Brown Political Review - Summer 2013 Issue by Brown Political Review

Spring 2013 / Volume II Issue 2

Prison, Incorporated The Prison-Industrial Complex is Arriving by Athena Bryan

Sanctioning Redemption Burma Is Finally Democratizing

by Thomas Nath

Lincoln Chafee

on His Political Future by Emily Gelber Sponsored by:

Editorial Board

Senior Managing Editor Carol Kim National Managing Editor Kathy nguyen Global managing editor Jorge tamames EDITORS-AT-LARGE Michael Chernin, MARINA Do Nascimento, jake karr, benjamin koatz, dorI rahbar & lauren sukin

Copy Editorial Board

Chief copy editor Dori Rahbar copy editors Sarah Domenick, Laura kirk, anne moody, ALEXA VAN HATTUM & ned willig

Online Board

online director lewis pollis webmaster emma funk Column Managers Matt Mccabe, Bradley Silverman & Jorge Tamames

Columnists

Featured columnists lena barsky, Carter johnson, Daniel Kopin, Annika Lichtenbaum, Graham Sheridan & ben wofford

Staff Writers

Staff Writer Managing Editors Jake Karr & Lauren Sukin Featured Staff Writers Mike D’Ortenzio, Jake Karr, James Konsky, Thomas Nath, Francis Torres & Carly west

Layout Board

layout & Art director katrina machado associate layout directorS Ben Berke & Liz Studlick layout associates Gabrielle Hick, Sarah Lu & MARLENA MORSHEAD

Artists

Staff Artists Rachel Haberstroh, TIFFANY KEUNG, Katrina Machado, SHeila Sitaram & Olivia Watson CONTRIBUTING ARTISTs GOYO KWON & EMILY REIF DISPATCHES & LETTER TO THE EDITOR KATRINA MACHADO Cover artist TIFFANY KEUNG

Business & Marketing Board

business & marketing director ELENA SALTZMAN business & marketing associates Chiamaka anyoku, Viktoria belberova, sarah Pariser, olivia shumlin & Allie Valicenti

Interviews Board

interviews director EMILY GELBER Interviews managing editor Henry knight Assistant Managing Editor Christina Kata deputy editor viktoria belberova interviews associates OMAR BEN haliM & IaN Reardon

Media Board

Media Director Ben Wolkon Associate Director Jarrett Key New Media Manager & Associate Chief-of-Staff nEIl singh CHIEF MEDIA EDITOR daniel Kopin media associate owen “buck” greenwald

Special Thanks

CARLOS LOPEZ ESTRADA, NASER MAHFOUZ, MEDIA PRODUCTION GROUP, TED NESI, STEPHEN OLSEN, LUKE PEREZ & CHRISTIAN VAREIKA

CONTENTS Special Feature

Features 14 PRISON, INCORPORATED

20 THE VOTING RIGHTS

ACT: SAVE IT, SCRAP IT OR SOMETHING ELSE?

The prison-industrial complex is arriving.

Athena Bryan

30 SANCTIONING REDEMPTION

Burma is finally democratizing. The US is taking the bait.

Thomas Nath

Dispatches

4 NO HOPE IN THIS POPE Jorge Tamames 5 THE HUNDRED-MILE BORDER Benjamin Koatz 6 THE POLITICS OF MACKLEMORE

Ben Wofford

National 7 OCEAN STATE SINKING Michael D’Ortenzio 10 ROCKET SCIENCE Lauren Sukin 12 GETTING A RAISE Daniel Kopin 18 SAME-SEX MYSTERY Bradley Silverman

Adam Asher, Sofia Fernandez Gold, Oliver Hudson & Ben Resnik

Global

22 THE BIG DATE Meghan Koushik 24 CUP IN PERIL Joaquim Salles 26 A DROUGHT FORETOLD Gae Emilio Leanza 28 RAP REVOLUTION Christina Kata

Interviews

33 HOOSHANG AMIRAHMADI 34 MISSY CUMMINGS 35 RICHARD SOCARIDES 36 LINCOLN CHAFEE 38 ALLAN FUNG

Executive Board

Editors-in-Chief Alexandros Diplas & Ben Wofford Chief-of-Staff Todd Harris Senior Managing Editor Carol Kim Interviews Director Emily Gelber Online Director Lewis Pollis Business & Marketing Director Elena Saltzman Layout & Art Director Katrina Machado Media Director BEN WOLKON

Editor’s Note: Because of an editing error, the article “It Won’t Go as It Always Goes” (Vol. II, Issue 1) implied that “aam admi” refers to a set of economic reforms. In fact, “aam admi” is an expression that is similar in meaning to “the common man.” Brown Political Review regrets the error and has corrected the article in the online edition.

Editorial Board

Copy Editorial Board

Chief copy editor Dori Rahbar copy editors Sarah Domenick, Laura kirk, anne moody, ALEXA VAN HATTUM & ned willig

Online Board

online director lewis pollis webmaster emma funk Column Managers Matt Mccabe, Bradley Silverman & Jorge Tamames

Columnists

Featured columnists lena barsky, Carter johnson, Daniel Kopin, Annika Lichtenbaum, Graham Sheridan & ben wofford

Staff Writers

Staff Writer Managing Editors Jake Karr & Lauren Sukin Featured Staff Writers Mike D’Ortenzio, Jake Karr, James Konsky, Thomas Nath, Francis Torres & Carly west

Layout Board

layout & Art director katrina machado associate layout directorS Ben Berke & Liz Studlick layout associates Gabrielle Hick, Sarah Lu & MARLENA MORSHEAD

Artists

Business & Marketing Board

business & marketing director ELENA SALTZMAN business & marketing associates Chiamaka anyoku, Viktoria belberova, sarah Pariser, olivia shumlin & Allie Valicenti

Interviews Board

interviews director EMILY GELBER Interviews managing editor Henry knight Assistant Managing Editor Christina Kata deputy editor viktoria belberova interviews associates OMAR BEN haliM & IaN Reardon

Media Board

Media Director Ben Wolkon Associate Director Jarrett Key New Media Manager & Associate Chief-of-Staff nEIl singh CHIEF MEDIA EDITOR daniel Kopin media associate owen “buck” greenwald

Special Thanks

CARLOS LOPEZ ESTRADA, NASER MAHFOUZ, MEDIA PRODUCTION GROUP, TED NESI, STEPHEN OLSEN, LUKE PEREZ & CHRISTIAN VAREIKA

CONTENTS Special Feature

Features 14 PRISON, INCORPORATED

20 THE VOTING RIGHTS

ACT: SAVE IT, SCRAP IT OR SOMETHING ELSE?

The prison-industrial complex is arriving.

Athena Bryan

30 SANCTIONING REDEMPTION

Burma is finally democratizing. The US is taking the bait.

Thomas Nath

Dispatches

4 NO HOPE IN THIS POPE Jorge Tamames 5 THE HUNDRED-MILE BORDER Benjamin Koatz 6 THE POLITICS OF MACKLEMORE

Ben Wofford

National 7 OCEAN STATE SINKING Michael D’Ortenzio 10 ROCKET SCIENCE Lauren Sukin 12 GETTING A RAISE Daniel Kopin 18 SAME-SEX MYSTERY Bradley Silverman

Adam Asher, Sofia Fernandez Gold, Oliver Hudson & Ben Resnik

Global

22 THE BIG DATE Meghan Koushik 24 CUP IN PERIL Joaquim Salles 26 A DROUGHT FORETOLD Gae Emilio Leanza 28 RAP REVOLUTION Christina Kata

Interviews

33 HOOSHANG AMIRAHMADI 34 MISSY CUMMINGS 35 RICHARD SOCARIDES 36 LINCOLN CHAFEE 38 ALLAN FUNG

Executive Board

DISPATCHES } NO HOPE IN THIS POPE

In September 2011, two friends and I took a 26-hour bus ride from Brasília, Brazil, to São Félix do Araguaia, a small town bordering the Amazon region of northern Mato Grosso. We went there to meet Pedro Casaldáliga. Casaldáliga was the bishop of the São Félix diocese from 1971 to 2003. He had moved from Spain to Brazil in 1968 and embraced Liberation Theology — a leftist offshoot of Catholicism that became widespread among Latin America’s clergy in the sixties and seventies. Dom Pedro, as he came to be known by the locals, spent decades fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples and landless peasants, openly criticizing the military dictatorship that controlled Brazil since 1964. In return the local landowners, backed by the military authorities, constantly threatened Casaldáliga. In 1977 their gunmen murdered his vicar, João Bosco, whom they mistook for the bishop himself. Still, Casaldáliga never went back to his home in Catalonia. He believed his duty was in Brazil, and he was aware that the military would not allow him to come back if he ever left. Knowing all of this, I was awed by the prospect of meeting Casaldáliga. He turned out to be a surprisingly warm man and gave each of us a long and intense hug as soon as we entered his austere house. We spent the next five days conversing with him and working on an article my friend and I were planning to write. We were impressed. Casaldáliga could link a discussion of Hugo Chávez’s presidency to a commentary on José Saramago’s writing on religion to a stinging critique of neoliberalism and European austerity to a jeremiad on the Church’s neglect of women and gay people. He would then crack a few self-deprecating jokes and switch back to talking about literature — he writes poetry extensively. Having grown up accustomed to the reactionary and hypocritical brand of Ca-

tholicism that is prevalent in Spain and has so far confined me to agnosticism, I found every one of Casaldáliga’s sentences a breath of fresh air. He stands for a more genuine Christianity. What are some of Jesus’ most powerful statements — on the camel and the needle, on “the lesser of these” — if not a straightforward defense of the many who are weak and poor against the few who are strong? Casaldáliga embodied that commitment to the wretched of the earth. He had so much strength and resolve in him and just as much warmth and humanity. He was full of compassion, in the truest sense of the word. I was moved. I thought of Casaldáliga as I read about Pope Francis’ call in March for “a Church that is poor and for the poor.” It seems that former Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now the 266th Pope of the Catholic Church, could put an end to Vatican

opulence. He has chosen “Francis” as his papal name to honor the patron saint of the poor and led an austere lifestyle in his native Argentina that grants him further credibility. All of this has raised expectations that the Catholic Church will undergo a progressive shift under Francis’ papacy. The shift would be welcome, and long overdue. A number of pressing issues — from the child abuse and Vatileaks scandal to the Vatican Bank’s notorious opacity — demand the Church’s immediate attention. Others, such as the institution’s stance on the ordination of women and gay marriage, must be addressed sooner rather than later. Each and every one of these issues requires urgent reforms. Sadly, I believe few

of them will take place under Francis’ papacy. The new pope is doctrinally conservative. He opposes gay marriage and abortion rights and refuses to address the role of women — or lack of it — in the clergy. This is not surprising: the Casaldáligas of the Church have been left out in the cold for the past 35 years of reactionary leadership. Today’s cardinals are a product of the times, and the overwhelming majority of them are conservative. None of them would emulate Pope John XXIII and “throw open the windows of the Church, so that we can see out and the people can see in.” As the first Jesuit pope, Francis may share his order’s dislike of extremist groups within the Church, such as Opus Dei, the Legion of Christ and the Neocatecumenal Way. Hopefully these groups will now lose the privileged position they enjoyed under Benedict XVI and especially John Paul II. But this alone provides small comfort, given the scale of the challenges faced by the Church. Far more interesting is Bergoglio’s stance on poverty. The new pope’s commitment to the dispossessed seems genuine and commendable. It appears that Francis wants to resurrect the Church’s long-neglected social doctrine, much of which was developed in the sixties and seventies by Jesuits under the influence of Liberation Theology. To a Latin American Jesuit deeply concerned with poverty, Liberation Theology would seem a natural fit. But the exact opposite is true of the pope, whose track record is, in this regard, profoundly contradictory. As one democracy after another collapsed throughout Latin America during the seventies, Bergoglio’s fellow Jesuits, as did Casaldáliga and many other Catholic priests and bishops, took sides. They stood up against the military, from Salvador to Brazil. They often paid for this decision with their lives. But Bergoglio did not join them. The highest-ranking Jesuit in Argentina when the junta took over, he not only failed to denounce the dictatorship but also tacitly collaborated with the military authorities in their Dirty War against leftists. The issues at stake are Bergoglio’s complicit silence when the junta kidnapped children from arrested and murdered left-

ists and his role in the imprisonment of two dissenting Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Franz Jalics. It remains unclear whether Bergoglio attempted to negotiate their release with the junta behind closed doors or simply washed his hands of the matter, as Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky has claimed. What is beyond doubt is that the Argentine dictatorship was among the most savage of the region. Over the span of seven years it murdered 30,000 Argentines. It practiced state terrorism upon thousands of its own citizens, throwing them, drugged, from planes into the sea, after torturing them at the Navy School of Mechanics. And Bergoglio did not raise his voice even once. This decision may seem understandable given the terrible circumstances. But what were those circumstances, exactly? Can Bergoglio’s commitment to the poor be isolated from politics? Jalics and Yorio were leftists, but they were also socially aware priests working in the slums of Buenos Aires. A Jesuit as high-ranking as Bergoglio could have spoken up for them. He could have criticized the junta without risking his life. Until Paul VI’s death in 1978, when the Dirty War was well under way, Bergoglio would have received the Pope’s backing had he truly opposed the dictatorship. He simply chose not to. This year I learned that Casaldáliga was forced to leave São Félix for two weeks because he had received several death threats after supporting an indigenous tribe whose lands had been stolen by Brazilian settlers. Casaldáliga is now 85, and he suffers from Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. When we visited him in 2011 he was aware that he would not live for much longer, but this did not trouble him. For those two weeks, however, it seemed as if Casaldáliga would spend his last days away from the place to which he consecrated his life, while men like Bergoglio would keep rising through the ranks of the Church. The thought made me very sad. So did reading about the new pope, his stance on poverty and his lack of a stance against power. Fighting poverty is not at odds with resisting oppression; most of the time the goals go hand in hand. Casaldáliga was by no means the only clergyman to embrace both. Of those who did, the ones who were not murdered lived to see John Paul II turn his back on them and remain ostracized to this day. None of them became popes, but every one of them acted as a Christian.

A Latin American Jesuit who is committed to the poor but has a past like Bergoglio’s is a particularly cruel and ironic choice for the papacy. I do not question Francis’ dedication to the dispossessed. But measured against men like Pedro Casaldáliga, Jorge Bergoglio is ersatz. My conversion will have to wait. u

THE HUNDREDMILE BORDER BENJAMIN KOATZ New Yorkers, you are one of the 190 million. If you live in LA you’re in the club, too. Houston and Seattle, you can also tag along. In fact, almost every major metropolitan area — and all those places on the coasts and borders in between them — can just hop onboard. If you roll with this multi-million crew, there are definitely benefits. For one, you often get great beachfront property and easy access to highly concentrated amounts of arts and culture. Also, if you’re caught driving, your laptop can be seized from you without warrant to look for child porn. Over three years ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a memo detailing a policy clarification. Intended to respect the “civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders,” the memo wanted to update DHS policy for the digital age. It ensured that just because our property today is on laptops and iPhones, those who are tasked with securing our borders will still be able to seize it without judicial oversight. The stated purpose is to save our country from “child pornography” and “copyright infringement.” Some background is helpful. When we enter or leave the country, routine stops and checks are not only practical but legally permissible. Under something commonly referred to as the Border Exception to the Fourth Amendment, certain members of the government (Customs and Border Patrol, immigration, etc.) can search us and seize property if they have a “reasonable cause to suspect” that doing so will lead to the discovery of something incriminating. The idea is that when dealing with the border, customs officials and security personnel don’t have to run to the nearest

town, hold up traffic, ask a judge for a warrant, wait and then run back. In fairness, it makes more sense than most government policy. But why is this legal concept applicable to New York City residents or citizens throughout the entire state of Michigan? Because what “the border” means to our government is not the same thing it means to you. The DHS memo also asked the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to provide an “Impact Assessment” within 120 days. A month ago, the office finally came to the (shocking) conclusion that nearly everything the DHS was doing was fine and dandy. Specifically, they said conducting “border searches without suspicion or warrant” has a long-standing legal precedent. The letter is correct when asserting that legal precedent exists for border searches. What is noteworthy, however, is that in the Immigration and Nationality Act (a 1952 law Congress perennially updates), the powers of immigration officials to search people in vehicles without a warrant extends a “reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States.” The point is to guarantee that drug-peddling Speedy Gonzálezes can’t outrun our immigration officials into the Land of Milk, Honey and Due Process. In the “Definitions” section of the same document, reasonable distance is defined as up to 100 miles. This creates a scenario where the majority of the United States does not have an absolute guarantee to due process. Having asserted their power to ‘respect our rights’ and search not only luggage and trunks for stowed-away illegals but also our electronic devices for porn, we (or at least two-thirds of the U.S. population) are now at the whim of customs agents who look at our car and think, “Hey, that guy might’ve crossed a border a few hours ago. Let’s check out his iPad.” As of two months ago, the DHS has already set up 33 internal checkpoints. Citizens have been forced to leave their train seats, input their laptop passwords and get interrogated about pictures they have saved. San Diegan Vince Peppard had his car ransacked by police dogs without reasonable suspicion, many miles into the country. The contraband he carried? Tile. Scarily, the DHS can extend the internal border beyond 100 miles if “unusual circumstances” justify the decision. This requires no judicial oversight — only a report to be checked off by some higher-up in

