interviews
When Voting Fails
by Dr. Martha Jones
July 9, 2020
This interview with Dr. Martha Jones, a Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
frank | Hi! I’m curious to know what’s on your mind right now.
Dr. Martha Jones | I live in Baltimore, Maryland. It's where I teach and where I live. When the spring 2020 protests began, for a moment my city was of interest to the national media. As uprising began to break out in other places across the country, the country recalled that we had had a major uprising here in 2015 after the killing of Freddie Gray. And still, in 2020 national gaze quickly turned away when Baltimore didn't comport, somehow, with expectations. The demonstrations here didn't look like Minneapolis. They didn't look like Louisville. They didn't look like LA or New York.
Media is essential to amplifying and projecting the voices of the disenfranchised. At the same time, the media is moved by the sensational.
There is something untenable for me about the view that we must rise to the sensational in order to be heard.
It's not just that we have to raise our voices. We have to raise them, and that spectacle must be sensational before journalists will deeply partner and become embedded in the scene.
What did Baltimore teach itself in the time between Freddie Gray in 2015 and George Floyd in 2020?
It's important to say I didn't live here in 2015, so I'm learning in real-time about my city.
The city had not only its own sense of outrage but its own vision for how to be. This comes in part from the roles played by seasoned community activists, folks who were part of the 2015 uprising who are still here and have remained deeply committed. In 2020, they have helped to shape an extraordinary series of demonstrations here in Baltimore.
In Baltimore, we were also getting ready to elect a new mayor in June, though with a limited capacity to get to the polls. Maryland had committed to mail-in voting without much debate or objection. But there were troubles with getting the ballots into people's hands and getting the right ballots into people's hands, so in-person polling places had to be opened up. People, in the midst of protests, in the midst of a pandemic, showed up here in Baltimore to cast their ballots. That evidenced another side of the civic culture here. People were tuned in to the fact that there was an election, and people came out for that.
Participating in democracy need not be an either-or proposition. We can simultaneously be in the streets, engaged in direct protest, a democratic tradition in this country, and we can show up to the polls.
That is what I saw happening in Baltimore, and it happened in the midst of a pandemic that encouraged us to stay home and to do nothing at all. Of course, that is complicated by important public health concerns. But I think an insistence that democracy is a participatory culture and not simply a set of principles or a structure, is an important part of what I play out here in real-time.
How does civil unrest and protest lend itself to more civic participation?
The story of the 1960s is instructive for me. It was simultaneously the scene of voting rights and the scene of uprisings. The two facets of that time may not often be told together. But they were not wholly antithetical to one another at all. Immediately in the wake of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the number of African American voters grew importantly and significantly. It is that context that we move into an era of uprisings in cities like Detroit and Los Angeles and New York. Part of what can be learned by voting, are the limits of the ballot. Yes, political power is embodied in casting a ballot and in electing a candidate. At the same time, harnessing political power requires more than showing up at the polls. Demonstrations are another way of being heard and influencing law and policy. I am an historian of Black politics in 19th century Baltimore, which may seem like a very long time ago. Still, that history includes important lessons in how people created their own power in an era, time, and place when they could not vote at all.
I'm interested in what we do when voting fails us, which it almost certainly will.
On this, I draw from the lessons of African American women in history. African American women have been engaged with politics for a long time, and for most of that time, they could not vote. They organized, they lobbied, they used men as surrogates. And when by a state constitution, or the 19th Amendment, or the Voting Rights Act of 1965, they received legally sanctioned political power, they were ready. When African American women got the vote, they were ready to use it as fully formed political actors because they had been constructing their own power for a very long time.
I want to talk more about the prominence of Black women through the history of protest and civil unrest in America.
One of the moments most well known to people during the civil rights movement is the march in Selma, Alabama. Among the best remembered of those marchers, is a young man who is today among our most venerated members of Congress, John Lewis. Lewis was among the scores who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in the name of winning voting rights, only to be met with brutal police violence.
