17 July 20
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16 July 20
Luke Savage, Jacobin
Savage writes: "For today's liberals, the default approach to combating the Right is to fact-check the Right. But conservatives aren't contestants in a debating contest: they're waging a political struggle and playing to win. Fact-checking won't save us."
n the hallowed tradition of hastily written and instantly forgettable election year books, David Plouffe’s A Citizen’s Guide to Beating Donald Trump amounts to pretty standard fare. Given its author’s bona fides (Plouffe served as Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, a fact emblazoned on the front cover for those still unaware), readers who expect a master class in grand strategy will, I must regretfully report, be let down. As I’ve written elsewhere, Plouffe essentially spends two hundred pages telling rank-and-file Democrats to canvass, make sure their friends are registered to vote, and post regularly on social media.
Suffice it to say that, for a book that’s supposedly about what the average person can do to fight Donald Trump, it’s heavy on banal anecdotes from throughout Plouffe’s career and embarrassingly thin on insights about campaigning or political strategy. Although these add up to a very dull read, I was quite struck by several passages dealing with what the author wants liberal partisans to do to fight conservatism online come election season. Among all the instructions Plouffe offers his readers, the most clearly fleshed out has to do with how they should be reacting to right-wing narratives on social media. His premise is a simple and familiar one:
Trump unleashes lies at an unprecedented rate, and his accomplices in the Fox News/Sinclair/Breitbart media-entertainment vortex from hell defend every single one . . . Young voters will be served ads claiming that the Democratic nominee is in bed with the fossil-fuel industry and won’t do anything on climate change. Health care sensitive swing voters will hear that our candidate is opposed to universal healthcare . . . Unbelievable claims — except that they aren’t unbelievable to everyone. In fact, the Trump campaign is already spending millions on these types of digital ads in core battleground states . . . We don’t have to match the Trump machine blow for blow, but we do have to unleash responses in such numbers and in so many mediums that his one huge presidential megaphone is matched not with volume . . . but with numbers.
It’s more than a little ironic that a passage preceding a section about fact-checking contains so many obvious fibs. (In Plouffe’s defense, at the time of writing — the book was drafted in the summer of 2019 — he didn’t know that Joe Biden would be the Democratic nominee. Even if it passed in uncompromised form, Biden’s health care plan would leave plenty of people uninsured, and he’s as much as said he’d veto Medicare for All. He also came under well-deserved fire during the primaries for his ties to the fossil fuel industry . . . among other things.
In any case, even if one assumes the total and unvarnished righteousness of the Democratic cause, Plouffe’s blueprint for fighting right-wing narratives is well worn and leaves much to be desired:
You see something in your Facebook feed from one of your old college friends about a “study” demonstrating that if the Democrat is victorious, crime will rise 50 percent and rapes and murders from undocumented immigrants will triple. Take a minute to shake your head in frustration, sigh in sadness, but then respond calmly and by sharing content that shows the Democrat’s commitment to increasing funds for local enforcement; stats showing that immigrants commit fewer crimes than those native born; our candidate’s commitment to solving at long last the immigration challenge with comprehensive reform, including smart, humane, technology-based border security.
Later in the book, Plouffe even imagines one side of a hypothetical conversation with a conspiracy-theory-obsessed red-state uncle posting about the Democratic nominee and infanticide. I won’t bore you with another quotation, but the crux is that liberal partisans are supposed to politely fact-check such misinformation — ideally offering links from more conservative sources like the Wall Street Journal so that their Republican acquaintances and relatives will be outflanked by logic and forced to concede defeat.
Plouffe admits this may not always work, but it’s nevertheless telling that he devotes several key passages of the book to it. For as long as I can remember, Democratic thought leaders have obsessed over fact-checking and argued that challenging right-wing misinformation is the key to beating back Republican dominance. Minus a few time-specific references, in fact, Plouffe’s instructions could probably have been written at any time in the past twenty or thirty years.
It’s a telling recurrence, because it suggests that many liberals still believe Democrats lose elections because of bad epistemology rather than because of politics. This is, as far as I can discern, the basic formula underlying Plouffe’s thesis and many others like it: 1) The Right creates misinformation [Democrats eat children, climate change is fake, etc.]; 2) Said misinformation is disseminated through powerful outlets like Fox News; 3) People internalize bad facts and empirically false narratives; 4) Without sufficient pushback and fact-checking, Democrats lose. The facts support Democrats, or so this logic goes, ergo the absence of facts bolsters conservatism.