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Customs and Border Protection. “Unusual circumstances” remains unbounded and undefined. After September 11, America has seen its liberty not only traded, but in some cases put on a fire sale for ‘security.’ The PATRIOT Act, NDAA 1021 and federal wiretapping are just a few egregious examples. If now, “for the children” and copyright holders, we allow DHS checkpoints to pop up wherever a fast car, boat or plane can get to within a few hours of crossing the border, our constitutional liberties will be under even more undue strain. If we want to stop smuggling, let’s stop smugglers at the border. If they get through, that sucks — but we can’t just use that possibility to search random cars in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. without a warrant. Our constitutional and human right to be secure in our persons and effects is simply too precious for that. u

for the last three months (part of Obamacare). I first met Macklemore three years ago in a tiny club in West Philadelphia, where he played a show for about 30 people and joined with Ryan Lewis and some fans for shots after the show. Macklemore’s die-hard followers, myself among them, love the artist for his indie appeal. But an existential crisis has emerged in the Mackle-sphere, largely surrounding the archetypal question of fame and selling out, especially after the duo appeared in a TV spot for the NBA All-Star game, clipping the anti-consumerism from their anti-consumerist anthem “Wings.” But I’m also uneasy about some of the other political implications in Macklemore’s work, especially the criticism that the premise of “Thrift Shop” operates on a cultural assumption that its listeners would

THE POLITICS OF MACKLEMORE

I walked up into the store like I got a big — well, a big thrift shop party to prepare for. And it was when milling through the Salvation Army store east of campus that I first heard the news of Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) endorsing same-sex marriage. It might have been the first time the Republican Party’s stance on a divisive social issue was predicated on that of an American hip-hop icon. I’m referring specifically to Macklemore’s “Same Love.” It had me wondering: Is Macklemore a political rapper? He’s not exactly dropping rhymes about the ramifications of a flat tax (although, let’s face it, that would be awesome). But Macklemore’s music is political, in the sense that he raps against the rituals of mainstream rap culture — consumerism, drug use, homophobia — that have obvious political repercussions and corresponding debates in the political arena. For those who haven’t walked through Jo’s this semester, Macklemore and his sidekick Ryan Lewis are a white hip-hop duo from the Northwest rap scene in Seattle. Their single “Thrift Shop” topped the charts this year, which, if you haven’t heard by now, means you have been legally dead

only hit up the Salvation Army for novelty — overlooking, for instance, the huge swath of Americans who actually need to shop there because they can’t afford to elsewhere. It’s easy to dismiss a critique of your favorite artist. But it was much harder to actually look around the aisles of the Salvation Army while I was shopping for the party. As our group of undergraduates loudly roamed through the store, an unshaven man in a sanitation uniform pushed his daughter on a stroller through the aisles; another woman, plainly bone tired, searched listlessly for pajamas. Meanwhile, a clan of Brown students photographed their romp through the hangers, deliberately searching for the most obnoxious outfits as if to painfully remind the others — one wants to say, the regulars — of where they were. I got the sense that the employ-

OCEAN STATE SINKING When Rhode Island fumbles reform, PK–20 is the result.

Story by Michael D’Ortenzio / ART by olivia watson

“F

or such a small state, why can’t it get its act together?” This is a sentiment often evoked when thinking of Rhode Island. From unemployment to pension reform, the Union’s tiniest member seems to have the greatest proportion of problems. One major issue is PK–12 education — the sector that most affects Rhode Island’s future. The facts of the Ocean State’s schools today are sobering, with direct effects on the state’s economy: 32 percent of citizens live in a household with a median income of less than $35,000 ($10,000 lower than that of neighboring Massachusetts), and about one in five Rhode Islanders receive public assistance. For the state, the challenge then is to give its young people a decent shot at a family-sustaining income that too few of their parents, especially in urban areas, have been able to earn. But as Rhode Island struggles to advance its educational system, its students continue to fall behind national standards. Currently, 40 percent of Rhode Island and 65 percent of Providence high school juniors are in danger of not graduating due to failing scores on the state assessment. To graduate from high school in Rhode Island, a student needs to score “partially proficient” on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP). NECAP scores are continuing to rise slowly, but many students, mostly urban, are still not prepared to meet the bar. NECAP has a lower cutoff score and easier content standards than tougher state assessments in Massachusetts and California. The 2012

four-year graduation rate in Rhode Island was a mere 77 percent, a full 8 percentage points lower than that of Massachusetts. Though the NECAP is to be replaced by a new test starting in the 2014–2015 school year, students’ lack of proficiency will remain a serious problem. Rhode Island tangos with the same devils many other states do: communities segregated by race and class, a lack of sufficient funding, and bureaucratic and operating apparatuses that stymie meaningful

currently 40 percent of rhode island juniors are in danger of not graduating due to failing the state assessment. but rhode island’s lack of success is hardly due to lack of effort. change. The state’s lack of success thus far is not due to a lack of effort, though. Commissioner Deborah A. Gist of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (RIDE) published a well-written, comprehensive 29-page strategic plan in 2010. The General Assembly also recently established a statewide school funding formula. The issue is not a lack of care for students; it is that, far too often, actors in education policy appear to operate in isolation. Take the 38 Studios debacle, another case of making policy decisions without meaningful scrutiny. In July 2010, the state’s Economic Development Corpora-

tion (EDC) approved a $75 million guaranteed loan to 38 Studios, a game development company founded by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, in exchange for 450 jobs that would be brought to the state by the end of 2012. On the surface, it looked like a great deal: lure a high-tech company run by a New England superstar to fill a vacant Providence building with plenty of jobs, all for a loan that will be repaid with interest. Unfortunately, the vetting stopped there. Then-Governor Donald Carcieri (R-RI) saw the high-tech Rhode Island of the future, bought into the deal and shepherded the authorizing legislation through the General Assembly and EDC — with little pushback from either of the two. Too few people in the Ocean State’s part-time legislature have a strong background in policy, so when a leadership figure (such as the Speaker or Governor) signs on, they do, too. Education policy has taken a similar trajectory in Rhode Island. The absence of a statewide team approach to solving problems significantly detracts from teaching and learning, which ought to be the core of education. Rhode Island needs improved long-term planning and greater intra-government communication to achieve better outcomes in education. This was perhaps best demonstrated by the poorly planned, recent changes to the state’s education policymaking structure. At the end of its session last June, the Assembly merged the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education with the Board of Governors for Higher

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ees were trying not to stare. The human disconnect in that warehouse was palpable. And I have to wonder to what extent Macklemore is responsible. “Thrift Shop” is a college anthem, and Brown students mostly adore it. But similar to the way mainstream rap gave American whites yet another medium through which to co-opt African American cultural idioms in America, could it now be that Macklemore has given upper class yuppies a self-issued license to appropriate “thrift shop” culture? The disjuncture is inherent in the question. When you think about it, there’s nothing apparent to “appropriate” at all. Thrift shop regulars are not searching for parachute pants, and the ragged man pushing his daughter down the aisle is not at the Salvation Army because of the Billboard Hot 100. Unless I’m missing something, it seems as though Macklemore’s anthem is, at least indirectly, cheerleading for the appropriation of others’ misfortune (and having a great time while we do it). Other facets of Macklemore’s political stances — especially his bold appraisal of hip-hop’s homophobia in “Same Love” — I find admirable, even noble. But the political demographics of “Same Love” only recapitulate the socioeconomic “Thrift Shop” divide: supporters of gay-marriage are skewed toward the well-educated (read: those with higher incomes), the same sect of Brunonians descending on the Salvation Army not for the discount, but the Instagram photo. This is to say nothing of the stigma of homosexuality in hip-hop. In “Same Love,” Macklemore just barely skirts the 800-pound gorilla — that national support for gay marriage among African-Americans continues to lag (although President Obama’s endorsement provided a strong uptick). I’m left to wonder: could Macklemore really say the things he does in his music, without jeopardizing his career, if he weren’t white? Being able to say and do something others can’t because you’re white has a term (rhymes with “shmite shmivelege”). I love Macklemore’s music. Not only was his latest album his best, but self-produced — an incredible achievement. But underneath these assumptions is an alienating possibility. Over a decade after Eminem shook the music world by declaring “Y’all act like you never seen a white person before,” it might be time to wonder: is it easier, sometimes, to get ahead in the rap industry if you’re white? u

THE POLITICS OF MACKLEMORE

OCEAN STATE SINKING When Rhode Island fumbles reform, PK–20 is the result.

Story by Michael D’Ortenzio / ART by olivia watson

“F

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membership untrained for roughly half of its responsibilities. The new board may promote collaboration, but it comes at the price of inexperience — hardly an improvement for Rhode Island students. Second, there is limited evidence that a combined board would be the most successful route. Only three other states have similarly combined boards, and results have been mixed. At the time the bill was heading to a vote, House Finance Committee Chairman Helio Melo told the Journal that he wanted to “make the education system in the state more efficient and effective.” However, the Assembly seems to have forgotten that Rhode Island previously had a combined Board of Education. That board was split in 1982 because it was dominated by K–12 advocates and neglected post-secondary concerns. The new board does have an executive committee that contains the presidents of the state’s public higher education institutions, but there is little reason otherwise to think the outcome will be any different this time. If the goal is to provide better coordination from PK–20, there are more established alternatives. The Assembly could have created a cabinet-level post, such as a Secretary of Education, giving the sector additional credence on Smith Hill and overseeing overall coordination. The Legislature could also have created a PK–20 “coordination council” or reserved seats on each board for the other’s commissioner or board members. Each of these approaches has political and financial costs, but they all make more sense than the board merger. The third and most significant issue for Rhode Island government is the rushed nature of the merger in the first place. Regardless of whether the merger is actually a good idea, it never makes sense to upset the paradigm in a way that compromises progress in the interim. The state education establishment, from RIDE to Journal reporters, all seemed to be caught off guard by the proposal. Virtually no public discourse took place because there was simply no time for it to occur, save a few brief opportunities to testify in late May. In fact, now-Chairwoman Mancuso argued against the merger at one such hearing. To her credit, she quickly moved on and now seems to be working hard to establish the new board. Rather than having a thoughtful, thorough civic conversation with Rhode Islanders, the Assembly buried the merger in the state budget and rammed it through

was reckless for the Assembly to set up a situation in which a board that oversees an over-$3-billion enterprise in Rhode Island would have no appointees for over a fifth of its first year — a situation that legislators should have foreseen before the bill passed. As if getting citizens to actually sit on the board wasn’t problematic enough, newly appointed members now walk into a bureaucracy with no clear administrative structure. To be fair, when the Assembly merged the former boards, they directed the newly combined board to create an operating structure and “submit to the Governor and the General Assembly its final plan” no later than July 1. But devising

The most significant issue for Rhode island government is the rushEd nature of the merger. regardless of whether it was a good idea, it never makes sense to upset the education establishment in a way that compromises progress in the future.

at the last minute, not even as its own bill. Regardless of the opinions of the merger plan’s backers in the Assembly, it was impossible for them to have all the information necessary for sound policymaking when they voted, due to a lack of a robust public conversation. In this case, the Assembly did everything they could to avoid important citizen debate on the measure, which had no clear need to pass and could have been taken up at the beginning of the next session less than six months later, with ample time for discussion.

Moreover, this rushed process is also evident in the final implementation of the merger. From the outset, the Assembly created a situation in which the new board would exist without any members actually sitting on it. Because the merger was passed at the very end of the session, even if the Governor vetted nominees over the summer, they could not have taken office, as the Senate would not be in session to give advice and consent. As a result, no one was appointed to the board until more than two months after its effective date. It

the leadership chart six months after the formation of a major board that oversees the education of hundreds of thousands of Rhode Islanders is reckless at best. This is the type of “buy now, pay later” scheme that swindles needy families, one that Rhode Island should be smart enough to avoid. Transitions, especially of this magnitude, should be executed in a deliberative, intentional manner. Even if this merger might at some point enhance PK–20 coordination at the board level, especially in a state as small as Rhode Island, it is not worth upsetting the establishment in a way that prevents the accomplishment of meaningful work for a year in the interim. Rather than creating unnecessary turf wars and artificial confusion, the Assembly should have waited and more thoroughly explored the idea of combining the boards at the start of the new session. In true Rhode Island fashion, the failure of education policy ultimately results from the state leaders’ constant search for a quick fix instead of a focus on what is tried and true: ensuring high standards, providing strong support and building a community of achievement. Most leadership professionals will tell you that it takes incremental, sustained change over a long period of time to truly affect an organiza-

tion or enterprise. Rhode Island has seen a last-minute merger without public input and infighting within the education establishment — and who is left last on the priority list? The students themselves. In fact, students lost their representation on the combined board. The Board of Governors once included a full-voting college student, and legislation passed last session added a non-voting high school representative to the Board of Regents. Both positions were eliminated when the boards combined. And in a standard misstep of the Assembly, the bill authorizing the Board of Regents student member was enacted five days after the statute merging the boards; in other words, Smith Hill combined the boards and then enacted legislation to add a student member to a soon-to-be-defunct board. A large part of the blame for these mistakes rests with the Ocean State’s legislature — not the individual legislators but rather the structure of the Assembly itself. Its part-time nature leads to decisions that are rarely fully thought out. Representatives and senators have other concerns on their mind: their day job, family and other myriad everyday responsibilities. They simply do not have enough time to devote to the important complexities of policy development. Legislators have to do what the average citizen does and run the state on the side. In any representative democracy, there is room to disagree; in fact, there should be disagreement. But Rhode Island’s leaders are not even giving a chance for that productive disagreement to occur. In an “I know what’s best” approach that exemplifies what is wrong with Ocean State government, the Assembly pushed through unproven, poorly vetted legislation, throwing the state’s educational administration into turmoil. Pieces of legislation like the merger, among many other examples, demonstrate that shoot-fromthe-hip ideas seldom work well. There is no good reason why the Ocean State can’t have a top-notch education system. Yet it must remember that silver bullets, such as the combined education board, rarely work as they’re intended to. Rhode Island may be the smallest state, but it should not be the one struggling to avoid last place. u MICHAEL D’ORTENZIO ‘15 is a public policy concentrator and staff writer AT bpr.

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Education. The result was a new Board of Education with authority over PK–20 (elementary, secondary and college students) policymaking. Despite the Legislature’s claims of greater PK–20 coordination, there is little evidence to support this approach. Some claimed the Assembly’s leaders orchestrated the merger because they were miffed that the Board of Governors approved in-state tuition for illegal immigrants without the body’s blessing. That may be true, but regardless of whether the Assembly was angered, it is not the real issue at stake. The problem is that the merger was not grounded in good policy or meaningful public discourse, for a number of reasons. First, the merger does not take into account the structure of teacher education systems. The American public education system naturally bifurcates PK–12 educators from college educators because of how its entry systems are set up. The majority of PK–12 educators go to school for education and take state certification exams. On the other hand, to become professors, tenure-track college educators attain a doctorate in a specific field. In both cases, an authority authenticates the individual educators: RIDE for PK–12 teachers, and higher education institutions for university professors. Yet the methods for entry into each are different, and while there is some overlap — such as individuals with doctorates teaching in elementary and secondary schools — they naturally separate the two groups. It is therefore difficult for individuals to gain meaningful experience in both fields, as teachers are in effect forced to choose one pathway while they are undergraduates. Although it is auspicious that the governor has filled the new board with appointees who represent a good crosssection of Rhode Island with backgrounds in both PK–12 and higher education, creating a combined board makes little sense because members will typically have expertise in only one level or the other. Chairwoman Eva-Marie Mancuso of the newly combined board told the Providence Journal in March, “This is about people getting out of their comfort zones, their silos of expertise, and sharing their vision.” That is a noble goal, but it makes little sense to force people out of their silos if they do not have meaningful experiences to share. Instead of having two boards with knowledgeable professionals, Rhode Island now has one board with a

