2. READ: Lost Children Archive. A novel by by Valeria Luiselli.
4. READ: There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. A book by Ali Noorani.
5. READ: What the first 24 hours on U.S. soil looks like for detained immigrants.
6.LOOK: Our 2018 photo essay in the midst of a rally outside the gates of Tornillo, Texas.
This interview with Dan Hopkins, Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, was conducted and condensed by franknews.
What were the original assumptions in the Constitution about state-level loyalty versus national government loyalty?
It's a good question. The Constitution is now far enough back in our collective memories that I think it's really valuable to start by having some sense of what the U.S. was like at the time. There were some scholars who argued that the Constitution is well understood as a peace treaty between sovereign states about how they were going to govern their affairs.
In 1776 and even in 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, the U.S. was a collection of 13 quite different colonies. It took the Georgia delegation six weeks to travel to Philadelphia in order to participate in the Constitutional Convention. Different colonies had very different economies and different religious heritages. This was a quite diverse country and, thus, the Constitution was designed to protect substantial levels of state-level autonomy. I think it is really important to recognize that at the time, many of the people thought of themselves as Americans, but also to a certain extent, as New Yorkers or Virginians or Pennsylvanians.
When do you start to see a shift towards politics in the U.S. becoming more nationalized?
To some degree, it's an ongoing process that has unfolded in fits and starts over our 200-plus year history. I do think that the Civil War is a critical turning point. In the run-up to the Civil War, you see many more implications of state-level identities. I'm a Georgian, I'm a Virginian. And obviously, the Civil War pitted state against state.
It's generally been the case that the Republican party has been more likely to invoke federalism. Of course, the exemplary issue is the issue of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in more recent times, the Republican party has advocated for there being less of a role in the federal government asserting itself to protect the rights of African-Americans, especially, but not only in the South. I think it's fair to say that if you've heard a state rights argument in the last 50 years, it's more likely to be coming from the Republican party.
There's also an element in which as power shifts, we see changes. When the Republicans control the federal office, sometimes it's Democrats who say, "Hey, it's important to let California write its own laws with respect to clean energy or car emissions standards." At the same time, the extent to which we see Republican states moving to block sanctuary cities, for instance, is surprising.
If you're a principled federalist, then presumably cities shouldn't be punished for diverging.
In general, I see very few principled federalists in American politics. I think that all too often in contemporary American politics, federalism is just the clothing we use to dress up certain arguments instead of being a principled approach to a range of policy problems.
What factors contribute to a nationalized political landscape?
I actually think there's a relationship between the transformation of campaign finance, the transformation of voting, and the transformation of what's getting covered in our newspapers. There's a unifying element to all of this.
Let's look at campaign finance first. In many of the most competitive 2020 Senate races, large majorities of money came from out-of-state donations. What does that do to the candidates, and how does that affect the way constituents perceive elections?
I think that the nationalization of the campaign finance structure is an example of our nationalized set of divisions. What we're trying to do is refract these highly nationalized divisions through our federalist system. And the result often distorts representation in critical ways. One of the key facts about campaign finance has been that as late as 1992, two-thirds of all donations to federal candidates, to members of Congress, were coming from within the state that they represent. 20 years later in 2012, only one-third of all dollars were coming from the states that people represented.
The danger is that the representatives and senators increasingly have one constituency where they get their votes, but a separate constituency from where they get their money.
That is not how our system was designed to work. It was not designed for members of Congress to spend four hours a day raising money from people who are not their constituents.
And simultaneously, there has been a collapse of local media. I wonder how the decline of local news plays into this landscape?
When the internet first became a sizable presence, there was a hope that it might actually lead to a proliferation of local news. With the internet there are very, very low production costs, so, theoretically, I could put up a newsletter about my neighborhood. But in fact, as you said, the rise of the internet and the rise of cable television led to this dramatic concentration of our attention on a very, very small number of nationalized news sources. Partly that's because the news media would target us based on where we lived. The Philadelphia Inquirer targeted a set of people who wanted to know about life in and around Philadelphia.
But more recently we instead see that the business model for many media companies is to compete based on who voters are and who readers are and who consumers are, rather than where they live.
Rather than providing me with information specific to Philadelphia, they will identify me as someone who likes the National Football League or cares about politics.
That has led to the fragmentation of our media environment. One of the real losers in this has been people's attention to state and local politics. State and local politics have never been on the top of people's priority lists. It used to be that if I were reading the Philadelphia Inquirer, as a by-product of learning what the Eagle's score was, I also learn a little bit about who my mayor was or who my governor was. And nowadays, since I can go right to ESPN or I can go right to Fox News, I can skip over all that state and local information.
In a world where state and local politicians want to be well-known, they're much more likely to attach themselves to a lightning rod federal issue than they are to actually dive into the challenging, complex issues that face their local community.
