Wednesday, November 30, 2005, 07:14 PM - Politics
CLEMENCY DENIED: Well, not a surprise after the tone of debate this weekend, but still a disappointment and a lost opportunity. Idealistic me thought clemency could still be about mercy or redemption not 'the facts of the case' and political calculus. The courts decided the facts; this should have been a moral decision, not a pragmatic one - not that I should expect much morality from our governor...read his denial of clemency here.
And, um, where were the Jesse and Joan and all those other protestors two weeks ago, when it might have made a difference?
Update: Mark Leno has introduced a bill (AB 1121) The California Moratorium on Executions Act that would halt Tookie's execution while the new bipartisan Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice consdiers problems in CA's death penalty system. Please do all you can to support the bill. More info at: ACLU Northern California Death Penalty Project
Saturday I went to San Quentin for a protest of the upcoming (mid-December) execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of the Crips and now transformed into a peacemaking children's book author. Snoop showed up and spoke briefly about how meeting with Tookie had made him change the way he thought about his influence on young people - sadly I don't think they talked about feminism and his impact on young women, but even a little modulation of the gangster ethos from one of its most prolific hiphop practitioners could make some positive change...
Either way, we shouldn't be killing anyone in San Quentin. Check out the Save Tookie website and write to Arnold requesting clemency.
Friday, November 18, 2005, 06:41 PM - Politics, Technology
So yesterday I wrote a conference proposal for dotOrganize - a social change technology initiative that I've been helping to get off the ground (find out more about that here), and I was proud of myself for crafting something with actual measurable objectives - x # of new collaborative projects, x# of people connected for ongoing peer support. It made me wonder how I've gotten this far in life without attending more conferences that had a point. Can we justify the environmental costs of travel to these kinds of events, when they tend to be so limited in their usefulness? In all the roles I've played in conferences and events (organizer, presenter, attendee), the worthwhile outcomes are the connections between people, not the content of the workshops. I tried to write something that would require actual work to be done, with real results - no doubt just one more example of my rampant idealism. I mean, I know it's important to meet new hotties that one can both make out and talk shop with, but I'd rather find them closer to home. Hopefully if we get this event funded, we'll find out if we can raise the bar...on all fronts.
OK, I lied, maybe it is sexy if Danah Boyd (who is clearly some sort of blog sage compared to my toddler status) is also writing about the challenges of making a good conference- especially in terms of limiting/ expanding social networks. Nice ideas about diversity of audience, and some support for my ideas about having attendees from multiple sectors at our planned event. I knew having all those great parties full of random people was preparing me for something...
Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 02:19 PM - Sex, Politics
So the NYT put the Plan B ridiculousness on the front page yesterday, but this is just the latest example of the blatant disregard for public health within this administration. It's pathetically ironic that they could actually REDUCE the number of abortions that happen by actively promoting the morning-after pill, yet they're so thoroughly anti-sex that they're unwilling to do so. The CDC's domestic and USAID's international HIV prevention efforts are less egregiously but still seriously stifled - where is the public support for needle exchange? Where is the honest acknowledgement of the complexity of sexual health? I'm terrified of what this means for our bioterrorism preparations - will we start giving purity tests before we hand out bird flu vaccine? Apparently there is a "Plan B for Plan B Act for 2005" being introduced in congress by CT's Chris Shays among others, but I can't find much in print on it - maybe just a clever pun? The article on it seems to have disappeared from Broadsheet...Monday, November 14, 2005, 07:51 PM - Politics
Still no results, of course, but we do seem to have been able to knock on enough doors with white non-local volunteers in Trenton to get some decent statistical power. We may have mucked up the validity by flukily recruiting a bunch of high school kids of color through their teacher - which meant the non-local same-race volunteer slots were also filled, just not by the groups that were in charge of them. This experiment could show the relative value of local vs. nonlocal volunteers of different race than the intervention community...although it also once again exposes the dreadful lack of coordination on the ground and the mess that volunteers usually walk into. Another argument for more training and coordinated efforts (and I think for giving volunteers themselves more authority in planning activities)I am verging on the militaristic in my organizational/logistical perspective on these things...or at least losing my patience with disorganization.Monday, November 14, 2005, 06:24 PM - Politics, Technology
The World Summit on the Information Society is happening this week in Tunis. Tunisia apparently has 10% of its population online, undoubtedly on the high end of the range for Africa (I would imagine South Africa must be higher?). I am fascinated by the MIT proposal for very low-cost hand-cranked laptops for distribution to students in developing countries - and clearly wireless solutions (whether through phones or laptops) are the right answer...the last thing we need is more cable strewn across the earth. Tensions over the control of the internet infrastructure by the U.S. are bubbling up again, unsurprisingly. At what point do technological underpinnings become an international public asset, and not a national prerogative? Kind of snarky piece in Foreign Affairs on the issue here.