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ROCKET SCIENCE The future of space looks increasingly privatized. Story by Lauren Sukin / ART BY RACHEL HABERSTROH

tures all of its parts in-house, employing a few ex-NASA engineers and a few fresh ones. Part of SpaceX’s stated goal is a permanent human colonization on Mars, but for now the company is just trying to pick up where NASA left off after Congress cut its human spaceflight program and canceled the U.S. Space Shuttle program. Last year, SpaceX sent their innovative Dragon spacecraft up to the International Space Station — the first commercial spacecraft to dock on the ISS for a resupply mission, and the only commercial spacecraft to do so from any nation. In fact, as of two years ago, only the European Space Agency and the governments of Japan, Russia and the United States had been able to reach the ISS. In October 2012, SpaceX’s Dragon capsule completed its first mission, and it has now begun regular resupply. Its most recent foray returned safely on March 26. The company has a few different designs: the Falcon Heavy, a launch-lift vehicle that can carry satellites into orbit and can handle twice the payload of the retired U.S. Space Shuttle, and the Falcon 1, a lighter-payload rocket that was the first liquid-fuel rocket designed by a commercial company to achieve orbit. Falcon Heavy, if everything goes as planned, will eventually be capable of lunar orbit missions, as well as Mars landings. That’s step one in Musk’s long-term plan. SpaceX is part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, a public-private partnership to encourage space technology innovation. NASA monitors the progress of these commercial industries, provides the legal flexibility for them to perform this sensitive work and pays companies for successful designs. What NASA doesn’t do is any of the design, development, manufacturing, testing or operation — meaning that, at least for human spaceflight, NASA is no longer the primary agency for technology creation. Instead, NASA is taking a new role as the National Aerospace Supervision Agency, regulating commercial ventures such as SpaceX and contracting out to them work

that used to be done in-house. For example, in 2014 SpaceX will launch DSCOVR, a NASA environmentmonitoring satellite, and in 2015 it will launch the satellites of another NASA partner, Iridium, which develops communication technology. SpaceX has launched satellites only into low Earth orbit so far but intends to put its first satellite into the higher and harder-to-reach geostationary orbit later this year. The company intends to use its rockets to launch commercial satellites from other corporations and governments as well, including public–private ventures in Argentina, Canada, Europe, Israel, Thailand and Taiwan. This is actually another step toward subsuming some of NASA’s responsibilities; in addition to launching American spacecraft, NASA has historically helped other nations’ space agencies deliver satellites. Of course, SpaceX isn’t the only company trying to privatize space travel. Virginia-based Orbital is also working on human spaceflight and exploration technology, similarly focusing on ISS and lunar missions. It was recently awarded a contract with NASA to begin ISS resupply missions

later this year. Its technology is slightly behind SpaceX’s but does show promise. And XCOR Aerospace and Space Expedition Corporation has been making history by opening up the newest frontier in extraterrestrial commerce: space tourism. If you have $100,000 and want a 60-minute out-of-this-world trip — 5 minutes of which are weightless — you could spend next spring break in suborbital space with XCOR. As of press time, however, the company’s policy on tequila body shots remained unclear. If you have $200,000 and want to space out for two hours, then an experience from Virgin Galactic, XCOR’s competitor, should be on your radar. Following this privatization trend, some NASA projects have even split off to become commercial. One example is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, which uses radio technology to scan the universe for signs of intelligent life. SETI has caused a lot of controversy through the years, because no one knows whether our academic curiosity will turn space bugs from Starship Troopers, a planet full of happy space puppies or nothing at all. Such uncertainty strikes at the heart of

the matter: space is interesting, but we don’t know why we should care about it, other than that it’s big, complex and foreign. It’s hard to take aliens or Mars colonization seriously because they seem so intangible. So while we laugh when Newt Gingrich wants humans to live on the moon, in reality we are in fact working toward that, even if the 51st state of Moonlandia remains a far-off dream. In the meantime, the private sector will keep on trying for a giant leap in human spaceflight technology. But even though the private sector is growing in size and influence, it currently still relies on NASA for money and access to technology, and NASA does serve a regulatory role as well, even for contract work. The real question might not be whether we can get to the moon as inhabitants but who should get us there. After all, if NASA is supposed to be in charge of space exploration for the United States, why is the American government putting astronauts from private companies on the ISS? Like most things in politics, the answer is money. It’s not that we don’t want to get to space; it’s that more pressing financial matters come first. Civilians like to look up at

LAUREN SUKIN ‘16 IS A POTENTIAL POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCENTRATOR AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE at BPR.

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hris Hadfield recently celebrated St. Patty’s in space. The Canadian astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) wore a green shirt and bow tie, snapped a space pic of Ireland that puts your Instagram to shame and recorded his own version of “Danny Boy.” Hadfield is just one example of an individual in the new arena of aerospace. The industry, having emerged in the midst of the Cold War, is now a reinvented field: increasingly dynamic and increasingly privatized. America first began its space exploration program with the 1958 creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which has since carried Americans to the ISS and the moon and sent probes and satellites far into space. Though NASA is still unquestionably the great American space agency, it is now increasingly shifting the burden of human spaceflight to a new entity, the commercialized aerospace industry. Young companies such as SpaceX, XCOR Aerospace and Space Expedition Corporation, Virgin Galactic and Orbital are just now taking off as symbols of American aerospace in their own right, making history as the first commercial enterprises to develop spacecraft and successfully enter into the marketplace of space travel. As these companies have grown, the government has taken notice. The Federal Communications Commission has for the first time expanded its Experimental Authorization program to space exploration companies, which temporarily gives them access to use certain radio frequency bands in a program called Spectrum. This is a critical step to help with projects these companies are working on, but more importantly it is a key early development in what might become a long history of public–private cooperation on space and the first step by a non-NASA organization to encourage these corporations to succeed. SpaceX was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a co-founder of both Tesla Motors and PayPal. The pet-project-turned-international-marvel develops and manufac-

the stars, but going there is a different question, especially when poor quality education, rising gas prices and high unemployment persist. This year’s sequester alone cut NASA’s budget by $900 million. Though John F. Kennedy’s dreams for NASA may have been tabled because of Uncle Sam’s empty pockets, the agency is not yet gone from the scene. It remains a key player in guiding the development of privatized human spaceflight, and it is also strong in its own right. NASA has its fingers in a lot of pies — human spaceflight is just one of them. The Cold War era space agency has contributed enormously to all aspects of STEM innovation throughout its existence. NASA has enhanced life on earth in a very tangible way, through projects such as communications satellites — those that make your TVs and iPhones work as well as those used by the military. It has also developed technology such as telescopes, probes and monitoring technology that supplements research on global warming, agriculture and even oceanography. Advances additionally include commercialized spin off byproducts of NASA research: the weird antioxidants you get in your Ivy Room smoothies, sensors (straight out of “Little Shop of Horrors”) that let plants text their farmers and even online video games to supplement your time spent browsing your substandard, sub-atmospheric Instagram. Even though the tide is changing, NASA still has several of these projects in place and 17 more satellite launches planned in 2013 alone. It remains the leader in probe development, space situational awareness and observation satellites, as well as many other fields. In addition, one of its new major projects is the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to replace our old friend Hubble. But NASA might be becoming a bit of an old friend, too, an agency that has gone from carrying groundbreaking and sound-barrier–breaking astronauts to destinations far, far away to an agency that has left that particular dream to the private sector in order to pursue a more regulatory role and a narrower focus on other technologies. If it’s another moon landing or a human mission to Mars that we dream of, then the future of the final frontier lies not in the hands of NASA but in the open arms of a new industry and its entrepreneurs. u

ROCKET SCIENCE The future of space looks increasingly privatized. Story by Lauren Sukin / ART BY RACHEL HABERSTROH

LAUREN SUKIN ‘16 IS A POTENTIAL POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCENTRATOR AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE at BPR.

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GETTING A RAISE What is the real cost of the minimum wage? Story by DAniel Kopin / ART by EMily Reif

wage is commonly used by conservatives and businesses owners, including a restaurant owner who testified at the committee hearing. But for liberals, as Dube remarked, “It’s uncontroversial that a minimum wage increase [to $10.10] would not have a [noticeably negative] impact on the economy.” Other witnesses who did not favor a minimum-wage increase shuffled awkwardly as they faced Warren and Dube’s questions, and it looks like the discomfort is increasingly justified. These questions, the shot-down proposal for a $10.10 minimum wage and President Obama’s State of the Union Address that called for a minimum wage of $9 are all beginning to leave the realm of rhetoric and create a basis for real policy. Though Miller and Harkin’s efforts have been largely defeated for now by the Republican bloc, President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Labor nomination, Thomas Perez — who as attorney general of Maryland pushed for increases to the state’s minimum wage — signifies that the left is mobilizing against the opposition. The Republican response to this mobilization is perhaps best exemplified by Sen. Paul Ryan’s comment: “I wish we could just pass a law saying everybody should make more money without any adverse consequences. The problem is you’re costing jobs from those who are just trying to get entry-level jobs. The goal ought to be getting people out of entry-level jobs into better jobs, better-paying jobs.” The left and the right thus differ vastly on how an increase in minimum wage would affect the economy. Who is correct? Is it the liberals who argue increasing the minimum wage would give productive workers more buying power, which would in turn stimulate the economy? Or is it the conservatives claiming that a higher minimum wage would cause all workers to want an increase in wages, meaning that employers would have to cut back on hiring employees, especially low-skilled ones, in order to manage those demands — a result that would ultimately hurt workers and stifle the economy? Research points both ways. The issue

is at once incredibly economically complex and politically loaded, so studies often are partisan and conclude on either extreme; the Koch brothers’ libertarian Cato Institute as well as the National Employment Law Project (which also runs the website raisetheminimumwage.com) have conducted exemplary conflicting studies in that regard. In February, the Washington Post ran an article exploring why economists disagree so much about the implications of increasing the minimum wage. The Post found that the theoretical model from Econ 101 that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment by increasing the cost of hiring low-pay workers and therefore causing enterprises to cut back on such employees is just not empirically true. Drawing from the careful work of John Schmitt of the widely revered and nonpartisan Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR), the Post highlighted that the majority of studies show that gradually increasing the minimum wage actually has little to no effect on the economy. This is because when wages are increased, there is less worker turnover. The possible corresponding slight decrease in wages for higher-paid employees and rise in consumer prices are offset by the lack of screening, training and vacancy-related costs that would otherwise result from worker turnover, which means companies do all right. Despite the fact that the majority of nonpartisan research points to the conclusion that gradually increasing the federal minimum wage would not hurt the economy as conservative critics suggest it would, the political reality for any increase at the federal level is gloomy. Every time a Democrat has proposed increasing the federal minimum wage or indexing the wage to inflation, Republicans have killed their efforts. Tellingly, the last time the right did vote in favor of increasing the federal wage — but not indexing it to inflation — was in 2007 under President George W. Bush. Considering that increasing the minimum wage results in workers spending more, high school enrollment increasing and

public health improving, one might gather that conservative objections are not made with public interests in mind. In essence, Republican concerns about low-paid workers amount to little more than inflammatory rhetoric when faced with the facts. Nevertheless, Republicans control the House and have filibustering power in the Senate, so there is little hope for minimum wage reform on the federal level. On the other hand, some states have taken the lead in increasing minimum wages for workers. Since 2007, 19 states

If 1968’s minimum wage wERE adjusted in real terms, today’s minimum wage would be $10. but the political chances for a federal increase remain gloomy. and Washington, D.C. have passed minimum-wage laws that surpass the federal amount. On the higher end of the spectrum, New York and Maine have recently passed laws to increase the state minimum wage to $9 over the next few years. The states with the most progressive minimum-wage laws have their minimum wages indexed to inflation. This includes Vermont, which has a radically higher employment rate than that of most states. The Miller–Harkin federal minimum wage proposal, following Vermont’s example by indexing the wage to inflation, would have had the same results as the state did: little to no negative impact on the economy and a better-paid working class with higher spending power.

The federal government has a history of following states — the laboratories of democracy — when it comes to the minimum wage. Massachusetts became the first state to introduce a minimum wage in 1912, but it took until 1938, during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, for the federal government to adopt its own minimum wage law, the Wages and Hours Bill. Roosevelt understood the significance of this policy, declaring during one of his fireside chats that “except perhaps for the Social Security Act, it [was] the most far-reaching program, the most farsighted program, for the benefit of workers that has ever been adopted, here or in any other country.” The federal minimum wage established by Roosevelt increased steadily until the early 1970s when, with less political support in a bad economy, it began to decline. That trend continued until the 2007 Fair Minimum Wage Act, which passed thanks to unusual Republican support. Then, the federal minimum wage was set to rise over the next two years, from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. Despite this victory for workers in 2007, another federal minimum wage increase is long overdue. Unlike the generations before them, Americans today who are paid the minimum wage have few chances to lift themselves out of poverty. In real terms, 1968’s minimum wage would today be $10, equivalent to annual earnings of $20,000 assuming an average of 40 hours a week. In contrast, working for the present federal minimum wage of $7.25 now barely amounts to making $15,000 a

year, well below the official U.S. poverty line for a family of four at $23,550 per annum. Although raising the minimum wage to $20,000 a year would still not be enough for such a family, even those few thousand dollars would mean a great deal. Warren helped call attention to this unfortunate absurdity in the Senate HELP committee hearing, and others in government are doing their part as well, suggesting brightness ahead rather than the gloom of the status quo for a federal minimum wage increase. Although her point about a $22 minimum wage was a tactic specifically to push for the $10.10 standard indexed with inflation, its broader effect may be long-lasting. There is certainly an audience for her maneuver: according to a poll done by USA Today and the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of Americans support increasing the federal minimum wage to $9. Gradually increasing the minimum wage, as many on the left have been pushing for, would not burden the American economy. With a higher minimum wage, companies would see reduced worker turnover costs, education enrollment would increase, public health would improve and fewer people would be living in poverty. Indeed, granting lowest-paid workers’ claims to higher wages may, in time, become less a far-fetched policy proposal and more a necessity for politicians to support if they want to remain in power. u Daniel kopin ‘15 is an urban studies concentrator and an online columnist and media editor at bpr.

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here was an ominous silence after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) finished asking Dr. Arindrajit Dube her question. “If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up — that is, as workers are producing more — then the minimum wage is going to go up [at] the same [rate],” said Warren. “The minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour… With a [current federal] minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker.” Dube, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was testifying at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) March 14 hearing, “Keeping up with a Changing Economy: Indexing the Minimum Wage.” He responded to Warren’s question by presenting another query: What would the federal minimum wage look like if it had kept up with the wages of the highest taxpaying bracket? In that scenario, it would be a remarkable $33. Implicit in Dube’s answer was that while nobody knows for sure where every cent went, it is clear that the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. A day later, House Republicans voted unanimously to defeat a proposed amendment to the Republican-backed SKILLS Act. Introduced by Rep. George Miller (DCA) and jointly sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), the amendment would have raised the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 over the next two years. Warren had been acutely aware of the approaching vote. She later clarified that the point in asking her question was to show that the proposed and ultimately defeated increases to the minimum wage were minuscule compared to what the wage should be from an economic standpoint. Warren was rejecting the claim of “inflationary effects,” which suggests that minimum wage increases inflate the costs of running a business that spill over and damage the economy as a whole. This argument against increasing the minimum

GETTING A RAISE What is the real cost of the minimum wage? Story by DAniel Kopin / ART by EMily Reif

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Photography by Derek Key

PRISON, INCorporated it’s not the war on drugs. why the Prison-Industrial Complex is about to get worse.

Story by Athena Bryan

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existent pool of prisoners. It is easy to prove the independent existences of an enormous incarcerated population and of industries benefiting from incarceration. But it’s much harder to prove whether the financial benefits of privatization create a positive feedback loop with incarceration — so that hyper-incarceration pays enough for it to become entrenched in the system.

ere’s an arresting list of statistics. The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world: 716 people incarcerated per 100,000 members of the population. With just around 5 percent of the world population, the U.S. contains 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population — there were 1,612,395 people incarcerated in state and federal U.S. prisons in 2010. These numbers continue to grow, and the cost of processing, convicting and incarcerating so many people expands with it. Hyper-incarceration is not a deeply entrenched aspect of American society but rather a fairly recent phenomenon showing astonishing growth in the past 30 years. The prison population in 2009 is over four times as large as it was in 1980. The rate of increase in incarceration also has seen steady

annual growth, with an average increase of 1.7 percent between 2000 and 2009 and a 15.9 percent increase in overall prison population from 2000 to 2010. It is important to differentiate between federal and state incarceration, as the policies governing each of them differ. The grand total of the prison population of 1.6 million breaks down lopsidedly to 1,402,624 prisoners in state prisons and 209,771 in federal prisons. Furthermore, the distribution of prisoners by type of offense is radically different in federal and state prisons. In 2010, a little over half of the inmates in state prisons were serving time for violent offenses and only 18 percent behind bars for drug offenses. In federal prisons, about half of the inmates were serving for drug offenses. Growth in federal prisons is also more robust than in state prisons. Between 2000 and 2009, federal prison populations have averaged 4.1 percent growth rates per year, while state rates averaged 1.4 percent. The trend of over-incarceration is directly related to mandatory minimum sentences. Before the 1980s, there were only three offenses with existing federal mandatory minimums: first-degree murder, failure or refusal to testify before Congress and disobedience of a cease-and-desist order.

tory minimum penalty, 77.4 percent were for drug trafficking. In fact, just four statutes make up 71.6 percent of mandatory minimum sentences. The New York Times’ bold proclamation that all mandatory minimums be rescinded was too broad and unrealistic, and it does not take much effort to suss out the actual culprits. As the nation warms up to the legalization of marijuana, it is worth noting that although marijuana cases composed 26 percent of the federal drug offenses in 2010, marijuana was the drug type for just 17.2 percent of drug offenses carrying mandatory minimum penalties. There are stories of nonviolent criminals put away for life for possessing small amounts of marijuana, but the only three-strike law where all three strikes need not be violent or serious was in California, and it was repealed in 2012 by a plebiscite. This horror story is no longer possible under any state or federal laws. In fact, the majority of mandatory minimum drug sentences concern powder or crack cocaine, with sentences handed down for the former slightly outpacing those of the latter (28.1 percent of mandatory minimum drug sentences and 24.7 percent, respectively). However, these federal mandatory minimums have inconsistent trigger quantities. Crack cocaine’s lowest

