretical system has no less explanatory power.
Her argument is summarized in the first chapter.
“The institutional features of the electoral rule and the strength of political parties play a key role in sorting the winners from the losers through two processes. First, the combination of the electoral rule and industry geography affects which industries legislators want to protect. That is to say, they induce preferences over which groups to protect. Second, the electoral rule and the strength of parties affect which industries legislators are able to protect. The legislative incentives created by these features determine how legislators' induced preferences are aggregated into actual policy.”
Replace 'industries' with 'minority groups' and you get the following.
The institutional features of the electoral rule and the strength of political parties play a key role in sorting the winners from the losers through two processes. First, the combination of the electoral rule and minority group geography affects which minority groups legislators want to protect. That is to say, they induce preferences over which groups to protect. Second, the electoral rule and the strength of parties affect which minority groups legislators are able to protect. The legislative incentives created by these features determine how legislators' induced preferences are aggregated into actual policy.
above
I found Obama's mouthpiece on the show to be a ridiculous human being. Being a father is not the most important role President Obama has; being the President of the United States is the most important role he has. There isn't a secret service person charged with jumping in front of a bullet so that Obama can make his kid's recital. If what this yahoo said were true, then every parent who has ever sent any of his or her children into the armed forces can be charged with being a bad parent.
The moral and political stakes in being a responsible person and a responsible parent are astoundingly complex, and casual platitudes about parenthood do more harm in economic and political policy than is fit to be discussed as a comment on a blog post. People are even scared to talk about the relation between the debt crisis and parents moving to areas that appear to have better schools. The way Americans talk out of both sides of their mouth with respect to parenting is a political and economic disaster. We don't know how to talk about the intersection of marriage and economics or family and politics, and the results of this poverty of serious discourse coupled with the over-abundance of platitudes is a nightmare.
Would love to hear more of what you thought of your US Social Forum experience. Its accomplishments, weaknessess, next steps. In a major process of analyzing and evaluating the experience from a variety of frameworks. The coverage that we did receive was an improvement from the 2007 USSF. Peace, Will Copeland
Apologies for responding a bit late. I’m going to post a radio interview I did while I was there. Then post a longer piece.