Behind the scenes was a Black woman named Diane Nash. She cut her political teeth organizing sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee as a student at Fisk University. She played a critical role in the work of the Freedom Rides in 1961 by sending young people from Tennessee further South to replenish the ranks of the Riders after many had been brutally attacked. It was Diane Nash who, long before Martin King and the SCLC assented to the strategy, came to Selma to wage a voting rights campaign.
Nash was an organizer, planner, and orchestrator, but we don’t see her photo as folks make that fateful march across the bridge. In those long moments, she was back in Selma making sure that there would be medics available when people are brutalized. To me, this is an example of a woman who taught us how leadership takes many forms. She taught that political leadership must embrace many forms of action. Nash never took the stage as a charismatic, upfront character. Still, she was someone who, when we look closely at the scenes in Selma, becomes critical to that story.
Contrast Nash with someone like Mississippi’s Fannie Lou Hamer. The two were peers but worked very differently. Hamer not only understood, she deliberately looked to exploit the cameras to propel her image, and her message, and project efforts to win voting rights in her home state and transform Democratic Party politics nationally. The two women worked by way of different philosophies and differing styles. They adopted divergent tactics even. Taking the work of Nash and Hamer as two parts of a whole during the Modern Civil Rights Movement helps us think in expansive ways about how political power can be won and how it can be wielded.
Looking back is one style more effective than the other?
It's difficult to say, because they are parts of a whole. The thing that knits them together, in some sense, is violence. Nash is deeply committed to nonviolent direct action, the sit-in, the march – but she still sees violence as essential. There's an often-quoted moment when she speaks with federal officials from Washington who tell her to desist from sending young people to join the freedom riders: “You know, we understand that we are walking into a brutal scene. The young people had made their wills the night before they left.” Hamer also knew violence and had a defining moment early in her career when she was stopped, detained, jailed, brutally beaten and sexually assaulted by police after attempting to register to vote.
The women I write about are all, each in their own way, wrestling with the violence that is woven into American politics. They know that violence will be directed unashamedly at their very bodies.
That core insight, one that sits at the foundation of Black women’s political consciousness, extends back to confrontations between enslaved women and their enslavers. In our own moment, the tragic killing of Breonna Taylor is the latest example of how Black women's bodies remain the targets of a brutal politics of violence. This thread runs through Black women's political philosophy and their practice, across time.
African American women have always been plagued by a specific form of violence: sexual violence. So many of the Black woman activists who I write about eventually explain their confrontations with either sexual violence or the threat of sexual violence. This not only informs their tactics, but sets the goals for political power must accomplish. When Tarana Burke gave us the Me Too movement in the 21st century, she was echoing a long-standing critique. Black women aim to use their power to end the scourge of sexual violence, a story that has an origin in the history of slavery but doesn't end with emancipation. It continues until this day.
Thank you for your time, I appreciate having this conversation.
One of the dangers of a conversation like this is to leave the impression either that nothing changes or nothing can change. I struggle with that. History is a tough endeavor in that regard. It is possible to look across two centuries and recognize what hasn't changed.
And still, I am inspired. Black women have been the conscience of this nation since its inception. They have studied the lay of the land. They have thought very hard about our founding ideals. They have also set the bar when it comes to what liberty, equality, and dignity mean. They have shared their ideas, pointing us where the bar is. Listen and Black women will remind you of the ideals that we all should aspire to, individually and collectively. The women I write about say no racism, and no sexism. Period. They say that in 1820 and have waited ever since for us to catch up as a nation. I've watched Breonna Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, speak, and I think I recognize something familiar in that act. She is an African American woman, representing her deceased daughter, and at the same time speaking to all of us about the violence which, as a nation, we must not, cannot, and should not allow.
There is nothing enviable about this position in body politic. And it's not enough. Still, voices that speak fundamental truths, that hold up indelible principles, that insist upon equality and dignity for all are absolutely essential. Someone has to set the bar high in a nation that has been built upon countless indignities and injustices.
Someone has to remind us that ideals animate this country, not interests, convenience, or pragmatism.