Of tHE whopping 52 expansions of federal mandatory minimum provisions between 2002 and 2012, only twO OF THEM involved drug policy. mandatory minimum sentence is triggered at 28 grams, versus 500 grams of powdered cocaine, even though crack — much more prevalent in poor, minority communities — is pharmacologically the same as powder cocaine. Such a policy may go some way in beginning to explain why blacks represent the highest proportion of those penalized with mandatory minimum sentences (38.5 percent versus whites’ 27.5 percent) and why blacks disproportionately made up 37.8 percent of the total incarcerated population in 2010, compared to 13 percent of the national population. The country’s

persistent, systemic racism and its relationship with poverty and crime is a topic that cannot be entirely covered in one article — let alone as an aside to an already complex issue — but not mentioning the skewed racial representation in incarcerated America would be dishonest by omission. All of this is simply to say that the mandatory minimum drug sentences themselves put into question the purpose of incarceration, be it rehabilitative or punitive. They cannot, however, be materially linked to the flood of prisoners incarcerated for petty drug crimes, especially, as people are wont to point out, for possession of small amounts of marijuana. The most pressing matter at the federal level (where, again, about 50 percent of inmates were charged on drug crimes versus states’ 18 percent) is the trigger quantities for crack versus powder cocaine, calling into question the social equity of mandatory minimums. The facts at hand may not be as lurid as some discussions on mandatory minimums would imply. But the continuing growth of prison populations, the use of mandatory minimums for drug trafficking and little else, the status of drug offenders as the majority of those incarcerated in federal prisons, and the faster rate of growth in federal prison populations compared to state populations all point toward these statutes as a good place to start investigating for reform in order to curb prison population growth and consequently defray exploding costs.

massive incarcerated population is costly, and the increased prison population has been consequently met with an increase in government spending. The most recent comprehensive statistics on corrections spending from 2007 put the cost of the nation’s police protection, corrections, and judicial and legal services at $228 billion. This represents an increase of 171 percent since 1982 after adjusting for inflation. Corrections expenditures alone rose from $21 billion in 1982 to $74 billion in 2007, representing a 255.3 percent change. State and local government spending accounts for the majority of this total, at $67.8 billion. Incarceration is the second fastest-growing budget item for states after Medicaid. The price for a state to incarcerate one prisoner in 2010 ranged from $14,603 in Kentucky to $60,076 in New York, averaging out to $31,286 per year. With costs mounting and constant fever-pitch anxiety over government bud-

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n 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that the degree of overcrowding in California prisons constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Hordes of suffering prisoners might present an image culturally mapped to conditions under foreign military dictatorships or the gulag system in the heyday of the Soviet Union, but it’s time to acknowledge that American incarceration has reached that level. Although California’s incarceration is an extreme case, 18 other states were operating above capacity in 2010, and the federal prison system was at 36 percent over capacity. How did it get to this point? And what lies ahead? One plausible narrative claims that lawmakers, bribed by corporate interests, write severe sentencing laws to supply private prisons with inmates and provide a massive pool of cheap laborers. Voices in The Guardian, The Nation, AlterNet and many others decry the U.S. justice system as a “prison-industrial complex” in exposés of prison labor or private, “for-profit” prisons. But in order to argue that a prison-industrial complex exists, the policies that contribute to massive incarceration must be linked to industries that benefit from the

Mandatory minimums have since been attached to many other crimes, including for laws related to drug trafficking, large-scale weapons, immigration and sex offenses. Mandatory minimums are not unpopular with voters. Such policies, driven by citizens’ fear, are not dirty secrets but instead popular campaign slogans in judicial, gubernatorial and congressional elections of candidates who promise to keep crime rates low. The push to get criminals in prison for long stretches of rigidly determined time reinforces the purpose of incarceration, not so much for rehabilitation but for retribution — and as a way to get criminals out of sight at any cost. In 2010, 14.5 percent of offenders sentenced in federal courts were convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum and subject to that penalty at sentencing. Although 27.2 percent of federal offenders were convicted of offenses carrying mandatory minimums, almost half avoided or mitigated the sentence by acting as informants or qualifying for the federal “safety valve” of being low-level, first-time and nonviolent. . So it might initially appear that sentencing with mandatory minimums fairly deals federal penalties. But in reality, 39.4 percent of prisoners in federal custody were subject to mandatory minimum penalties at sentencing. The very nature of mandatory minimums means that prisons will be clogged with inmates for vast stretches of time. Even if the rate of sentencing stays relatively low, the proportion of the prison population of those incarcerated under mandatory minimums will logically continue to increase. There is a growing cultural association between mandatory minimum sentences and the War on Drugs. Yet of the whopping 52 expansions of federal mandatory minimum provisions that Congress wrote between 2002 and 2012, 43 involved the sexual exploitation, harm or murder of children. Only two involved drug policy — one for the possession of armor-piercing ammunition during a drug trade and one to expand drug statutes to include the distribution of synthetic drugs. So when a 2011 editorial in The New York Times criticizing the harshness of drug-related mandatory minimum sentences concluded that “Congress needs to rescind all mandatory minimum sentences,” the editors were aiming at the wrong target. It is not the legislation itself where the focus on drug crimes is disproportionate but its execution. Of 19,896 defendants convicted in 2010 of an offense carrying a manda-

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Photography by Derek Key

PRISON, INCorporated it’s not the war on drugs. why the Prison-Industrial Complex is about to get worse.

Story by Athena Bryan

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promises. Thus the free-market solution is socially unrewarding, and private prisons can self-interestedly increase profits simply by lowering the quality of incarceration. And the number of private prisons is still growing. Between 2000 and 2005 the proportion of private facilities compared to public ones grew from 16 percent to 23 percent. Approximately 8 percent of the prison population was housed in private facilities in 2010, up from 6.3 percent in 2000. And 16.1 percent of federal prisoners are in private facilities compared to state prisons’ 6.7 percent. The growth in private federal prison populations has been robust at an average annual change of 9.1 percent from 2000 to 2009, while private state facilities have seen a more modest growth in population of 3.2 percent. Trends point toward growth in the privatization of prisons, despite no signs that such institutions improve the incarceration system — opening ethical inquiries into the nascence and perpetuation of the private prison industry. The top two private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, capture 77 percent of the private prison market with a combined revenue exceeding $3.3 billion. Both have uncomfortably close relationships with the political right-wing establishment, whose ideology steadfastly espouses privatization, and have acquired companies with

the top two private prison companies capture 77 percent of the private prison market with a combined revenue exceeding $3.3 billion. track records of similarly shady dealings. Both have made contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose members are the same conservative legislators pushing for stricter prison sentences, inmate labor in the private sector and the legalization of private prisons in various states. One of CCA’s founders was the chair of Tennessee’s Republican Party. Executives in U.S. Corrections Corporation, which was acquired by CCA in 1998, paid $77,000 in

campaign contributions to Republican candidates in local Kentucky races between 1987 and 1993. And one of GEO Group’s acquisitions, Correctional Services Corporation, has been accused of abusing and mistreating inmates and was fined for failing to report gifts, meals and transportation to various Brooklyn and Bronx legislators. Innovation and quality improvements may be lacking in prison privatization, but profits are high and populations are growing, making privatization a very potent element of the prison-industrial system. But the privatization of corrections facilities is just one way in which prisons are being drawn to the private sector. Another looming time bomb — and one with even more dangerous ethical implications — is the use of inmate labor. The argument in favor of inmate labor holds that such programs help keep prisoners busy while preparing them for employment once their sentences are complete, reducing recidivism. At the same time, the goods produced and wages earned would help defray incarceration costs. Wariness about public substitution effects on the private sector has led to bans on interstate commerce of prison-produced goods and to limited government contracts since the early 20th century. Yet inmates today in both state and federal prison are employed in manufacturing. Private sector employment by prisoners has been legal in state prisons for over 30 years, and in 2011, Congress allowed federal prison industries to carry out pilot projects with private companies. Federal prisoners are employed exclusively through a government-owned corporation called Federal Prison Industries (FPI), whose trade name is UNICOR. The FPI employs inmates at wages of $0.23 to $1.15 per hour to produce goods that government agencies are sometimes forced to buy through controversial mandatory clauses, wherein government agencies are required to purchase UNICOR products. Complaints have arisen that this unfairly competes with the private industry and would be especially harmful to small-scale private businesses. There has been a push to reform these arrangements, and legislation has rolled back the FPI’s advantage by reducing these requirements to purchase from FPI. The number of prisoners employed by FPI in 2010 had tripled to about 15,900 since 1970, after peaking at 23,200 in 2007.

But the proportion of inmates employed by FPI has been decreasing steadily since the late 1980s, from a high of around 30 percent. In 2010, fewer than 10 percent of federal inmates were employed by the FPI, suggesting that the true cause of the absolute increase in FPI employment is the growth of the total prison population. This

MORE corrections facilities are becoming private, but a looming and more dangerous ethical time bomb is the increasing use of inmate labor. renders the claim that increased federal incarceration is tied with a desire to turn inmates into a cheap labor force a tenuous one at best. The scale between growth of incarceration and the growth of industrial labor do not match. The speed and consistency of prison population growth is not paralleled by the more erratic trends in the employment of the prisoners. For the most part, they are an unused pool. FPI’s partnering with private industries is nascent and, as of now, lacks data, but the use of inmates from state prisons for labor in the private sector is well established. The Justice System Improvement Act of 1979 authorized the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP), which allows private industry to establish joint ventures with certified prison institutions. It has understandably raised some hackles. Detractors have called it slave labor or attempted to connect PIECP and the exploding prison population as a plot to give corporations a cheap and compliant labor pool. However, despite temptation to condemn corporations, the numbers simply aren’t yet there to ring any alarms about an underground private industry slave-wage labor force. As of June 30, 2010, there were 30 jurisdictions with PIECP operations, but inmate laborers in this program total only 4,500 to 5,000 nationwide. Still, prison labor, though currently not fully realized, remains extremely attractive, enough so that despite the relative smallness of the PIECP program (especially

in contrast to the size of the incarcerated population), its growth seems inevitable. Industries using prison labor would not have to pay a lease on manufacturing space, and benefits such as vacation or health insurance are not provided. Wages comparable to non-incarcerated workers must be paid, but deductions from wages can include room and board, restitutions, and family support as long as they do not exceed 80 percent of gross wages. In theory, the wages paid would not severely undercut non-prison competition even if little makes its way to the inmate’s actual possession, but new model legislation for establishing prison industries has proposed diverting some of the room-and-board deductions to the maintenance of the PIECP program. So far, such legislation has only been adopted in Florida, but the profitability advantages of such a policy are absurd, not to mention the blatant departure from the overarching goal of using proceeds of such ventures to reduce incarceration costs. In fairness, to become a certified PIECP participator, jurisdictions must comply with eight mandatory guidelines that attempt to ensure that prisoners receive the effective minimum wage, that inmates participate voluntarily and that the existing industry and its workers undergo no harm. In 2010, the most recent compliance assessment of these guidelines by the National Correction Industries Association, which is responsible for PIECP oversight, called ensuring the minimum wage the “single most difficult requirement...to implement.” As far as not interfering with existing laborers and industry, the NCIA compliance assessment notes that they were able to secure “non-displacement determinations,” meaning that the State Department of Enterprise Services signed off on a statement that non-inmate workers in the same industries were not forced out of their jobs by inmate laborers. However, the report notes that the State Department of Enterprise Services “expressed strong discomfort” in doing so and likely wouldn’t in the future. Additionally, NCIA’s oversight is itself weak; it performs reviews every two years of about only 30 percent of the institutions and mostly reviews previously filed documents instead of performing on-site assessments. The ethical implications of inmate labor are obvious cause for concern. Not only would the huge pool of laborers — who are subject to low wages and unable to organize or agitate in any politically meaningful way

— undercut employment of regular civilians, but also the goods they produce could choke out competition. There is additionally the plainly horrifying concept of a permanent underclass of Americans, gaining far below minimum wage with no ability to move up or away from their menial, lowskill jobs.

o date, private prisons and for-profit prison labor are not operating on a scale anywhere near the size of the prison population. It is consequently difficult to argue that privatization is causing the expansion of the prison population. The enormous pool of prisoners, yet untapped for profit, is more of a time bomb than an aftereffect of an entrenched industrial prison system. If such a large incarcerated population can start turning a profit for enough moneyed interests, reform might be pushed permanently out of reach. The figures as of yet do not present the private prison system as an unconquerable monolith — but at its present rate of growth, incarceration reform needs to be discussed soberly, now. In terms of incarceration itself, the statistics are not so elusive or inconclusive. Hyper-incarceration in modern America is no secret, and mainstream media sources will roll out an article here and there whenever a new study is published. So why is the trend still going upward? Why the gap between identifying the problem and addressing it? Michel Foucault notes that “in a very strange way, the history of imprisonment does not obey a chronology in which one sees…the establishment of a penalty of detention; then the recognition of its failure; then the slow rise of projects of reform.” While his arguments concern prisons in early 19th century France, the statement retains a chilling relevance today. Crime rates correspond little with incarceration rates, yet imprisonment is employed with only heightened fervor. The American cultural acceptance and embrace of incarceration is evident, if difficult to explain. But the dilemma of presenting a comprehensive theoretical model to explain such a love of incarceration will only become a moot point if private industries’ profit margins make a straightforward, if somber, economic case for hyper-incarceration. u athena bryan ‘15.5 is a public policy concentrator and a staff writer At bpr.

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gets, decreasing the financial burden of the prison system is in the U.S. government’s interest. Obvious solutions would be to slow the rate of incarceration and decrease prison populations, perhaps by reforming mandatory minimum sentences. Two often proposed methods of offsetting taxpayer costs — privatizing penal institutions and using the pool of available labor in prisons — contain troubling pitfalls. These solutions presuppose the enormous, costly pool of prisoners as a permanent aspect of the nation. They switch the dilemma from, “How can we safely decrease the prison population?” to “How can we make the prison population pay for itself?” For the past quarter-century, the privatization of prisons has been suggested as a hypothetical solution to the high cost of incarceration, wherein free-market forces would increase the quality and decrease the cost of prisons. Results so far have not matched these hopes. Quality of life and opportunities is demonstrably worse in private prisons. While nine out of 10 public correctional facilities offer academic or vocational training, the proportion is only six out of 10 for private facilities. Counseling programs, available in virtually all public facilities, are present in only three out of four private facilities. Why isn’t the free market ameliorating and streamlining incarceration? Richard Culp, a Ph.D. in criminal justice, argued in an article for Prison Legal News that a free-market solution to incarceration is fundamentally flawed since there exists no natural market for incarceration facilities in the first place. The market for prison facilities is artificially constructed by the government, and is limited in demand and supply, resulting in uncompetitive oligopolies. The only possible customers are federal correctional facilities, state correctional facilities and local county or city-operated jails, totaling a mere 4,700 potential customers for the private prison industry. Further, only eight states (Texas, Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, Tennessee, California and Mississippi) and the federal government account for 70 percent of business done with private prison providers. On the supply side of private prisons, the top four companies make up a staggering 92 percent of the market for incarceration facilities or services — out of only seven providers total. Lack of competition in oligopolies does not produce the sort of innovation and cost reduction a free market solution

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follow state law and issue marriage licenses to loving, committed couples who have the right to marry the person that they love, including same-sex couples.” New Mexico Statutes §40-1-1 reads, “Marriage is contemplated by the law as a civil contract, for which the consent of the contracting parties, capable in law of contracting, is essential.” Notably, this statute does not require the parties to marriage be one man and one woman; in fact, it makes no reference to the genders of the contracting parties whatsoever. Meanwhile, §40-19, which enumerates prohibited forms of marriage under state law, does not forbid same-sex marriages. A reasonable inference from these facts — based on the principle that acts are generally permissible if they are not specifically forbidden — is that same-sex marriage is already legal in New Mexico. Indeed, the rush on the parts of states such as Ohio and Hawaii to explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage supports the argument that same-sex marriages are permitted absent a specific legal prohibition. After all, if this were not the case, why would those states feel the need to proactively ban same-sex marriage at all? Inquiry into the legal status of samesex marriage first arose in New Mexico on

SAME-SEX MYSTERY

Story by bradley silverman / ART by GOYO KWON

s the U.S. Supreme Court considers two prominent cases with monumental implications for same-sex marriage, legislatures in several states including Rhode Island have taken up debate whether to potentially preempt the Court by ending their own same-sex marriage prohibitions. Currently, nine states plus the District of Columbia explicitly perform and recognize same-sex marriage. The majority of states prohibit it through statute or

constitutional amendment, while a handful grant limited rights, including civil unions, that fall short of full marriage. In New Mexico, however, a very different and unusual controversy over the legality of gay nuptials is unfolding. There the question is not whether same-sex marriage should be legal in the state, but whether it already is. And the truth is, no one really knows the answer. New Mexico is the only state in Amer-

ica whose marriage laws neither overtly allow nor prohibit same-sex marriage. In fact, they do not reference same-sex relationships. On the basis of this ambiguity, Santa Fe Mayor David Coss and City Attorney Geno Zamora have recently called on the state to issue marriage licenses to samesex couples. On March 27, they introduced a resolution in the city council calling on county clerks to recognize “that same-sex marriage is legal in New Mexico” and “to