Which really allows issues to be manipulated. When we focused on immigration, something I found interesting was how much immigration was used as a campaign tool in Ohio or Maine. It’s easy to make a border terrifying when you don’t live near one. Do you feel like campaigning has changed based on the ability to take issues that don't have anything to do with your constituents, but are made to look like they have everything to do with constituents?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the real challenges with a nationalized political environment is that it encourages attention to issues that are evocative and emotionally charged and often have to do with specific groups of people, but ultimately do not have clear policy effects. I think one prominent example of this is not long after President Trump was elected he attacked football players who refused to stand for the National Anthem. I think it's a very instructive case because he wasn't proposing any policy. This was purely about symbols.
I worry that in the nationalized political environment, it's very hard to put together a political coalition that speaks to auto workers and nurses in the suburbs of Detroit, and retirees in Maricopa County. This is a very diverse country. One of the easier ways to knit together a political coalition is to reach for these divisive, identity-oriented issues, even if that's not actually what's going to motivate the policies that you're proposing.
I do think that there's been a real connection between the way in which our politics has nationalized and the way in which our politics has become more identity oriented.
It's these kinds of identity charged issues that can have an intuitive meaning to people in places from Montana to North Carolina.
Has your work clarified your opinion about how national politics should work? What do you advocate for moving forward in terms of policy and campaigning?
I certainly think that voters do better when they have the information that they need, and I think that we are missing an opportunity to really use our federalist system, because there are so many different kinds of issues that face the different communities in our country.
If we are trying to force all of those issues onto a single divide between Democrats and Republicans, we're going to miss a lot of critical issues.
I think some of the disaffection with contemporary politics stems from the fact that many of us deal with problems in our day-to-day lives that are not represented by the Republican-Democrat divide.
I do want to be wary of nostalgia — or suggesting that some earlier period of history was markedly better. Yes. I worry a lot that today's voters just don't know much about state and local politics, but state and local politics wasn't always vibrant and democratic in previous generations, right? As a social scientist, I think part of my job is to lay out trends. I do think that nationalization is something that we should forecast as being a major part of our politics moving forward.
I also think that there are some policy changes on the edges that I would advocate for that I think would help reinforce the connections between places and voters, and to make better use of our current federalist system. For instance, I think campaign finance matching, so that every dollar you get locally is amplified, is a great idea. I think that could encourage politicians to lay down roots in the specific communities they represent and to spend less time trying to raise money from Manhattan or Dallas.
I think we should also do everything in our regulatory capacity to help promote, protect, and foster high-quality, non-partisan coverage of states and localities.
As a country that is hemorrhaging reporters who cover states and localities I do think that given how many important decisions are made at the state and local level, as a society, we have a real stake in the quality of local news media. There are fewer statehouse reporters, there are fewer city hall reporters, and there are fewer people who are tracking state and local politics to hold our politicians accountable. I think that has been underappreciated, and one of the real dangers in contemporary American democracy.
interviews
Othering and its Consequences
by Philip Melendez
August 25, 2020
This interview with Philip Melendez was conducted and condensed by franknews.
My name is Philip Melendez and I am the program manager at Re:Store Justice. I was formerly incarcerated. I served nearly 20 years and I've been home for nearly three years.
Can you tell me more about the work that Re:Store Justice does?
Our focus at Re:Store Justice is to go from proximity to policy.
Before COVID, we did a lot of work inside of prisons. We brought survivors of crime, people who had lost loved ones to violence, district attorneys, legislators, people who just had an interest in criminal justice reform, into the prisons, and held events to give them a different perspective. We want to create a shift in the way people think about prisons, and about the transformation and rehabilitation that can happen on the inside.
How has the work changed since COVID? What have your priorities become?
That work inside has much halted since we can not hold events inside.
Initially, we started helping by donating PPE. We donated masks and gloves to some of the hardest-hit prisons where the outbreak started. We don't know what happened to the supplies, but obviously, with the numbers we are seeing now, it didn't help them enough.
We recently started the Canteen Project, raising money to go directly to prisoners so they use that money in the commissary for food and other hygiene projects. I don’t know if you saw our post the other day, but the food that they are serving, during a pandemic, is abysmal. It’s like a piece of bread and some cornflakes. There is no nutrition, there is no holistic focus on health during a pandemic.
That reminds me of a quote from a previous interview. "The Department of Corrections has never prepared for a health crisis. They have one solution to a health crisis, and that is punishment." Like looking back, can you see mechanisms of that mindset?
Definitely.
I remember once when I was sick, I decided to tough it out and not leave my cell. I remember going to sleep and hoping that I would not die, hoping that I would wake up the next morning. Two or three days later, I was feeling better and asked the nurse for some lozenges. They asked what I had had and took my temperature.
It was just barely a high temperature, but they sent me to the hold, which is the same as solitary confinement. I had to sit in a solitary cell for a couple of days. And they stripped me of everything. They took all my belongings, which are everything when you are inside of the prison especially if you have pictures of loved ones.
So is that the standard approach? You get sick, you get put in an isolated cell?
Yeah.