Someone has to do that. Black women took up that mantle in the earliest days of this republic and they continue to bear that burden even today, in the 21st century.
interviews
How FICO Limits Clean Energy
by Forrest Watkins
December 15, 2019
How do you, as a company, define energy democracy?
For us, energy democracy is really about giving power over our energy systems back to everyday people. We know that for the whole history of the energy industry, the benefits and the impacts of energy systems have been very unevenly distributed. Low-income communities and communities of color have confronted the worst impacts of pollution from energy and industry – to the extent that a 2017 study showed that the very structure of our cities has been informed by which sectors of the city are downwind, and where the pollution will blow and have the most impact.
To this day, there are millions of people that lack access to electricity. Even in places where we think of our electric grids as robust and well-developed, like in the U.S., low-income households frequently experience energy poverty, where they don't necessarily have the money to adequately heat their homes. And this has real impacts on people’s health and livelihoods, especially those of children and families.
When we're working on energy democracy, we’re trying to ensure that the next iteration of our energy systems can reverse that dynamic, and really put the people that have been marginalized in fossil-fueled energy systems, at the core of the transition to clean energy.
On a practical level, that means that when we're building out solar and wind energy infrastructure, we need to make sure that low-income communities, communities of color, are included in the benefits of those energy projects, and equally importantly, that they have a say in the development of those projects. When there's a project going into our communities, whether it's a solar project or a gas pipeline, we really need to make sure they have a say in how that develops, and whether it's developed in the first place.
Finally, it's worth calling out that movements for clean energy and environmental protection have pretty consistently undervalued the needs and objectives of communities of color, low-income communities and other marginalized people. Movements for energy democracy and environmental justice, on the other hand, has been led by these communities, from Afton, North Carolina in 1982 to present-day groups like PUSH Buffalo, Greenlining Institute, and campaigns like the Portland Clean Energy Initiative.
Why do you think there's such a lack of understanding about where our energy comes from and how the grid functions?
I think it’s the same thing with a lot of the really important, complex issues that we’re facing today. I care a lot about energy and have worked really hard over the last few years to do what I can to contribute to equity in the space, but I don't necessarily have the same level of understanding on agriculture, or on health systems.
But I also don't know that in-depth policy and resource understanding is necessary to increasing democratic control. If we build the transition to clean energy on the idea that everyone has to understand regional power markets, or utility resource planning schemes, or different regulatory processes, then I don't know if we're going to get there. But if we can give people an opportunity to say, "Yes, I want the choice to participate in this renewable energy program." Or, "Yes, I think if you have the chance to build out more renewable energy in the coming years, you should include that in your resource planning." There's lots of ways we can take the incredible public support for renewable energy, and translate it into smart policies that shape the future of energy.
How do you engage the unengaged in a conversation about transitioning away from a system they’re used to, and might not mind?
Solstice does a lot of the direct engagement in getting people signed up for local, community-shared solar arrays. We know what people are thinking about when they're making these decisions. What we see is people might have different motivations for supporting renewable energy, but they really, overwhelmingly support clean energy, and they don’t want to wait. For some people, it is a climate motivation, or making a more sustainable energy system. Other people, it's not that. Some people say, "I don't believe in climate change," or, "I don't believe that humans are even having an effect on the climate. But solar just makes sense, because it's less expensive, and it gives us more independence in your energy supply.” For some it's about that, the cost savings of energy independence
I think for us, when we’re thinking about our impact, we really want to engage with everyone in the transition to renewable energy, regardless of their specific motivations for it. When it comes down to it, I think people have heard this is the right way to go economically as well as environmentally. When we get on the phone with them, or are at the town hall events with them, it's not something where we have to do a tremendous amount of convincing.
Energy democracy is really tied to clean energy. But the move towards clean doesn't necessarily have to incorporate the ideals of energy democracy. There is a version of this that's corporate, and the power structures won’t change. Why is discussing power, when talking about energy, important?
What we've seen so far in the solar industry, though, is that the early adopters who are able to make these decisions, are generally people with higher income, and the time to shop around and make a good investments decision. In many states, a lot of the wind and solar deployment is being driven by big, investor-owned utilities.