February 20, 2004, when Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. As Dunlap told the Albuquerque Journal, her decision came after consultation with the county attorney who said that state law on the subject was ambiguous: “This has nothing to do with politics or morals,” she said. “If there are no legal grounds that say this should be prohibited, I can’t withhold it.” Dunlap’s same-sex marriage license-issuing spree lasted for all of eight hours. Prompted by an inquiry from state Senator Timothy Jennings (D-Roswell), then-New Mexico

versity of Kansas School of Law. McAllister notes that while executive officials are likely to follow an attorney general’s advisory opinion, because they lack both legal expertise and the broad authority to interpret the law that courts enjoy, they are not necessarily bound to do so legally. As the advisory letter states, New Mexico marriage law is replete with references to husbands and wives — as is the marriage license application form, whose text was adopted by the legislature via statute. These references do not necessarily carry much significance; the word “husband” can be used in reference to a woman in a lesbian relationship, and “wife” can be used in reference to a man married to another man. While such usage may have been unthinkable by the creators of the application form in 1961, today it is far less uncommon and falls within the scope of ordinary parlance. Other areas of New Mexico marriage law also indicate the validity of same-sex marriages. New Mexico Statutes §40-1-4 reads: “All marriages celebrated beyond the limits of this state, which are valid according to the laws of the country wherein they were celebrated or contracted, shall be likewise valid in this state, and shall have the same force as if they had been celebrated in accordance with the laws in force in this state.” In 2011 Attorney General Gary King relied on this statute in an advisory opinion holding that New Mexico is required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in out-of-state jurisdictions. In 2010 a state judge ruled that a samesex couple who had received a marriage license in Sandoval County, and subsequently filed for divorce, was entitled to receive divorce proceedings in court because their marriage license had been validly issued. However, she avoided the question of whether gay marriage is generally legal in New Mexico, stating only that even if Dunlap had been mistaken to issue the license, it was “not void from the inception, but merely voidable.” Last January a bill to place a referendum on whether to legalize same-sex marriage on the ballot in 2014 was defeated in a House committee. For now, the challenge facing gay rights advocates in New Mexico may not be convincing lawmakers to make same-sex marriage legal but to convince the rest of the state that it already is. u Bradley Silverman ‘13 is a Public Policy, Economics, and Political Science Concentrator and an online columnist at bpr.

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Did New Mexico legalize gay marriage by accident?

THE RUSH ON THE PARTS OF OHIO AND HAWAII TO EXPLICITLY PROHIBIT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE SUPPORTS THE ARGUMENT THAT SAME-SEX MARRIAGES ARE PERMITTED ABSENT A SPECIFIC LEGAL PROHIBITION. AFTER ALL, WHY DID THOSE STATES FEEL THE NEED TO BAN THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Attorney General Patricia Madrid issued an advisory opinion by the end of the day asserting that New Mexico state law did not permit same-sex marriage and that the licenses were “invalid under current law.” Madrid’s reasoning rested on the fact that several state statutes appeared to “contemplate that marriage will be between a man and a woman,” noting that the official marriage application form adopted by the legislature “requires a male and a female applicant,” that the “rights of married persons are set forth as applicable to a husband and a wife,” and that “property rights of married persons are expressed as existing between a husband and a wife.” Furthermore, Madrid cited a decision by the New Mexico Supreme Court establishing that evidentiary privilege between spouses is “limited to communications that occur while the parties are a husband and a wife.” Drawing on traditional definitions of “husband” and “wife” provided by the Sixth Edition of Black’s Law Library, Madrid concluded that marriage in New Mexico is limited to a man and a woman. Dunlap stopped issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples after Madrid released the advisory, and New Mexico officials and agencies have operated under the directive since 2004. Though a series of lawsuits over the issuing of same-sex marriage licenses ensued, the matter was never litigated to its conclusion, as the suits were dismissed before a court could consider them. Given that Madrid’s letter is more or less the only public legal authority clearly prohibiting same sex marriage, it is worth noting several important caveats with respect to it. The ambivalence in Madrid’s tone that permeates the letter is unmistakable. She explicitly declines to issue a formal opinion, instead offering a more informal advisory letter, and acknowledges the likelihood that a prohibition of same-sex marriage could be declared unconstitutional in the courts. She cites Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the Supreme Court case striking down anti-sodomy laws nationwide, and Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003), the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case that paved the way for same-sex marriage in that state. More important is the indubitable fact that neither state courts nor state agencies are bound by the opinions of state attorneys general. “An AG opinion is just as the name suggests, an ‘opinion’ on the law,” says Stephen R. McAllister, the solicitor general of Kansas and a professor of law at the Uni-

SAME-SEX MYSTERY

Story by bradley silverman / ART by GOYO KWON

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Did New Mexico legalize gay marriage by accident?

The Voting Rights Act: Save It, Scrap It or Something Else? On February 20th, the Supreme Court heard Shelby County v. Alabama, a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Four BPF participants weigh in on the pending decision.

BURDEN TO DEMOCRACY Oliver Hudson, Editor-in-Chief of the Brown Spectator

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) touches an old nerve in this country. It’s still painfully clear how temporary the beachhead is that equality has established, and how few barriers there are to that equality being swept away again. That’s why Shelby is such a bitter fight. There are very legitimate points to be made on both sides, but it’s hard to divorce reasoned discussion from the passionate history surrounding it. There is no better example of this than the crux of Shelby County, Alabama’s defense — the argument to overturn Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because it places an undue burden on certain states. There are valid, logical points to be made here and perfectly valid, logical arguments that prove the assertion wrong: the 15th Amendment demonstrably failed do its job for the first 100 or so years of its history, and the Voting Rights Act helps the 15th Amendment do this job. It is an unevenly applied solution because it is an unevenly distributed problem.

Objectively speaking, yes, it is true that the law imposes a disproportionate burden of proof on certain parts of the country. Whether that burden is excessive is an entirely different matter, but one that can be addressed with just as much objectivity. What of obsolescence, the argument that the problem has moved to areas like Pennsylvania and Ohio that are not fettered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act? Again, there is real political thought and theory to this argument, and once proponents of social justice calm down they can use real political thought and theory to disprove it. The fact that voting equality problems have popped up outside the South isn’t grounds for an abandonment of Section 5, but for an expansion of it to every state and region that permits unequal access. That will have the double benefit of solving the problem while giving Shelby County what they wanted all along, the same privileges and consequences as every other county in the country.

off — in 1965. But today, efforts to create discriminatory voting laws are slim, despite the news stories. Out of all voting changes submitted to the Department of Justice for preclearance between 1982 and 2004, only 0.74 percent raised an objection. In 2004 and 2005, objection rates were 0.02 percent and 0.05 percent, respectively. This is a great accomplishment, given that the objection rate from 1964 until 1974 was 14.2 percent. The minimal number of violations of Section 5 in recent decades and their relative decline confirms that voting discrimination is not a major current problem. Today, the VRA is a greater burden on the right to vote on election laws themselves than it is a protection of the actual right to vote. Unfortunately, racism still exists in America as well as rare incidents of voting discrimination. Pockets of racism and discrimination will always exist, but this cannot become a justification for a law burdening the voting rights of millions without racist intentions. The “preclearance” requirement of the VRA should be scrapped. That would symbolize a true victory against voter discrimination. u

RATIONAL DISCOURSE KEY Ben Resnik, President of the Brown Political Forum The answer, as always, is conversation, not passionate but thoughtless offense. Shelby County raises very real points; there are issues of unequal access everywhere, not just in the South, and proponents of the VRA should be willing to hear that argument and adjust, doing things like setting clear, objective and location-blind criteria for opting in or out of Section 5. To do otherwise just cheapens the debate and erodes the legitimacy of counterpoint. Civil rights are dear to our national identity, but that means we must be all the more critical, and all the more introspective, in their defense. u

The Brown Political Forum is a student-run political organization dedicated to multi-partisan dialogue. It meets bimonthly Mondays. Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/TheBrownPoliticalForum.

My missing Juris Doctor title aside, I find the current threat to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) worrisome at best and dangerous at worst. There are myriad arguments to be made in favor of upholding Section 5, many of which have been made by the Court’s justices, the Solicitor General and the Obama administration. But it boils down to one simple fact: voting discrimination still exists. When Congress passed the VRA, circumstances were far different than they are today. State-sponsored discrimination

was commonplace, carried out through poll taxes, complex residency requirements and literacy tests. Progress has been made since 1965, but discrimination is far from obsolete. Between 1982 and 2006, Section 5 ensured that more than 1,000 proposed discriminatory voting changes were not enacted in jurisdictions singled out for preclearance. The problem is not that discrimination exists as it did in 1965, but rather that it continues to exist in increasingly subtle ways. In short, the poll tax of 1965 has become the voter ID laws of 2012. Yet many of the states that passed or attempted voter suppression laws in the last five years fell outside the counties covered by Section 5. Last year Rhode Island, too, joined the ranks of disenfranchising states, alongside Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and tens of others, none of which are explicitly mentioned in Section 5. To con-

Shelby County v. Holder got off to a rocky start for Bert Rein. The star conservative litigator had barely begun his argument in favor of the small county in Alabama when Justice Sonia Sotomayor interrupted. “Assuming I accept your premise that some portions of the South have changed,” she said, “your county pretty much hasn’t.” In other words, even if Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) should be struck down, Shelby County’s history of discriminatory voting regulations and transgressions makes it a poor candidate to bring a lawsuit. If Section 5 were a permanent, noway-out clause for the precincts it affects, I would have no choice but to agree that it should be repealed. However, municipalities can — and often have — “bailed out” of federal preclearance for voting procedural changes, including a recent bailout in New Hampshire this March. The law stipulates that if a precinct has shown it does not engage in discriminatory practices, it does not have to remain under the supervision of the federal government. If we’re going to debate the VRA, our focus should be on making the “bailout” requirements clearer, not repealing Section 5 entirely.

In 1982, Congress passed the “bailout” option in an amendment to Section 4 of the VRA to make it easier for municipalities to “obtain relief ” from the law’s requirements. In 2009 the Supreme Court further clarified these requirements in Northwest Austin v. Holder, stating that if an applicant can show it has not engaged in discriminatory practices for the past 10 years, it may be exempt from federal preclearance. But there are numerous places in the process of seeking an exemption in which the attorney general can step in and exert undue influence over the application, a complexity that both the VRA’s supporters and opponents should be wary of. In this scenario, an overly zealous attorney general could hand out more exemptions than are reasonable, or continue to capriciously “punish” counties and states as he sees fit. The tempting alternative is a “legislative test”— a metric to fairly and simply determine federal overreach — but there is significant danger here, too. If the standard for exemption was solely statistics-based, for instance, it might encourage election administrators to fudge the numbers to better make their case. More importantly, what would such a test be? Black voter-turnout

THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME Sofia Fernandez Gold, President of Brown Democrats

sider eliminating an integral piece of American civil rights law at a time like this seems foolish. Why not expand preclearance? By holding all states to the same standards, we can better protect the voting rights of all our nation’s citizens, regardless of political party, skin color or location. Would such an expansion be burdensome? Yes. Is it worth the equality it provides? Of course. A case like Shelby, in which the very democratic nature of our country is at stake, requires a strong response from the Court. If expansion is not an option — doubtful given the ideological makeup of the present Court — we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Voting discrimination still widely exists — both in preclearance counties and many others. Let us not forget that the work we started nearly 50 years ago is not yet finished — indeed, we’ve only just begun. u

LEAVE OUT THE A.G. Adam Asher, senior columnist for the Brown Daily Herald percentage? Number of black candidates elected? Utilizing these specifically targeted statistical tests only invites an entirely new set of problems. In a perfect world of perfectly impartial judges, there would be no issue with the judicial test for bailing out of Section 5. But judges’ personal opinions and sentiments routinely come into play more often than not. If the burdens of Section 5 are as onerous as the petitioners in Shelby claim, one solution is to take the attorney general out of the picture, leaving the issue of assessing bailout petitions instead to local federal district courts where judges can be closer to the areas under consideration. However, for the next 10 years — the review period mandated by Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act — Shelby may have to stomach playing by the Justice Department’s rules. After that, the county can be free to do whatever it wants. u

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Like it or not, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) is a third rail in American politics. As with many laws championed by the political left, any suggestion of scrapping or reforming the VRA is met with accusations of racism. Look no further than the media frenzy over Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments during

oral argument in Shelby Country v. Holder, in which Scalia said that the VRA is a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” A Google search of “Scalia racial entitlement” brings pages of articles and videos describing Scalia as backward and racist. Not many questions at oral argument become mainstream news. That Scalia’s did confirms that the political left has succeeded in equating “voting rights” with “the Voting Rights Act” in the minds of the American public. But the VRA is more of an infringement on voting than it is a protection of voting. Section 5 of the VRA requires particular voting jurisdictions to obtain “preclearance” from the Justice Department in order to change their voting laws, discriminating against particular areas under the auspices of protecting those citizens’ “right to vote.” In doing so, the VRA denies many citizens the right to democratically determine their local election laws solely on the theory that this infringement on voting is less severe than the potential for these areas to adopt discriminatory voting laws in the future. This may have been a justified trade-

} A Special Feature by BPR and BPF

BROWN POLITICAL FORUM

BURDEN TO DEMOCRACY Oliver Hudson, Editor-in-Chief of the Brown Spectator

The Brown Political Forum is a student-run political organization dedicated to multi-partisan dialogue. It meets bimonthly Mondays. Join the conversation at www.facebook.com/TheBrownPoliticalForum.

THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME Sofia Fernandez Gold, President of Brown Democrats

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BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW SPECIAL FEATURE

} A Special Feature by BPR and BPF

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THE BIG DATE As 2014 nears, lessons from a Russian exit strategy. Story by Meghan koushik / ART BY katrina machado

“Afghanizing” national institutions — that is, transferring control of day-to-day responsibilities, civilian and military, from Soviet to Afghan officials. A similar fixed date from the American coalition would serve to pressure the Karzai government into taking responsibility for governing the country. Foreign aid can also make a crucial contribution to Afghanistan’s stability. Soviet post-withdrawal support is largely credited with saving Najibullah’s regime from immediate collapse, though it ulti-

Since 9/11, pakistan’s continued support for the afghan insurgency has proved deeply detrimental to american interests throughout the region. mately could not ensure its survival in the long run. Afghanistan received military equipment, food and advisory assistance until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This gave Najibullah’s forces a tactical advantage over mujahideen fighters and allowed the government to buy off rival factions through an extensive patronage network. Patronage networks have long been a traditional means of power consolidation in Afghanistan; they allow tribal leaders to run economic matters and form militias within their region. The results were mixed. Much of Najibullah’s military support came from independent militias such as the Uzbek faction led by Abdul Rashid Dostum, which formed the 53rd infantry division of the Afghan army — but as soon as Soviet aid dried up, rival factions succeeded in combining strengths to take Kabul and then fell into ethnic tensions and civil strife.