If some people find this story compelling, it’s probably because it contains a grain of truth. American conservatives have, on the whole, been better than their liberal rivals at creating powerful media enterprises, and outlets like Fox and Breitbart manifestly do spend plenty of time misinforming their audiences. And, despite facing an abundance of competition, Donald Trump probably lies more than anyone.
But conservatism is ultimately a political project, not a malign information system. Most people with hardened conservative beliefs won’t be swayed by an article from the Wall Street Journal or a Glenn Kessler column giving the birther conspiracy five Pinocchios — even when it clearly contradicts their stated view. A fact, by itself, is nothing until it becomes part of a larger narrative — and it’s these, by and large, that actually structure political identity. In this respect, the Right’s willingness to embrace populist storytelling matters a whole lot more than the obvious untruths so regularly put to work in its service. Which is all to say, if we’re actually serious about rolling back conservative dominance, fact-checking will never be a substitute for politics.
The APT29 group has been active for a number of years, and is also known in the hacker community as the Dukes or Cozy Bear. (photo: Rawpixel)
Russian State-Sponsored Hackers Target Covid-19 Vaccine Researchers
Dan Sabbagh and Andrew Roth, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Russian state-sponsored hackers are targeting UK, US and Canadian organizations involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, according to British security officials."
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New York City. (photo: Getty)
Dan Sabbagh and Andrew Roth, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Russian state-sponsored hackers are targeting UK, US and Canadian organizations involved in developing a coronavirus vaccine, according to British security officials."
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New York City. (photo: Getty)
The Flu May Linger in the Air, Just Like the Coronavirus
Katherine J. Wu, The New York Times
Wu writes: "The coronavirus is not the flu. But the two viruses have something crucial in common: Both have been described as spreading primarily through close contact with symptomatic people or the surfaces they've touched."
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Sen. Charles Schumer. (photo: Getty)
Katherine J. Wu, The New York Times
Wu writes: "The coronavirus is not the flu. But the two viruses have something crucial in common: Both have been described as spreading primarily through close contact with symptomatic people or the surfaces they've touched."
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Sen. Charles Schumer. (photo: Getty)
Democrats Propose $350 Billion in Aid for Minority Communities in Next COVID-19 Bill
Jordain Carney, The Hill
Carney writes: "Senate Democrats want to include $350 billion in aid for communities of color as part of the next coronavirus-relief package, with negotiations expected to start as soon as next week."
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Malik Rahim started Common Ground to organize volunteer workers in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. (photo: Christopher Bangert/Redux)
Jordain Carney, The Hill
Carney writes: "Senate Democrats want to include $350 billion in aid for communities of color as part of the next coronavirus-relief package, with negotiations expected to start as soon as next week."
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Malik Rahim started Common Ground to organize volunteer workers in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. (photo: Christopher Bangert/Redux)
Micco Caporale, YES! Magazine
Caporale writes: "In leftist circles, Common Ground became one of the most storied mutual aid projects in recent history, in part because it was co-founded by a man later revealed to be an FBI informant who now works for Breitbart. But it's also one of the longest-standing examples of the community change mutual aid can bring - and it offers lessons that still guide organizers elsewhere."
Volunteer crisis responses are crucial in an emergency. But can they make lasting change?
n the husk of an old grocery store, on an unassuming corner in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, sits the Common Ground Health Clinic, a front-line fighter of COVID-19 that emerged from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. In leftist circles, Common Ground became one of the most storied mutual aid projects in recent history, in part because it was co-founded by a man later revealed to be an FBI informant who now works for Breitbart. But it’s also one of the longest-standing examples of the community change mutual aid can bring—and it offers lessons that still guide organizers elsewhere.
Common Ground began in 2005 as an anarchist collective in the backyard of Malik Rahim, a long-time community organizer and former Black Panther. While Hurricane Katrina still raged, he asked organizers Brandon Darby and scott crow to help him protect himself from White vigilante groups who were roaming the streets. Soon, members of their robust networks were asking how they could help, and the trio was inundated with donations, supplies, and volunteers.
From the outset, Common Ground’s motto was “solidarity, not charity.” It’s a common refrain for mutual aid projects—shorthand for the organizing opportunities crises can present. On the surface, a group’s disaster response might look similar to that of established organizations. After Katrina, for example, the Red Cross served hot meals, while Common Ground delivered groceries to those who needed to replenish their supplies.
Mutual aid groups might even outdo the relief offered by nonprofits and government agencies. Before people began filing FEMA claims, Common Ground was teaching residents how to tarp their roofs and assess wind and flood damage. But those groups also can provide space for deeper conversations about why certain communities are more affected by disaster than others—and build networks to address myriad problems exposed by emergencies.