It can be argued that this is the most economically efficient way of rolling out clean energy, but we also know from a few centuries of hard data who benefits from an energy system that’s built that way - and who is marginalized. When we build at a scale that serves a community, and we create spaces for input on the project from the community, that’s how we fit the project to their needs and priorities, and make sure that it’s developed in an equitable way.
When you're building at that scale, it also increases the resiliency of the grid. If you have a more decentralized system with more local power generation, that's a way of reducing the risk for local communities, and making them more resilient to larger impacts. As we're looking at cases like California and Puerto Rico, if our goal is to get the power back on sooner for communities regardless of their economic or racial makeup, inclusive, community-scale solar is a great path to creating an energy system that is resilient not just for the people able to invest in a rooftop array, but also those who aren't.
And how does this all work in practice?
Community solar allows people to enroll in a local solar array and see credits on their energy bill as if they had the array on their own rooftop. Solstice typically uses a subscription model, because it allows people to participate without any upfront payment. So we’ll look at your utility payment history, and how your energy bill has fluctuated over time. That allows us to adjust the allocation size for your energy needs. Once that energy project's turned on, you will start seeing credits on your utility bill. Those credits will more or less zero out your energy bill, and you pay for that energy, but at a discounted rate. The typical discount that we see is about 10%.We advocate for contracts that let the customer pass the subscription on to another customer, should they have to move, or have to cancel their subscription for whatever reason. That just allows for everyone to participate, whether they're renters, or other people that have higher levels of mobility.
At Solstice, we don't develop the projects ourselves. We work with the people that develop and finance the solar projects, we help them get people signed up for the projects, then manage people’s experience, and their allocations, on an ongoing basis. We have a software platform that integrates this with utilities systems to manage the billing process and give people ongoing information about how much they're saving, how much their piece of the solar garden is contributing to carbon reductions, things like that.
We also have invented the EnergyScore, an alternative way of qualifying people for community solar farms that is more accurate in predicting people’s utility bill payment behavior and more inclusive of low-to-moderate income households than the FICO credit scores that are typically used to qualify people for projects. Our goal is really to make it as easy as possible for everyone to participate in these projects, regardless of their background, or how they're coming to the table.
How do you charge people, and decide the value of what that energy is worth?
There's a number of different ways people are approaching this. What we advocate for, is doing a direct percentage discount, because that is really the best way of protecting the customer and making sure they are seeing a discount, no matter what. There are legislated programs of community solar in 18 states, and the 19th, New Mexico, is likely to pass a bill before long. In those 18 states, currently, there is legislative program that allows for automatic bill crediting and the administration of these programs. Under those, people automatically see the utility bill credits that allow them to see savings at the end of the month.
Do you work outside the grid, or through the grid?
We work through the grid. There are definitely some exciting things happening in the microgrid space. At this point, they still have a fairly limited set of use cases because the economics often don’t allow people to save. But in some cases, like with off-grid communities, or organizations like hospitals that really need a high degree of reliability and resiliency, it can make financial sense for them to do that. As far as community solar goes, we’re operating through the traditional grid, and that makes the most financial sense in a lot of ways, not having to reinvent the whole grid system, but just adapting it to meet the new reality.
As energy storage becomes cheaper over the next decade and demand response technologies become more sophisticated, the line between on-grid community solar and off-grid microgrids will likely start to blur. In many places, this will make it increasingly difficult to restrict the decentralization and democratization of energy.
Can the grid handle a transition away from coal and gas, to wind and solar?
There are a lot of smart people working on that question.
But in the long term, we know having a more decentralized grid makes for better resilience, and more reliability. Utilities are not always the most popular among everyday people, or people in the solar industry. But they are really good at keeping the lights on, and managing the grid, which is an incredibly complex system. This is the direction we need to be heading regardless, and a lot of the brainpower going into this transition will happen at that level too.