As of January 2013, France, Canada and the Netherlands have withdrawn their combat missions from Afghanistan. Britain and America are expected to withdraw most troops by mid-2014, which has raised concerns that the foreign aid keeping Afghanistan’s economy afloat will be drastically reduced. At present, the United States has only made a tenuous commitment to remain engaged in Afghanistan after 2014. In May 2012, the Chicago Summit Declaration on Afghanistan reiterated the commitment of the United States and its NATO allies to the lofty goal of “helping to craft a democratic society, based on rule of law and good governance.” However, the scope of this commitment remains relatively vague, and Afghanistan’s capacity to prevent the Taliban’s return to power or deny their affiliated transnational terrorist groups a safe haven will prove impossible to maintain without American support. The Afghan National Security Force (ANSF), much like the mujahideen in the 1990s, is likely to collapse into ethnic infighting when American support vanishes. Though the ANSF currently assumes responsibility for 75 percent of military operations conducted in Afghanistan, it relies on the NATO coalition for intelligence, logistics and air support. The Obama administration’s plan calls for a cut in its annual funding from $6 billion to $4.1 billion after 2014. In real terms, this would require laying off 120,000 soldiers and policemen from the ANSF, which currently employs around 350,000 Afghans. Afghanistan’s young men are easily drawn to insurgent groups and narcotics traffickers, both of which provide higher salaries than does the armed service. Such a drastic reduction of Afghan security forces would only exacerbate the country’s

the best way to “win hearts and minds” is through a strong governmental commitment to improve the quality of life for rural Afghans. As the USSR would learn, nothing ever survives in Kabul without Islamabad’s approval. The influence of Afghanistan’s eastern neighbor is often overlooked in popular discourse but remains as salient today as it did in 1989. Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) has routinely funneled arms and money to Islamic extremist groups in both India and Afghanistan over the past few decades. Islamabad’s support for the insurgency, in turn, results from Pakistan’s contentious relationship with India. Pakistan fears finding itself sandwiched between its eastern neighbor and an Afghanistan aligned with Delhi, which remains a leading aid donor to the Karzai government. Pakistan has sought to destabilize India with the covert funding of terror and has maintained close relationships with friendly strategic partners in Afghanistan to ensure that its influence over Afghan politics endures. Pakistan was one of the few nations to recognize and support Mullah Omar’s Taliban government throughout the mid-to-late 1990s. Since 9/11, Pakistan’s continued support for the Afghan insurgency has proved deeply detrimental to American interests in the region. The notorious Haqqani networks and Mullah Omar’s Shura Taliban continue to operate openly within Pakistani borders. In the wake of the raid that killed al-Qaida

leader Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration cut $800 million in American military aid to Pakistan. However, the administration has not closed off the possibility of restoring this aid, and in the 2013 fiscal year it budgeted roughly $2 billion in federal aid to Pakistan. Unlike the USSR, the United States has the capacity to influence Islamabad’s actions by cutting off aid. The Soviet Union failed to ensure that aid was effectively disbursed on sustainable mechanisms for state stability, and after 1991 it abandoned its commitment to Afghanistan. Najibullah’s reign ended in his public execution and the disintegration of the nation into civil war. But the Soviet’s strategy between 1989 and 1991 had successful aspects and can still provide a valuable road map for America. It clearly demonstrates that troops can — and should — leave immediately. It also indicates that America must remain committed to managing strategic regional relationships and harnessing developmental aid to improve the quality of life for ordinary Afghans, who have suffered the most during the past decade. Should the United States fail in its commitment to Afghanistan’s long-term stability, the country will fall prey to the same civil strife it suffered throughout the 1990s. The United States must learn from history, or be condemned to repeat it. u meghan koushik ‘13 is an international relations and middle east studies concentrator.

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BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

fghan history brings to life George Santayana’s maxim: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” For the last two centuries the nation has witnessed a stream of failed occupations by foreign invaders who have consistently demonstrated learning nothing from the mistakes of their predecessors. In fact, the United States’ situation today mirrors the 1979–89 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Neither power understood the strength of ethnic factionalism in Afghanistan, and both underestimated the social backlash generated by their attempts to modernize the country. By the late 1980s, the USSR’s exit strategy resembled America’s today: withdrawing, but leaving behind a self-sufficient government in Kabul, with a functioning army to assert its authority. Afghanistan is remembered as the Soviet Vietnam, with a humiliating Soviet defeat followed by civil war between ethnic factions. However, even after the Soviets withdrew, President Mohammad Najibullah’s government managed to hold onto power for three years, defying global expectations. As the United States prepares to withdraw from Afghanistan after 12 years of protracted conflict, the successes and failures of the Soviet campaign provide the Obama administration with key insights to manage the operation. Unlike the current U.S. government that has consistently balked at providing a fixed date for military withdrawal, the Soviets made it eminently clear they were leaving. In 1987, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev established a two-year exit strategy and denied Najibullah’s government additional military assistance past February 15 of that year. This move forced the Najibullah government to take responsibility for

security issues. Given the recent turmoil over fiscal prudence in American economic policy, these budget cuts might seem necessary. But in the context of a $3.8 trillion U.S. budget, a mere $2 billion in savings is far likelier to make a substantial difference on the ground in Afghanistan than it is to ease domestic budgetary woes. Equally important to securing aid is knowing where to direct it. The Soviets were highly successful at promoting development in urban areas like Kabul, but they lacked the resources and the foresight to extend this strategy to rural areas. Because of this, the mujahideen were able to build a power base in rural Afghanistan by relying on local people as a source of new fighters and hideouts. Najiibullah’s weakening grip on urban Afghanistan as aid faltered, coupled with a strengthening mujahideen presence in rural Afghanistan, eventually led to the loss of urban areas to mujahideen commanders. The same dynamic is taking place today: the vast majority of developmental aid and investments in infrastructure are funneled to urban centers like Herat and Kabul, while rural regions like the Helmand province are left to the mercy of pro-Taliban groups. The insurgency is once again rooted strongly in rural Afghanistan, bolstered by a flourishing opium trade and loyalty from rural populations dismayed by the government’s neglect and the lack of economic opportunities. Given that support for the insurgency often develops in a vacuum of government social services,

THE BIG DATE As 2014 nears, lessons from a Russian exit strategy. Story by Meghan koushik / ART BY katrina machado

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BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

Cup in Peril An iconic tournament is on the rocks. Brazil’s political institutions are, too. Story by joaquim salles / ART BY SHEILA SITARAM

Janeiro’s 2007 Pan-American games. The event’s main construction project, the Engenhão Olympic Stadium, was meant to cost $60 million Brazilian reais and scheduled to be completed in 18 months. In the end, the stadium cost R$380 million and took 54 months to be inaugurated — a mere two weeks before the start of the games. Adding insult to injury, the stadium was recently closed down due to structural irregularities. Its cover was rusting precariously, posing a serious risk to fans; it also presented electric and hydraulic problems. Botafogo F.R., the team that took over the stadium after the games, now considers returning it to the government, rendering it a white elephant in the heart of Brazil’s second-largest city. The story is now taking place on a much larger scale. The culprit, as always, is the fatal mixture of corruption and bureaucratic stagnation that has long characterized Brazil. These characteristics are not unique to the country, but in Brazil incompetence is magnified by a lack of impunity and urgency, as well as a baseless faith that last minute improvisation is an acceptable solution to problems. Take São Paulo’s Arena Corinthians, a stadium being built specifically for the Corinthians soccer club. When Brazil won the World Cup nomination, São Paulo seemed like the city best prepared to host the games, boasting three modern stadiums that would only require minor renovation for 2014. Defying logic, plans for a brandnew stadium were announced in late 2010. The stadium is being built in a remote and dangerous area of São Paulo, and due to the city’s notorious traffic jams it can take as long as two hours to reach by car. This pet project of former President Lula — a diehard Corinthians fan — was set to host the opening game of the World Cup.

Progress takes place at snail’s pace and financing for the project is set to run out over the next few weeks. Corinthians still has yet to receive R$400 million in anticipated loans from state controlled banks. The problem is that Brazil’s development bank, BNDES, is forbidden by law to extend loans to soccer clubs and must do so through intermediaries like Banco do Brasil SA. Banco do Brasil is now the kink in this chain, refusing to release the funds in the belief that the collateral and guarantees for the loans — mainly ticket and naming rights revenue — are insufficient and lack specificity. The result is that Arena Corinthians may not be completed by the start of the tournament, leaving São Paulo out of the World Cup. Similar problems are taking place throughout Brazil. One of the construction companies responsible for Arena Pantanal in Cuiaba quit in mid-March when the funding dried up. The company that took over is now scrambling to finish the stadium before the World Cup and will have to more than double its rate of progress to meet the deadline. Arena Pantanal will have a capacity for 43,000 spectators, even though Cuiaba is only home to a third-league team. It is destined to become another white elephant, along with stadiums in Brasilia, Na-

spending billions on stadiums in a country where many still have limited access to sanitation and health care is not easy to justify. tal and Manaus, the latter of which is home to a fourth league team. Combined, these four stadiums will cost over R$2 billion — yet the city of Belem do Para, home to one of Brazil’s biggest derbies, was inexplicably left out of the games. Another problem is the ceaseless growth of budgets for stadiums. Originally budgeted at R$2.3 billion, the construction cost of the 12 stadiums has increased threefold. One can only assume that much of this money is going into the pockets of politicians and construction companies who often maintain cozy relationships with each other. An example is the construction company Delta, previously in charge of several World Cup projects, including the R$1 billion renovation of the legendary Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Delta, whose owner is a close associate of Rio Governor Sergio Cabral, became the subject of a congressional inquiry and was forced to forego its government contracts. Scandal after scandal has exposed this

collusion, to the point where the public has become apathetic. A poll taken in 2012 showed that 85 percent of Brazilians believed World Cup related corruption would be inevitable. Needless to say, transparency is almost nonexistent, with none of the 12 stadium projects adhering to a 2012 transparency law created for the World Cup. Spending billions on stadiums in a country where many still have limited access to sanitation, health care and education is not easy to justify. Part of the expectation was that Brazilians would reap the benefits of much needed improvements in infrastructure, especially in the area of urban mobility. However, none of 50 urban mobility projects scheduled for 2012 were completed in time. The most ambitious ones have been abandoned, many have been scaled down and 19 are over-budget. Ongoing projects are mostly focused on access to stadiums, as opposed to solving the country’s overwhelming deficiencies in public transportation. Much of the incompletions and delays are due to mismanagement in government procurements, which were either too slow or awarded contracts to projects that were poorly planned or purposely vague. In the absence of concrete solutions, many host cities are now relying on quick fixes, such as decreeing municipal

joaquim salles ‘14 is a history and political science concentrator.

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BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

occer, beaches, carnival, scantily clad women. Clichés and stereotypes inevitably arise when talking about Brazil. Chief among them is the myth of the jeitinho brasileiro, or the “Brazilian way”: the informal and street-smart manner in which Brazilians live their lives. It is often said that every stereotype holds a grain of truth, but in the case of the jeitinho, a grain might be too modest a quantity. The Brazilian way refers to the ever-present breezy attitude of Brazilians toward life, the way many deal with their problems by relying on charm, personal relationships and other shortcuts or quick fixes that make life easier. Can’t find a parking spot? Park illegally and give the parking enforcer a six-pack of beer on your return. Out of a job? Have your cousin who is the manager at the local supermarket hire you. Jeitinho has always been part of Brazil’s charm, but when it spreads to government — as it almost always does — it is a recipe for incompetence and corruption. Couple that with the responsibility of putting together the World Cup, and incompetence quickly escalates into disaster. Ever since Brazil won the bid to host the 2014 World Cup in 2007, the country has been teaching the world a lesson on how not to prepare for a major international event. Mistakes were made right from the earliest stages of the planning process, beginning with the decision to have 12 host cities instead of a more manageable number. At the time of writing, only three of the 82 World Cup related projects were not over-budget or behind schedule. Two months before the Confederations Cup — the dress rehearsal for 2014 — three of the six stadiums scheduled to host games in the competition are still not ready. None of this should come as a surprise. All that was needed was a look at Rio de

holidays on match day to keep commuters and students off the roads and creating temporary bus-only lanes to allow spectators to avoid traffic. A final worrying factor is the state of Brazil’s airports, run by the inept government agency INFRAERO. In Rio’s Tom Jobim, Brazil’s busiest airport, electrical failures are commonplace, baggage conveyor belts break down regularly and waiting for hours to claim baggage is a normal occurrence. Considering 2014 will be one of the most well attended World Cups due to the international allure and excitement that Brazil generates, airports should have been priority number one on the list. But so far only 30 percent of the money earmarked for airport renovations has been spent. Service remains as slow as ever and the infrastructure shoddy. Now it seems that airports will not be renovated in time, and there is talk of temporary tents and warehouse terminals. Despite the mistakes, scandals and delays, Brazilians don’t seem infuriated with the way preparations for 2014 are taking place. They’re not happy either, but they’ve become immune to this kind of behavior after decades of the same old story. Few in Brazil believe the country will ever reach the level of competency and efficiency of developed nations. In 2010, 60 Minutes interviewed then-President Lula for a special on Brazil’s rise. When asked about World Cup delays, Lula laughed them off: “You have to be careful about European perfectionism. Everything that happens here in the South, they think they know better than us…We will organize the most extraordinary World Cup ever,” he said, putting off the question with classic Brazilian jeitinho. Somehow “European perfectionism” has become a negative trait, too formal and rigid for the fun-loving, relaxed Brazilian lifestyle. Sadly, this mentality has increased Brazilians’ tolerance for corruption and incompetence. Brazil has made progress over the past decade despite poor governance. Home to some of the world’s largest companies, its GDP per capita has nearly tripled while the country makes great strides against poverty. But Brazilians must learn when to shy away from jeitinho, overcome their apathy and demand more of their elected officials. Should this happen, it would be hard to stop the South American giant. But it can’t happen soon enough. The 2016 Olympics are just around the corner. u

Cup in Peril An iconic tournament is on the rocks. Brazil’s political institutions are, too. Story by joaquim salles / ART BY SHEILA SITARAM

joaquim salles ‘14 is a history and political science concentrator.

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BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

Summer leadership positions abroad! Putney Student Travel and National Geographic Student Expeditions are seeking qualified college graduates to co-lead small groups of middle school and high school students on educational travel programs around the globe.

A DROUGHT FORETOLD India’s democracy is dying of thirst.

Apply on GoPutney.com or Ngstudentexpeditions.com

Story by gae emilio leanza / ART by OLIVIA WATSON

have taken place in Maharashtra alone. The most common method: ingesting the costly pesticides that drove them to debt in the first place. Now, after two consecutive years of failed monsoon rains (defined as receiving less than 90 percent of average rainfall over a period of four months) Maharashtra is experiencing its worst drought in four decades. With increased crop failure and 20 million people lacking stable access to drinking water, experts predict a dramatic rise in farmers so desperate that they would opt to end their lives. Yet Maharashtra’s drought is not

strictly a natural phenomenon. It has less to do with the absence of rain and more to do with a severe misallocation of water resources favoring private industries over the needs of the rural poor. In fact, there is a common thread connecting Mumbai’s rising nouveau riche, farmer suicides and the 16 of Maharashtra’s 35 districts that have completely run out of water. Unraveling this web of causality demands examining the roots of Maharashtra’s agrarian crisis. What is driving mass numbers of farmers to commit suicide? The story began when then-Finance Minister (now Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh enacted a wave of neoliberal reforms in the early 1990s. The Indian economy, for the first time since gaining independence in 1947, was opened to massive flows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Soon enough, global chains such as McDonalds and Pizza Hut set up shop across the country. Colossal, air-conditioned shopping malls became the haunts of an expanding Indian middle class, increasingly characterized by conspicuous consumption. But for farmers in drought-prone Vidarbha, the new economy meant the introduction of water-intensive, genetically-modified (GM) cotton strains, courtesy of the multinational seed conglomerate Monsanto. Initially profitable, Indian GM cotton suffered a rapid loss in competitiveness after cheap, heavily subsidized U.S. cotton flooded the international market around 1995. Maharashtra’s cotton growers are now left with a crop that requires substantial investment in water, fertilizer and expensive GM seeds, but yields little monetary gain as a result. The price of Monsanto’s GM product ($38 per packet), for example, costs nearly eight times what a farmer used to pay for conventional seeds. Thus, many cotton farmers in Vidarbha — the first links in a global supply chain that

ends in a Levi’s jeans retailer — are trapped in a livelihood that has become the source of egregious debt and dire stress. The suicides of Maharashtra’s farmers, who have fallen through the cracks of neoliberalism, exposed an economic policy that makes the poor poorer while a select few, concentrated in cities like Mumbai, prosper immensely. In addition to triggering the circumstances that led to these farmer suicides and doubling income inequality over the past 20 years, India’s neoliberal regime controls who does and does not have access to water. The rural poor, for instance, experience the side effects of Maharashtra’s drought disproportionately. While millions in central and eastern Maharashtra are dying of thirst, large landholders and factory owners can afford to dig deeper borewells and illegally tap into what is left of a dwindling supply of ground water without compromising their business operations or quality of life. Luxury hotels, golf courses and high-end residential complexes, recently constructed on the periphery of Maharashtra’s urban centers, are also unscrupulously hoarding water. A fitting example is “independent India’s first planned hill city,” Lavasa. Located on the outskirts of Pune (Maharashtra’s Internet technology hub and second-largest city), Lavasa stores 24.6 billion liters of water in private reservoirs, offers extravagant suites with private swimming pools and thrives largely unabated by the surrounding scarcity of water. Its infrastructure, which is modeled after an Italian canal city, also includes large fountains and a lake for water sports. Meanwhile in Vidarbha, one of Maharashtra’s driest regions, this year’s farmer suicide toll was already at 16 by January 26, India’s Republic Day. Although the government of Maharashtra has publicly acknowledged the seriousness of the drought, its efforts at alleviation have so far been lackluster at best.