In New Orleans, many health care facilities closed during the storm, including Charity Hospital, one of the nation’s oldest free hospitals. The hurricane exacerbated the need for health care among low-income people, a famously transient population made all the more vulnerable because of displacement.
Within a month, Common Ground had opened a clinic in a mosque. A wide variety of volunteer healers, including not just doctors but also acupuncturists and other alternative practitioners, provided free health care to a population that, by Rahim’s estimate, was 85% uninsured. Clinic volunteers rode through the community on bicycles asking who needed medical attention and advertising available clinic services, such as vaccines.
I volunteered with Common Ground in October 2005, and I remember one person showing up for a tetanus shot and disclosing he hadn’t seen a doctor in 10 years. While the clinic provided a solution to an immediate need, it also contended with a bigger question: Why is this need so abundant among Black and low-income residents?
On a national scale, COVID-19 is revealing similar racial and economic disparities. Mutual aid groups are coalescing to provide immediate relief: emotional support, financial resources, and even protective gear. But without informed direction, mutual aid disaster relief can be difficult to sustain over the longer term.
That’s what the Common Ground Health Clinic is doing today. While Louisiana is the 25th most populous state, as of April 22 it had the seventh-highest number of COVID-19 deaths in the country, with New Orleans accounting for the majority of them.
The pandemic poses a unique challenge for a medical facility serving low-income people.
“[Our patients] change their phone numbers,” says Common Ground chief executive officer Carleetha Smith, referring to clients who rely on prepaid phones because their incomes or credit histories bar them from stable phone contracts. “They move often. Some of our patients don’t even have a working phone, much less a smartphone.”
Tom Llewellyn, co-producer of The Response, a documentary podcast about community solutions to crises, observes: “A lot of these networks or groups work on things because there’s an acute issue.” Projects have to adapt in order to last beyond the acute need, or they disband.
“Often, there’s very little funding. It’s just people using available resources to do the most good at that time,” Llewellyn says.
When I worked with Common Ground after the hurricane, one of the ways the group acquired medicine was by making unofficial arrangements with government agencies—for instance, Army soldiers would smuggle doses to the clinic that they say “fell off the truck.” But if the clinic was going to survive, it needed to develop a reliable operations strategy.
When disaster first strikes, the need for donations and volunteers from outside the area is critical. For a relief effort to persist, however, it needs steady money. It also needs to show potential donors that not only are resources being put to good use, but that there are still needs to address.
The Common Ground collective lasted six years, running the clinic and also offering services, such as tenant organizing and legal aid, which targeted systemic problems faced by an economically disadvantaged population. But in 2011, its outsized ambition, lack of accountability, and a constant influx of itinerant volunteers all contributed to its dissolution. The clinic survived, probably because it was the easiest project to adapt to pre-existing organizational models.
In 2013, the clinic became a Federally Qualified Health Center, which made it eligible for federal funding and opened the door to more grant opportunities. That kind of financial security allowed the clinic to open a second location. Both clinics are able to focus on preventative care and outreach as much as acute treatment.
But many more mutual aid organizations don’t survive that transition.
As a disaster aid group, Occupy Sandy in New York is now defunct. It only held together for about six months after the superstorm hit the U.S. East Coast in October 2012. But those who were involved continue its mission in new ways.
After being involved with Occupy, some residents organized the Worker-Owned Rockaway Cooperatives, which provides its community with the skills, financing, and support to start worker-owned businesses that keep wealth in the neighborhood. The project has helped start three businesses so far.
Nate Kleinman, an Occupy Sandy volunteer who originally came to the project from Philadelphia, says many volunteers who were not from the affected areas have returned to their communities and shifted to developing tech-based mutual aid, such as a new Slack channel for initiatives to address COVID-19.
Kleinman started a nonprofit called the Experimental Farming Network that addresses climate change with sustainable farming. Since the coronavirus outbreak, he’s used organizing skills from Occupy Sandy to create the Cooperative Gardens Commission, from which anyone worried about a breakdown in the food supply chain can learn how to grow their own food and feed their communities.
Lessons learned from Common Ground inform the work of former volunteers such as Jimmy Dunson, who co-founded the Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR) network in 2016. “There’s been a lot of different solidarity-based disaster relief organizations that have been really effective and outperformed the top-down model,” he says. “We wanted to build off that legacy and its successes and avoid the failures.”
MADR’s steering committee has identified some of what works and what doesn’t in disaster relief, and shares a belief that horizontal, community-led organizing is the best response to emergencies. MADR has helped organizers in dozens of cities tackle the effects of wildfires, floods, and now COVID-19.