Regulators also have an important role in shaping utilities’ incentives to make this energy transition while also maintaining affordability and reliability. Changing utilities’ incentive structures is vital, so they’re not just paid high returns for continuing to build huge, centralized generation plans, and instead paying them to make the changes that serve their constituents, like transitioning to a cleaner, more decentralized generation, and upgrading software systems to maintain grid security and make crediting and billing systems run more smoothly and with less overhead expense.
So it's definitely something that will require transition, but I think is on its way. We're already seeing some utilities really get on board. As I said here are 18 legislated community solar programs. But there are 42 states that have at least one community solar garden. Those states where it’s not legislated are where the utility is taking the initiative, and they're doing this because it's a way for them to control that transition a little bit more. Instead of just having people put up projects wherever they want, or having to manage an increase in energy over their lines - from a neighborhood with a lot of solar, for example - they can choose to site a community solar array right next to their distribution infrastructure. They get to plan it out themselves, and often save on upgrades in the transmission system.
You mentioned the idea of decentralizing the grid, as the thing driving some of this change. Some critics point out decentralizing as a security risk. Is that something that you talk about?
I've heard some of the big utilities make the argument that increasing the number of people who are involved in this system - people like third party generators - may increase some cyber security risks on their end. I definitely trust that they know what they’re talking about, but growing data systems and the risk associated with that is a reality across many industries, and there are certainly ways to mitigate data security concerns. As an organization that is working with large energy companies on software for community solar gardens, I can tell you there are a lot of strict standards around data and software security that we have to deal with.
I think it’s also worth pointing out, though, that at the end of the day, if you end up with a system that is more decentralized, and what they call islandable, where basically, you could take a local energy grid, if the larger grid goes down for whatever reason, and power the local grid in a town, or a county, at a localized level, then you’re actually better off in terms of the resiliency of the overall grid, because it's harder to just hit one large piece of the grid, and take the whole thing down.
What policy needs to exist to make your work sustainable, profitable, compelling, incentivizing, etc.?
We do work at a state and local level because that's where we are seeing a lot of movement and innovation on the policy front. Solstice was founded to get as many people access to clean energy as possible.
Community solar addresses some of those needs, but there's also a whole set of barriers on the financial side. There are a lot of people that could theoretically get solar in some way, but who don't have the FICO credit scores, or the upfront savings to be able to participate.
One of the areas we focus on most closely are financial and policy innovations that empower those communities to participate. We are working under funding from the Department of Energy to develop an alternative to FICO, that's more specific to needs of community solar. We talk to people every day to try to get them connected to projects and so many have been paying their energy bill on time for decades, and just don't quite have a FICO credit score of 650 or 700 that they need to sign up. The people who are putting up the money for the projects would rather keep their risk low, and they see people with a FICO score below 650 or 700 as potentially to risky.
What we need to do is gather the data to show them otherwise, to show that someone who pays their bill on time every month is likely to pay their bill on time every month with a 10% discount.
We want to make something more accurate in saying, not can we rely on you to pay your mortgage, but will you pay your community solar bill on time? So we’ve come up with the EnergyScore, a machine-learning algorithm based on over half a million customer utility records. As I said, we've taken that aggregate data and made it into something that is both more accurate, in predicting people's future utility bill payment behavior, and more inclusive of low-income communities. We’re now testing it out in pilots in New York, and proving it out in a real-world context and using the data we collect to improve it, and we’ll be scaling it across the country in the coming years.
On the policy side, we're active in advocating for community solar programs, ones that will allow for third-party participation, for community-led solar projects, but also for policies that really encourage innovation on the inclusion front. Kelly Roache, our Director of Inclusion, has done amazing work building consensus between environmental and energy justice advocates like PUSH Buffalo and the NY Energy Democracy Alliance, as well as people in the solar industry, to push for policies that support financial inclusion, and that directly address the issue of finance. Two victories that Solstice has been a part of advocating for are winning a $21M pool of grant funding and a loan-loss reserve, and both of those went to support pilots innovating on low-income inclusion.
Our hope is that with this in place, we can work with communities in New York to prove that low-income folks can and should be full participants in the transition to clean energy, and scale that approach across the country.