Update: apparently there is a compromise document that leaves most of the structural control of things to the U.S., but creates some international advisory stuff...Here's the dreamy summit doc if you get off on bureaucracy porn.
Saturday, November 12, 2005, 08:03 PM - Politics
Saw Stephen Hawking speak today. It's been a long time since I wondered about the not-taken life path as an astrophysicist. I was Adam's faux date for Cambridge in America Day 2005 - interesting presentations on history of philosophy but I admit I was more engaged in a psych presentation on the science of well-being. Some discussion on indices being developed to measure community well-being, movements to include those indices along with economic indicators as measure of overall progress of societies. As one would expect, democracies result in more happiness for their constituents, but I doubt that the Swiss experiment Prof. Huppert mentioned holds here - they found that more referenda resulted in greater happiness...IO can't imagine that's the case in California politics. Brings me back to my ongoing low-level interest in how mental health indicators and particularly psychiatric medication impacts political engagement; I'd love to study how our polity is being changed by all those antidepressants....Thursday, November 10, 2005, 05:46 PM - Politics, Technology
So I attended three things over the last two days that I think fit together somehow...
The first was the first Net Tuesday hosted by Net2 - a project of techsoup that's trying to involve the nonprofit community in web2.0 - obviously a worthwhile concept, interesting plans, all very preliminary at the moment, potentially a very nice fit with dotOrganize. Crowd was very technoriffic, as expected, but which also brought home the yawning divide that still exists between people. And cute as flock was, I'm not sure it's the mechanism by which to bridge the gap.
Yesterday morning I got up terribly early to go see Malcolm Gladwell give UCSF grand rounds. The most interesting components of his message centered on how less information often leads to better decisions - somewhat anaethema to an enlightenment/technocratic sensibility, I think, but borne out in my experience of creating decision models on the campaign last year. More variables do not, I believe, always lead to better decisions, especially in a time-pressured context. There is a limit to regression as a tool, and it's too easy for the academic side of life to take over and value results that are significant but not important.
My last event was my first blogger call - with Chuck Schumer on the DSCC reaction to the election. (Why, pray tell, was I the only woman?) Although there were some interesting questions at the end, I'm not sure that people took full advantage of the situation - I certainly didn't. But the different levels of access that are available in the world, if you know who to ask always amaze me. And really, I wouldn't mind taking back the Senate. I do have to say my reaction to the call confirms my suspicion that my strenghts are all in structure, not content.
Wednesday, November 9, 2005, 12:48 PM - Politics
on Prop 73. But nonetheless successfull. I'm not really sure how to react to a post-election morning without agony, but I'd like to get used to this feeling.Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 05:02 PM - Politics
It's astonishing to me that it's only been a year since Election Day 2004. Thankfully I will not be standing in the rain in Copley Square tonight, but instead comfortably ensconced at Mighty, hopefully drinking to the first-ever defeat of a parental notification initiative. I so so badly want to feel the tide turning on restrictions on abortion, especially given what's likely to happen at the Supreme Court in January.
What should be in place by next year to make congressional and senate transfer of power possible?
- better coordination between national, state, local parties on list management, fundraising, etc.
- more sophisticated and personalized targeting (especially for non-party reg states and for independent and unlikely voters)
- improved media strategies that make use of diverse communication channels
- mechanisms developed to link the power of lateral, spontaneous organizing to infrastructure/ resources
- a voter mobilization project that incorporates online dating
- systems to link grassroots organizers to each other
- systems to facilitate events and DIY voter turnout, persuasion, and contact that also offer opportunities for community-building
- coherent strategies for disaffected sub/exurbanites. We have to be able to come up with something more appealing than the local megachurch, right?
- a better understanding of individuals' choices around party affiliation, trends among DTS/independents
- a simple and coherent progressive message to counter the self-serving corrupt greed of the hyper-elite. We need sexy, connected, positive, responsible.
- oh, and maybe a decent candidate or two??
Some of these things are in process, some already exist, some need lots of work. If I'm responsible, I'll try and look more deeply at each of these elements soon.
Monday, November 7, 2005, 01:03 PM - Politics
So I am moderately frantic today about what will happen today with Prop 73....guardedly hopeful that California will step up and be the first place to defeat a parental notification measure. Interesting to note that folks are also playing up the possible stem cell research implications of the 'unborn' language in the proposition - I will take any reluctant libertarian or patient advocate we can get on this one....Stem Cell Research and Prop 73 Back Next