If there's something more severe, like Coronavirus, or if you needed surgery or if you were having a heart attack, they simply can't help you. As the quote said, they don't have anything in place. It's not a hospital. They can hold you until the helicopter comes. If people get stabbed, they don't get care. Hopefully, the helicopter gets there soon enough, and they'll do what they can, but they're just not prepared or, I don't think, educated enough to handle any major medical issues.
How has this crisis has forced us to look at the intersection between public health and prisons?
Public health concerns are very much intertwined with what happens in prison. And that is not something that people ever really even gave a second thought before this crisis. But it is real.
The spread is all on the prison staff - 100%. The guards, the kitchen staff, the maintenance staff, it's all on them. Once they bring a virus in and an outbreak starts, it's impossible to socially distance inside. Prisons are like incubators, and they are run like incubators - everything from food distribution, cross-contamination between cells, the cramped spaces, the terrible ventilation. All of it. And then prison staff comes in and out, every day, all over the state, and spreads it to their families, and it goes on and on.
Our organization has been very active in talking about the San Quentin outbreak.
What are you asking for during this pandemic?
The specific asks for San Quentin are to cut the population by 50%. The prison itself is overcapacity. Buildings made to house 400 people, house 800. The cells themselves are 4X10. They were originally one-man cells but they added bunks in these spaces. I used to be able to reach out and have both hands touching each wall. The windows are welded shut and the ventilation is horrible. Based on these horrific conditions, we have asked that San Quentin reduce the population to have a hope at social distancing.
We want mass releases, and we don’t want there to be a distinction between release for violent and nonviolent offenders. We think that that is a horrible distinction that deems some people deserving and others not deserving. It's not considerate of data on recidivism rates, it doesn't consider violence as situational rather than indicative of a person's being.
Our organization has been very much involved with San Quentin. We have a team of seven, and three of us are formerly incarcerated and spent time together at San Quentin. We left a lot of good friends behind. A lot of people who have committed horrible crimes in their past, but have made very huge shifts in their personality and became people that we are very fond of and love.
Do you see prisons effectively implementing rehabilitative programs?
San Quentin has been known as the “Ivy League school” of rehabilitation. I have been told that I have the “San Quentin privilege" largely because of where we are situated in Marin. We have all these very affluent, very progressive communities, and people around us.
But San Quentin is an anomaly.
But during my time in San Quentin, I learned a lot. I learned that I have emotions. I learned that I was taught toxic masculinity and to hide my emotions. I learned that I was hurt. I learned that I had traumas. I was a really sensitive kid. I realized that I went above and beyond to prove that I did belong.
I unpacked all of that during my time at San Quentin, but the way that the system is set up right now is just stupid. You are going to wait for us to kill somebody, to teach us how to not kill somebody, to teach us how to be okay with ourselves? That is backward.
How do you think we should be thinking about crime as a society?
As situational. Poverty is one of the biggest drivers of crime. Crime not indicative of people's culture - that is one of the most ignorant and racist things that I hear. And the ethos of, “oh just pick your up by the bootstraps” is ridiculous. How can we pick ourselves up by our bootstraps when we have nothing, when we have all these disadvantages.
There are human needs at the root of crime - and not just physical needs, emotional needs are critical. Safety, security, and self-esteem are essential. Maslow's hierarchy is real.
Otherization is a big thing as well. It stems from a natural fear - we don't trust outsiders. It sets the stage for xenophobia and tribalism, things that are being stoked on a national scale. But it also happens on a micro-scale- within gangs for example. In gangs, we almost always have derogatory terms for the opposition. We reduce them from a person to a thing. We do all that we can to dehumanize people so that we can then cause harm.
How do you see that same mindset playing out within the courts?
And I said, “Well, sir, you know, that is murderer logic.” That is a little something I learned from anger management class - our tendency to objectify and dehumanize people allows us to harm them. He was just speechless.
With law enforcement in general, there is a societal disconnect. The general mindset is that these people who come in are criminals, that our job, in the courts, is to uphold law and order, and we are righteous in our job. But in giving themselves that righteousness, they are implicitly saying to the people in front of them, you are not righteous. We are all humans, but with this mindset, they take away people's humanity and people's dignity. The courts lead to so many injustices, under the guise of the pursuit of justice.
Many district attorneys that we work with come in with those biases, but when they see the humanity of the folks, their whole psyche is messed up. The goal of our programs is to have people in the system see the personhood of the people behind bars, and it works. I have had district attorneys themselves tell me, "I don't know how I'm going to do my job again." They work in an assembly line of sorts. They'll get a case, see gruesome photos, hear a horrible story, give conviction, move on, and never see what happens in the aftermath.
How do we make sure that this shift in our collective psyche is carried out beyond this moment?
I mean, that's the big question of 2020. It ties together the Coronavirus outbreak, and the Black Lives Matter protests. These things are intertwined and this moment has exposed a lot of people to the horrors of the criminal justice system.
I hope we can keep these conversations going and keep the pressure on lawmakers. We need to keep the family members and advocates emboldened and passionate. We also need to continue to combat these negative narratives and this idea that everyone behind bars is a monster, that they are dangerous, and that we can’t let them back out into society.
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