West Street Recovery, a Houston collective that emerged in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, benefitted from MADR’s guidance. Its founders were local organizers who initially stepped in to help flood victims by delivering meals and supplies to people in hard-to-reach neighborhoods.
But once the water receded and the acute emergency was over, the group shifted to rebuilding, repairing damaged homes, case management, and organizing in more Houston communities. West Street incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit so it could receive larger donations and grants. That transformation also meant the eight core volunteers started receiving paychecks.
Gaining nonprofit status often derails consensus-based decision-making and horizontal organizing—a first step towards assimilating into what many grassroots organizers refer to as the “nonprofit industrial complex,” which West Street’s organizers are determined to avoid.
As West Street’s director of strategic partnerships Ben Hirsch explains, when something is volunteer-run, “Consensus provides a way to keep everyone buying into the project, and it prevents one person’s perspective from dominating.”
When there’s an influx of large tax-deductible donations and grant money, both internal and external pressures can demand accounting for how the money is spent. This can allow old social hierarchies to creep in. West Street Recovery has kept true to its roots and goals with far fewer growing pains, Hirsch says.
“Experienced organizers told us, ‘Don’t fuck with your process,’” Hirsch laughs. “‘Let your process play out.’” That’s how the group built communication and trust among its members.
Like many groups, West Street is learning as it goes how best to respond to COVID-19, but its past experience better positioned it to support its communities, making it easier to identify who is most vulnerable and coordinate regular check-ins or online group activities.
That’s a lesson that the Common Ground clinic embraced, even as it continues to search for the right solutions for its patients. Its history, and the way it’s weathered past challenges, makes Common Ground’s leadership confident it can meet this challenge.
Palestinian demonstrators attend a protest in Gaza City, on February 24, 2019. (photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
When Hope Dies: Why So Many Young Palestinians in Gaza Are Committing Suicide
Muhammad Shehada, Haaretz
Shehada writes: "Suleiman was a thoughtful and goodhearted young man. His only wish was to live the minimum of a normal and decent life."
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Muhammad Shehada, Haaretz
Shehada writes: "Suleiman was a thoughtful and goodhearted young man. His only wish was to live the minimum of a normal and decent life."
READ MORE
Mayors across the world are calling for a reduction in car traffic in cities. (photo: Getty)
The World's Mayors Want a Pandemic Recovery That Takes Cars Off the Streets
Angely Mercado, Grist
Mercado writes: "On Wednesday, the Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force, a group of dozens of leaders of major cities on nearly every continent, announced a proposal for a 'green and just recovery' from the pandemic."
Angely Mercado, Grist
Mercado writes: "On Wednesday, the Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force, a group of dozens of leaders of major cities on nearly every continent, announced a proposal for a 'green and just recovery' from the pandemic."
ome have claimed that dense urban areas are exacerbating the COVID-19 pandemic by their very nature. But this week, a group of mayors from some of the world’s largest metropolitan centers are arguing that cities themselves can lead a transformative post-pandemic recovery — one that will make cities better places to live for all their residents.The proposal calls for substantial investments in affordable housing and public transportation, the permanent banning of cars from many city streets, the end of public investment in and subsidies for fossil fuels, and an embrace of the “15-minute city” paradigm.
“We are reaffirming our commitment to the principles of the Global Green New Deal — to protecting our environment, strengthening our economy, and building a more equitable future by cutting emissions from the sectors most responsible for the climate crisis,” the proposal’s executive summary reads.
The task force was formed this April by C40 Cities, a network of more than 90 of the world’s major cities committed to tackling climate change. Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, is the chair of the task force, which was created to establish an international effort to rebuild urban economies and infrastructure in a way that would reduce different forms of inequality, strengthen public health, and simultaneously address different causes of the climate crisis.
On the transportation front, the task force recommends expanding public transportation by deploying electric buses as well as adding railway and bike lanes. It also calls for the creation of so-called 15-minute cities, where residents “are able to meet most of their needs within a short walk or bicycle ride from their homes.” This paradigm involves the creation of new green spaces and permanent walking and cycling networks throughout cities. The task force’s recommendations suggest that these infrastructure improvements and others (like retrofitting old buildings for more efficient energy usage) could improve job opportunities for residents as well as lower emissions.
Car-centric cities are squarely in the sights of this recovery plan. It calls for cities to “give streets back to people, by permanently reallocating more road space to walking and cycling.” Some major cities have closed streets to cars during the pandemic to enable pedestrians to more easily engage in social distancing, but such measures have often been minor and piecemeal. The Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force wants them expanded and made permanent.
“This is a reckoning for all of us for how we live and how we plan to live,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a press call on Wednesday. “Returning to normal is not the goal.”
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