Relief plans are limited to the occasional shipment of water trucks to areas in need and the construction of cattle camps to provide water and fodder to famished livestock. Neither measure has proven satisfactory. In light of the state’s shortcomings, villagers are increasingly turning to private “water tanker mafias” that take advantage of the crisis by jacking up prices. The underfunded cattle camps are few and far

Maharashtra’s drought is not strictly a natural phenomenon. It has less to do with the absence of rain and more to do with a severe misallocation of water resources favoring private industries over the needs of the rural poor. between and cannot make a significant impact. And the paltry wages provided by the 2005 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), a large-scale public works program, have failed to stem a steady migration of villagers to Maharashtra’s cities in search of work. Most migrants, forced to eke out a precarious existence in tightly packed urban slums, end up working for low wages at dangerous construction jobs. Perhaps the most startling aspect of Maharashtra’s crippling drought, though, is its preventability. Water is in ample supply, but is diverted away from drought-affected areas through an intricate network of dams. In the 1950s India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, declared dams to be the “temples of modern India.” The large-scale construction of dams became the cornerstone of Nehru’s centrally planned economy, the predecessor of today’s neoliberal regime. The outcome: irreparable environmental degradation

and massive displacement, while industrial growth failed to meet expectations. Nonetheless, thousands of dams scattered across Maharashtra exist today as relics of the Nehruvian era — and for the past 15 years, they have been diverting water from the Krishna river basin to industrial projects and companies in the lifestyle business. Private interests, in other words, are consuming potable water that could be used to relieve seriously parched districts. At a moment of such dire need, activists argue that the government should be willing to divert flows from these private interests, even if it means reducing hydroelectricity production. But the resource claims of villagers matter significantly less in the eyes of the state than the “needs” of businesses such as Lavasa. In spite of a policy decision in the Pune district to prioritize water from dams for drinking purposes, the water ended up in the hands of sugarcane barons who are associated with the Pawars, a leading political family from the area. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who approved the diversion of drinking water to sugar and beer factories in the Pune district, recently ridiculed a drought-affected farmer on a 55-day hunger strike to protest government inaction. “From where should we get him water?” Pawar asked. “Should we urinate in dams?” Pawar’s statement epitomizes the indifference — if not outright disdain — toward the poor that characterizes the Indian state today. A dripping flow of corruption runs through the policy decisions of Maharashtra, benefiting Monsanto’s GMOs at the expense of farmers and perpetuating the drought that shouldn’t be. u

gae emilio leanza ‘15 is a history concentrator.

GLOBAL BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

aharashtra, like the rest of “rising” India, is full of contradictions. Home to 111 million, it ranks second only to Uttar Pradesh as India’s most populous state. Maharashtra has two very different symbolic capitals within its borders. One is the bustling, seaside megacity of Mumbai, where India’s richest family resides in a personal skyscraper. The other is the eastern inland region of Vidarbha, known for its exceptionally high rate of debt-ridden farmers who kill themselves. Out of more than 270,000 farmer suicides reported in India since 1995, 54,000

A DROUGHT FORETOLD India’s democracy is dying of thirst.

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Story by gae emilio leanza / ART by OLIVIA WATSON

gae emilio leanza ‘15 is a history concentrator.

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BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

RAP REVOLUTION Egyptian hip-hop is trying to revive the political aspirations of the Arab Spring. Story by CHRISTINA KATA / ART BY TIFFANY KEUNG

“Your blood, the government’s shedding it/Your nation, they’ve exhausted it/Your religion, they’ve targeted it/Your portion… they’ve swallowed it.” Ramy Donjewan’s “Ded El 7koma,” or “Against the Government.”

Dizard. In January 2011, rappers like Deeb tapped into a wellspring of resentment and frustration in Egyptian society. The music video “Masrah Deeb,” shot in Tahrir Square just days before the January 25 revolution, describes the political disenfranchisement suffered by the average Egyptian. In the video, Deeb strolls down the streets of the capital, Cairo; as he gathers the parts to build a microphone, he calls for his fellow Egyptians, “tired/from snakes trapping the blood of millions,” to wake up and challenge the government’s oppression. The music video drives the point home with close-ups of ordinary Egyptians repeating the song’s hook: “I’m sacrificing my time/ waking my people/the mic’s my friend/it appreciates my honesty/I feel at ease/life’s a big joke/welcome to my stage.” As Deeb acknowledged during the panel discussion, the relationship between Arabic hip-hop and the Arab Spring can get muddled. Did the music catalyze the revolution, or did the revolution create the music? The answer is both. While the Arab Spring gave artists a jolt of energy and plenty of motivation, Arabic hip-hop artists were producing protest music well before 2011. Many of the songs that became part of the soundtrack of the protest movements in Tahrir Square were actually recorded in 2008, or even earlier. It was simply harder to distribute them to a large audience under the Mubarak regime. Once the censors’ powerful grasp began to weaken in 2011, artists seized the opportunity and rushed to circulate their music. Deeb, for example, recorded “Masrah Deeb” before the January 2011 movement; it was not until the revolution was underway that a friend of his suggested he put the music to video. “I never thought I’d be performing (Masrah Deeb)

at such a venue,” he said at the panel discussion, referring to Tahrir Square. While hip-hop has resonated across the Middle East, Arabic hip-hop is not a monolith; the genre adapts to local dialects, political conditions and degrees of censorship, and as a result has seen varying levels of success. A burgeoning hip-hop scene in Syria was choked off by political censorship and the violence of the civil war. The hip-hop scene in Egypt is still in its infancy, according to Deeb, despite the influence of the Tahrir Square protests. But in places like Morocco, Algeria and Palestine, it has been flourishing for many years. This does not mean that the genre has not faced challenges in these countries. Moroccan rapper El-Haqed (“The Enraged”) is evidence of this. In 2011, he criticized the corruption he saw crippling his nation in his song “Kilab al-Dawla,” or “Dogs of the State.” El-Haqed excoriated Morocco’s infamously corrupt police force: “You are paid to protect the citizens, not to steal their money/...Did your commander order you

to take money from the poor?” His music found an eager audience in Morocco’s disenchanted youth, who made up the bulk of the participants during the February 20 protest movement. The Moroccan authorities, though, were not fans. El-Haqed was imprisoned for four months in 2011 after fighting with a regime supporter in Casablanca on what were widely decried as trumped-up charges. In 2012 he was arrested again after authorities found a YouTube post of “Kilab al-Dawla” showing an image of a donkey’s head superimposed on a picture of a police officer. El-Haqed stated that he did not make the video, but the government claimed the rapper had displayed contempt for the police and posed a risk to public order. He was fined 1,000 dirhams (U.S. $110) and handed a one-year prison sentence. As the movements that initiated the Arab Spring have morphed, or in the case of Morocco, faded away, the hip-hop scene has also changed. Some artists have decided to remove themselves from political

christina kata ‘14 is a human biology and middle east studies concentrator and interviews associate AT bpr.

GLOBAL BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

ith his shaved head and hornrimmed glasses, Mohamed El Deeb resembles more of a bookish college student than an internationally renowned rapper. But Deeb has been writing and producing rap music for nearly a decade. His songs combine samples of American hip-hop with traditional Egyptian music, and his lyrics excoriate the corruption and hypocrisy prevalent in the Egyptian government. On January 25, the “Day of Rage” that marked the start of the Egyptian revolution, the twenty-nineyear-old joined protesters in Tahrir Square. There, his music, along with that of other hip-hop artists, became part of the Arab Spring’s soundtrack. “A lot of [Egyptians] hadn’t heard about hip-hop before. So it was very interesting to see the crowd react with you and sing with you,” recalled Deeb. “Even in the square, when we meet up with people from an older generation — for example, like my father’s generation or my grandfather’s generation — they’d tell us, ‘Listen, you’ve done something that we’ve never thought of doing.’ Because they were living under fear.” On March 12, 2013, Deeb came to Brown University as part of a panel discussion entitled “Poetic Forces: Creative Change In and Beyond the Arab Spring,” which focused on the relationship between the Arab Spring and hip-hop. Hip-hop and Arabic might seem an unlikely marriage, but it should not be surprising that the

two complement each other so well. Addressing the more doubtful members of the audience, Deeb noted that American hiphop has long been popular in the Middle East. One reason, he explained, is that rap harkens back to a long history of Arabic poetry. Long before the birth of hip-hop on the streets of New York City, Arabic bards would trade barbs and duel one another with rhymes — an early form of the modern-day rap battle. Some have attributed hip-hop’s rapid growth to the increased availability of the Internet. In 2003 only 4 percent of Egyptians had access to the Internet. By 2009 that percentage had shot up to 26.3 percent. Not only could more Arabic hip-hop artists listen and sample tracks from musicians overseas, but more artists had the ability to disseminate their material to an ever-growing audience, especially with the relaxing of censors in Egypt and Tunisia from early 2011 onward. The speed with which it can be disseminated to audiences also boosts hip-hop’s popularity. “The immediacy of hip-hop makes it very useful,” Iraqi rapper The Narcicyst once explained. “You can create music fast, record a song in a couple of hours and put it out right after.” Hip-hop’s rapid growth in the Middle East also stems from the nature of the genre itself. At its heart, hip-hop is a potent form of social commentary: it provides a creative outlet for disenfranchised youth through which they can criticize the state-sponsored oppression and corruption around them. “American rappers sing about the same problems many Arab youth endure: disenfranchisement, discrimination, poverty and violence [that are] endemic in their communities,” wrote reporter Wilson

activism. After being released from jail on March 29, 2013, El-Haqed stated in press releases that he would prefer to focus on his studies rather than dive headlong back into protests: “I am just out of prison, and I’m still tired, so I need a bit of time to answer this question about how I will assess the situation of [the February 20 movement] in the country.” But many other artists are still active and continue to clamor for the goals of the protests: political enfranchisement, dignity and freedom. They are reminding the people that their work is not yet done. In the music video for “Maw3ood,” which was released by Deeb last year, the rapper’s lyrics take on a more frustrated, jaded bent. He meets with ordinary Egyptians as he highlights the failings of the current Egyptian government, and declares: “A call to all the liberals, Islamists, womanizers or judges/...one year and a half passed since Mubarak stepped down and still my people are not satisfied.” Deeb takes the current Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government to task, criticizing what he views as their failure to keep their promises to the Egyptian people. He specifically brings up the issue of women’s rights, pointing out the sexual harassment women in Cairo face: “The current government is complacent and not addressing the real issues/… harassment is still an everyday issue in our streets, ask our sisters.” And yet, the overall tone of the song is hopeful and brims with the promise of change. At the end of the music video, Deeb unfurls an Egyptian flag and repeats the song’s hook: “Promised a better life, because the one we’re living today isn’t rosy.../stand by me, or else we die, shout out loud:/No to the ruling of monkeys, this is the time of lions.” The end of the music video for “Maw3ood” captures the spirit of the ongoing revolution in Egypt as well as in other Middle Eastern nations. Like many activists in Egypt, Deeb has been disappointed with the current trajectory of the Morsi government, but he stresses his faith in the democratic process. Change needs to take place, but activists needn’t start from scratch. They can work within the democratic framework they fought to establish. “This is the democracy we asked for!” Deeb told the audience at Brown. “We just got to hope that in four years we can vote again and correct ourselves.” u

RAP REVOLUTION Egyptian hip-hop is trying to revive the political aspirations of the Arab Spring. Story by CHRISTINA KATA / ART BY TIFFANY KEUNG

christina kata ‘14 is a human biology and middle east studies concentrator and interviews associate AT bpr.

GLOBAL BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW GLOBAL

SANCTIONING REDEMPTION

Burma is finally democratizing. THE US IS TAKING the bait.

Story by thomas nath / ART BY gabrielle hick

to a Discipline-Flourishing Democracy.” In 2008 the government proposed a new democratic constitution. And in 2010 the SPDC oversaw the country’s first parliamentary elections in two decades. But this process is neither swift nor comprehensive. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) “received” close to 80 percent of the popular vote and did not permit its main challenger, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to participate. The new constitution, heralded by the government as a new commitment to democracy, reserves over 25 percent of its legislature seats for military appointments. As insufficient as they are, the government’s reforms have brought about major democratic advancements in Burma, rolling back many of the severe human rights violations that were common under military rule. NLD Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, one of the world’s most respected prisoners of conscience, has been formally released after two decades of intermittent house arrest. In addition to her release the government has enacted several amnesties, freeing roughly 15,000 prisoners, among them other prominent political dissidents. In December 2011 peaceful public demonstrations were allowed for the first time. Four months later the NLD was finally permitted to participate in parliamentary by-elections, sweeping 43 of 45 available seats, including one won by Suu Kyi herself. In response to recent reforms, the United States has vastly improved its foreign relations with the country. A Decem-

ber 2011 visit by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton marked the beginning of increased trust and cooperation between the two countries. Last May, President Obama appointed Derek Mitchell as ambassador to Burma, the first since 1990. Later that July, the United States eased sanctions on the country — albeit with some major conditions, such as a prohibition against investment in military-owned enterprises. While progress is undeniable, the United States should not be so quick to normalize its diplomatic and economic relations with Burma. Democracy there is far from consolidated, and despite the pretense of a new transparency law, Burma still remains near the bottom of Transparency International’s worldwide rankings of perceived corruption. The United States should first address Burma’s rampant corruption, which has created severe inequality problems and has exacerbated social unrest across the country. In this regard, while the Obama administration’s decision to ease the sanctions against Burma allows for the inflow of much-needed capital, it seems an unwise decision at this point in time. Compelling economic arguments remain for lifting sanctions. Prior to the imposition of sanctions, the Burmese textile industry constituted a major source of economic revenue for the country, employing thousands of citizens. But over half of Burma’s 300 textiles factories were shut down upon the introduction of sanctions, devastating the country’s economy. In addition, the Asian trading partners to whom Burma turned in the United States’ absence,

such as China, Korea and Japan, have even lower standards of labor than U.S. corporations overseas and created even worse working conditions for the remaining Burmese factory workers. Allowing U.S. companies to re-enter the Burmese market may very well boost the overall economy as well as improve the working conditions and living standards of unskilled laborers. There are also some restrictions placed on U.S. businesses newly operating in Burma. In an effort to monitor the effects of enhanced economic ties between the two countries, companies investing more than $500,000 are required to log detailed annual accounts of their activities with the State Department. U.S. companies or individuals

are prohibited from conducting any transactions with either affiliates of the Burmese military or certain “specially designated nationals” — Burmese citizens who, according to the Obama administration, “undermine the reform process, engage in human rights abuses, contribute to ethnic conflict or participate in military trade with North Korea.” These regulations, however, do not go far enough to be truly effective. As of today, there are no limitations on investments in the lucrative Burmese energy sector, which means U.S. companies can partner with the state-run monopoly Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE). Emblematic of the cronyism that has for years permeated all facets of political and economic life in

Burma, MOGE has been denounced for its lack of transparency and for its ties to “antidemocratic military figures.” What’s more, an investment in MOGE, which is wholly owned by the Burmese government, would only serve to strengthen the old military elites who still hold high posts in the new, “reformist” administration. More importantly, the degree to which multinational corporations — and the capital they will pour into Burma — could undermine the country’s stability encourages skepticism toward the desirability and efficacy of lifting sanctions. Corporations such as General Electric are already investing heavily in the country, generating massive inflows of capital. This is not a bad thing in

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ppressive regimes are not known for their tendency toward democratic reform. They are characterized by repression, the imprisonment of political opponents and the concentration of power in the hands of a few, and the longer they remain in command, the more entrenched their position and power become. So if a despotic military junta decided to develop a new constitution and hold elections for the first time in 20 years, it would be difficult to believe that their true pursuit was progress and democracy. Faced with such an unprecedented and ambiguous diplomatic dilemma, how should the United States government respond? The case at hand is Burma, formally known as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Between 1988 and 2010, the military-led State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) held the country’s 55 million people in an iron grip, perpetrating horrible human rights abuses, recruiting child soldiers in its attempts to fight ongoing rebel insurgencies and encouraging a genocide against Burma’s Muslim minority. This went hand in hand with the embezzlement of huge sums of money by a small military elite in a country were poverty is endemic. As a result, the United States imposed sanctions through the 2003 Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act. The Act banned trade between both countries, restricted visas for Burmese officials and froze overseas Burmese assets. The SPDC has since attempted to reform its tarnished image. In 2003 the regime announced its seven-step “Roadmap

SANCTIONING REDEMPTION

Burma is finally democratizing. THE US IS TAKING the bait.

Story by thomas nath / ART BY gabrielle hick

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itself, but given the government’s corruption and the military’s enduring grasp on power, the likelihood is that profits will remain concentrated in the hands of a few. How will such a corrupt elite ensure that multinational corporations do not exploit the Burmese people for cheap labor or wreck the environment as they mine natural resources? And many of the country’s vast mineral and energy resources, which include copper, coal, natural gas and gold, are found on Burma’s periphery, in regions where armed rebel groups regularly challenge the state’s authority. As U.S. companies race to invest in these areas, the ensuing land grabs and deforestation may shatter the country’s attempts to stabilize. The rash removal of restrictions on trade with Burma also risks causing the

Regarding religion and politics, you have said on Reddit, “I am not running to eliminate this thirty-year-old practice… [but] the time may have come for the religious authorities to subject the association between religion and the state to a vigorous re-evaluation with the aim of better regulating their relations.” How can the Iranian government revamp its theocratic structure but still maintain the constitution’s integrity and Islam’s integrity?

country to overlook many of the non-economic problems that plague its people. Although the government has allegedly reached a ceasefire agreement to end a decades-old confrontation with ethnic rebels in the resource-rich state of Karen, the current situation there does not appear to be improving. In addition, violent clashes between Burmese Buddhists and Muslims have only increased since a new breakout of hostilities last summer. Hundreds have died and tens of thousands have been displaced since the government declared a state of emergency in the coastal state of Rakhine, the site of these most recent attacks. The government has only seemed to exacerbate the problem, because public authorities and military officers themselves have been accused of targeting Muslims and supporting Buddhist extremists. Engulfed in such ethnic and religious conflict, Burma could easily become overwhelmed by the socioeconomic challenges that come with the removal of sanctions. Societal stability must precede economic growth; if incoming revenue keeps failing to reach the people, it remains water pouring through a sieve. The overnight reinstatement of unrestricted trade with Burma clearly threatens

the delicate progress that has been made so far. The Burmese government appears to be on the correct path, but there is still much progress to be made. Although poverty levels in Burma — the poorest nation in Southeast Asia — are intolerable, the United States should wait to economically engage with the country until its internal situation is more stable. Along with other countries that have decided to ease their sanctions against Burma — such as Canada, Australia and the European Union member states — the United States should instead push for much stronger restrictions on trade in order to pressure the Burmese government to continue to move in a positive direction. The impact of sanctions should not be ignored. As Suu Kyi pointed out back in September 2012, “The very fact that there’s a strong desire to have sanctions limited shows they were effective.”

The United States government should be more hesitant to restore unlimited economic access for U.S. companies to a country still under the grasp of a repressive and corrupt regime. The economic boon that foreign capital provides to recovering, developing countries should not be underestimated, but neither should its destabilizing effects. In pursuing its own economic interests in Burma, the United States should neither disregard the country’s economic and social instability nor overlook the many abuses that the Burmese government still commits. Rather than strengthening the democratic processes that the sanctions were meant to promote, U.S. policies could cause unintended damage. u thomas nath ‘16 is a potential public policy, political science and english concentrator and a staff writer at bpr.

That statement is an insult to the Iranian people. Over the last 33 years, almost every election in Iran, free or otherwise, has brought millions of Iranians to the election polls, from 55 to 88 percent — probably one of the highest participation rates in the world. To be fair [to Mr. Pahlavi], I don’t think the Islamic Republic’s elections are fair, or free, or democratic when compared to the U.S., or even to Turkey and Israel. But remember, Iran is in a region where there are very few countries that hold elections. So I think we need to be realistic. Mr. Pahlavi is a dreamer. He thinks Iranian elections should compare to the American, French or British elections. Certainly not. Unfortunately, Iran is at least 100 years behind. Instead of just dismissing elections, we must work hard to make them democratic. To force the government to hold a transparent, responsible and accountable election. That’s what I am for. You’ve largely campaigned outside of Iran in the hopes of reaching the Iranian diaspora, but international support doesn’t necessarily translate into support in Tehran. What is the logic behind your tactics? Iran has been a global issue…so its election has to be global. For the first time in Iran’s history…the presidential election [is being] discussed with the international community beyond the Iranian diaspora. And there are almost 7 million Iranian expatriates, almost 10 percent, who have as much right as the people inside Iran to listen to you. This is a global community, an Internet and satellite community, so any time I am speaking anywhere in the world, Iranians all hear.

Hooshang Amirahmadi is a professor at Rutgers University and the founder and president of the American-Iranian Council, a non-profit think tank dedicated to USIran relations. He was a candidate in the 2005 Iranian presidential election and is running again in the 2013 election.

INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL CHERNIN

Is there any part of you that feels the importance of physically residing in a country and building that psychological connection with the electorate? That physical connection with the country is very important [and] I have kept [that connection]. But that connection is not everything. Many Iranian leaders who have messed up have lived all their life in Iran. Living in Iran doesn’t make you a better president, or prime minster, or a planner or anything. The Iranian people are for results, not just where you are residing. I can show results. Regarding Iran’s relationship with Israel, do you think most of the animosity between Israel and Iran is rooted in the personalistic aspects of Ahmadinejad’s presidency, so that presumably when he’s out of office, relations will stabilize? Ahmadinejad is just one of many Iranian leaders who [holds] the ideas that he espouses vis-à-vis Israel. Almost everyone running in the regime today is of the same mindset as Ahmadinejad about Israel. Mr. Ghalibaf has exactly the same position on Israel as Ahmadinejad. That’s a systemic issue. That’s more than just a “person” issue. Where do you feel the future of Iran-Israeli relations is going? There is no historical or territorial problem between Iran and Israel. There is no religious difference: Islam accepts Judaism, and Judaism accepts Islam. The bottom line is something called the Islamic Revolution. This revolution was anti-American, anti-imperialism, and “anti-Zionist.” And that revolution in its constitution says the Islamic government is obliged to support the struggle of oppressed people against the oppressor countries or governments. In Iran-Israeli relations, this translates into Palestinians being the oppressed people, and the Israelis the oppressors; as long as that relationship persists, from the Islamic Republic’s perspective, there cannot be better relations. Practically, this means that to resolve anything between Iran and Israel, you need to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli question. The Israeli people are a reality, and the Palestinian people are a reality. In my administration, I will be in favor of a two state solution.

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BURMA’S PROGRESS HAS BEEN UNDENIABLE, BUT THE US SHOULD NOT BE SO QUICK TO NORMALIZE ITS DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH THE COUNTRY. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE OF RAMPANT CORRUPTION, PRESIDENT OBAMA’S DECISION TO EASE SANCTIONS SEEMS PREMATURE.

First, constitutions are not written as holy books; they are written to be changed. The Islamic Republic’s constitution in Chapter 178 explicitly states, “I can be changed, and this is how you change me.” In fact the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini once said, “Every generation has the right to write its own constitution.” I think many in the Islamic Republic now see that what was written thirty-some years ago may not be sufficient for a better Iran of tomorrow. As president, I don’t have the authority to change the constitution. But I have the authority to do two things: first, to implement the constitution in its totality without any ignorance of any particular part. Second, I have the authority to ask others to ask for a change or a revision of the constitution. All of this is predicated on the assumption of accountable government and free and fair elections. When asked about the elections, Prince Reza Pahlavi, the last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran, said, “What elections? It would be insulting to call this mockery of a process an election in the sense that you talk about elections in any democratic country.” What is your take on this?

HOOSHANG AMIRAHMADI

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HOOSHANG AMIRAHMADI

MISSY CUMMINGS An associate professor at MIT, Cummings was one of the US Navy’s first female fighter pilots. Her research interests include human interaction with autonomous vehicle systems and the social impact of drone technology.

Professor Daniel Brunstetter of UC Irvine recently claimed, “In the just war tradition, there’s the notion that you only wage war as a last resort.” Have drones become so convenient that they make warfare too easy for our government to wage? Yes. I’m concerned, having been a war fighter, that these kinds of remote technologies — UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles], but also remotely operated missiles — make it easier for us to make decisions that maybe we wouldn’t have, like the time of planning, the time of response. In the old days it took forever to get satellite imagery and to figure out the target, so you had a lot of time to think about what you were about to do. Now we shorten that time cycle — it used to be days — to possibly seconds. So I do think there is a danger. This is something that’s worth discussing as part of national, even international policy. Do you worry whether or not drones used by domestic law enforcement agencies will intrude upon the privacy or civil liberties of U.S. citizens? In terms of privacy violations, UAVs are probably the least threat that you could have in your life right now. Facebook, the Internet, these are everyday devices that are violating your privacy — in some cases, with your full consent — far more than a UAV in the sky ever could. You can go on Brookstone right now or Amazon.com and buy a UAV and spy on your neighbor like crazy, and there are no rules against it other than the privacy laws on the books, “Peeping Tom” laws. But [rules apply] for law enforcement agencies — these are government agencies that are covered by laws and rules. The privacy debate about drones has basically crippled our law enforcement agencies. At the same time, the people who are potentially doing the real damage — your neighbor who wants to spy on you or some pedophile who wants to put a UAV over a playground — he’s doing everything legal, he’s within his legal capabilities, and we’re not worried about that person at all. So the conversation about the regulation of UAVs within the United States should be much more comprehensive? That’s right. And we should be less concerned about law enforcement agencies because, for example, right now however we use manned helicopters in law enforcement, those

same rules apply to UAVs. So if you use a helicopter to potentially search someone’s field for marijuana, whatever laws in terms of warrants still apply to UAVs as they apply to manned aircraft. So we actually have some protection. It’s not perfect, and certainly people need to discuss it. Basically, we need to go back to the drawing board about all of these regulations, because the technology has improved and changed in ways that lawmakers didn’t envision 50 years ago, whenever these laws were put on the books. You have written that drones don’t deal well with wind. What are some other technological hurdles for drone technology? It’s all size and weight dependent, like any aircraft. For small UAVs, winds are a huge issue. And battery life: how long can something stay aloft? Right now small UAVs, with an amazing battery and the lightest camera on the market, might get thirty minutes flight time — maybe. And that’s in no wind conditions. To get something aloft, you have to be landing this thing a lot to replace the battery. So we’re not talking about long sustained [operations], what they call “perch and stare” missions. The big ones in the military are gas powered. They have another kind of fuel, so they can stay aloft longer. The most interesting development in this area is the development of the Boeing Solar Eagle. It’s basically going to be a UAV that stays aloft for five years. It’s one big flying solar wing. People think, “Oh my god, that’s terrible, it’s Big Brother.” Not really. You can imagine big, five-year flying UAVs with these long wings will be able to do crop health surveillance, or air quality monitoring. But that’s in development — they’re probably five to ten years away from seeing something like that in reality. In the future, will we start to see this type of unmanned technology being used for civilian purposes — on commercial flights, for example? Technically you don’t need a pilot onboard, but there’s a socio-technical problem and that is number one. You have to have somebody on board that’s a legitimate authority when you’ve got people involved. You need somebody to control the drunk passengers and so, for no other reason, we have to have a babysitter for the people, but not the technology. The other problem that we see with humans is something called “shared fate.” The reason we want a pilot or [someone] managing the vehicle is that you want to believe that the person is going to do everything they can to save their own lives, that they share our fate. The question is, will we get beyond that? I think we will. I think we will see the Jetsons in the future. I think we will get so comfortable with the technology and it will become so reliable that we’re willing to turn over the driving or the flying — or both, if we have flying cars — but that day is not any day soon. The bottom line is sometimes we do need somebody. What we need the human brain to do is what we call “contingency management”…because not every emergency can be anticipated, not everything could be automated necessarily. Do you need somebody in the cockpit to do that? That’s why cargo airplanes will become fully automated, because the person on the ground is actually under less stress because they’re not physically there. They can often do a better job than if they were in the plane. And we see this time and time again in the military. When you don’t think your life is in danger, you can respond in a more calm, methodical manner.

Several justices have expressed doubt as to whether the proponents of Proposition 8 have standing to appeal the lower court ruling. Do they have standing, and would denying that standing be a judicial cop-out? There are standing issues in both cases, and in both cases I think there are some definite procedural challenges for our side. I think that if they end up making a procedural ruling in the Proposition 8 case, it may delay a substantive ruling on the issue of marriage equality for a year or two, but it won’t buy them much time. I think that if it’s a way to quickly get a result that returns marriage equality to 12 million Californians, I don’t think it’s a bad result at all. My own prediction is that in the Proposition 8 case the Court will rule that there isn’t standing and marriage will thus return in California. In the Windsor case, I think you’re going to have some combination of six or seven justices striking DOMA, four on equal protectionist grounds and two or more on federalist grounds. So we’ll have two very good results. I don’t think that we will have the kind of sweeping precedent that we hoped. These things take time. What is the most legitimate or well-articulated argument you’ve heard against marriage equality? The smartest thing I’ve ready recently on the other side was an article by Professor Michael McConnell in the Wall Street Journal. He’s a conservative constitutional law scholar at Stanford. He makes the most persuasive argument I’ve heard for federalism, what I would call “discrimination lite,” [which] basically says, “We’re not for discrimination, we just want to let the states decide. A gradual evolution on this issue state-by-state would be good for building consensus.” In other words, it’s an argument that’s cloaked in the idea that we’re not really prejudiced or supportive of discrimination, we’re just more for a gradual evolution of thinking on this, which would make for a better consensus view. From my perspective, that’s nonsense. States don’t have the right to continue to discriminate until they start to feel better about it because other states have changed their laws. I think that on the surface it’s very appealing, but if you scratch beneath it, you see it’s merely another justification for continuing discrimination. The defense for Proposition 8 hinges on the premise that marriage is about procreation. What does marriage mean to you? I don’t think anybody in the Supreme Court is buying the procreation argument. The reason why these marriage cases are important is because marriage is a proxy issue, not so much that everyone is interested in getting married. It’s a proxy issue for whether or not you believe in full equality, just as Loving v. Virginia [wasn’t about] people who wanted to marry someone of a different race. It meant that you basically supported the idea that there was a basis in the equal protection clause for full racial equality. I think that the same argument applies here. What [these marriage cases] mean to me is that if you support marriage equality for gay and lesbian people on equal protection grounds, it warrants support of full equality sooner rather than later. Federal policies that treat individuals differently than others have to be founded on a rational basis. What was President Clinton’s rational basis for signing DOMA? The debate [surrounding] DOMA had nothing to do with constitutional principles. It had to do with the fact that Republicans pushed through Congress a law that was politically popular six weeks from a presidential election. That’s why the law was en-

RICHARD SOCARIDES A contributor to the New Yorker, the Washington Post and Politico, Socarides is a civil rights litigator and the founder of Equality Matters, a gay rights advocacy organization. Socarides worked in the Clinton administration during the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

INTERVIEW BY HENRY KNIGHT

acted. It had nothing to do with observing constitutional principles. In fact, it was unconstitutional when it was signed. In other words, you think DOMA was just campaign fodder? We have this law today because the Republicans in Congress pushed it through six weeks before the presidential election because they thought that it would give them a wedge issue to run on against the Democrats. Democrats, quite tactically, because of the lessons they thought they learned around the gays in the military debate in 1993, took the steam out of that argument by voting for and then enacting an unconstitutional provision. It’s an episode in our democracy in which nobody acted well, nobody put the constitution first [and] nobody put individual rights first. It was all about the election. That sometimes happens in our democracy. It was not a proud moment for anyone involved. What are some of the crippling effects of DOMA? How do they impact the daily lives of gay couples? Some of the most onerous difficulties come in the context of immigration. If you’re married to a person of the opposite sex, your spouse gets to stay here with you, but if you’re married to a person of the same sex, your non-citizen spouse can get deported. I think that’s a very vivid context in which this issue arises. I also think that the Windsor case very clearly demonstrated a rather severe financial penalty…There are very real hardships, but I think we shouldn’t forget that separate but equal, symbolically, is very powerful and stigmatic. If the Court’s DOMA ruling changes the level of constitutional scrutiny given to gay rights issues, what do you think that means for gay rights moving forward? I’ve often said that the most important decision was the decision by President Obama and the Justice Department to advocate for heightened scrutiny in these cases. I think it will completely change the entire framework in which these issues are decided, if they’re successful. I think that in all of this the most important development has been the administration’s willingness to enter these cases on the side of gay rights advocates and to advocate for heightened scrutiny. It is a sea change from where they started out at the beginning of President Obama’s first term. They’ve ended up in a great place.

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LINCOLN CHAFEE

And is that a campaign from gun owners, catchphrases that people use to ignite fear? Well, we talked about distrust of government, and it starts with that. They don’t trust the government [when it says] that this is common sense regulation. It’s not a subversive plot to take away every hunting rifle or shotgun that legitimate sportsmen need and have.

Governor Lincoln D. Chafee ’75 is the 74th Governor of Rhode Island. Elected in 2010 on a platform of increasing government transparency and economic revitalization, Chafee will likely face challengers from both the left and right in his upcoming reelection. During a live filmed interview, Chafee sat down with BPR’s Interview Director Emily Gelber to discuss his time at Brown, gun control in Rhode Island and his upcoming chances at reelection in 2014.

What do we need to do to get Democrats and Republicans to start working together on important issues? It’s a big discussion, what we need to do. They say as you get involved with these primaries — I think that is very accurate — that in order to prevail, as John McCain found out and Mitt Romney found out on the Republican side, you’re just pulled further and further to the edges. Romney’s campaign manager said, “Etch-a-Sketch, we take the primaries and shake it up and start all over again” and you shouldn’t have to be that way. You should be making statements that you’re going to be held to every day of the campaign, not shake it up and start over. Now we have a different view on immigration. Now we have a different view on international issues. Now we have a different view on guns. It shouldn’t be one position for the primaries and another one for the November election. It shouldn’t be that way.

INTERVIEW BY emily gelber

But isn’t it that more polarized and politically extreme people vote in the primaries? Yes, that’s one of the problems.

Do you think this generation is distrustful of the government? Some people believe that there was an effort to stop students from voting, and students are really dealing with debt; is there a different sentiment towards government now? I don’t think so, and I don’t want to speak for you, but I don’t think there is a complete distrust. I think there is a little bit of discontent. You mentioned student debt, [the] disparity of wealth the students are seeing out there. I think the Occupy movement was an expression of disparity of wealth but I don’t think there is distrust yet. It is more that we have to stay vigilant and watch out for those that are looking out for themselves instead of the common good, and it’s always the idealism that young people have. You’re big on reducing student loans and making college more affordable. What is the meaning of a college degree now? Well, I do think that going back to my experience after WWII and the G.I. Bill and the strength of the state universities across America…that’s what made America strong. People just were able to go to that community college or go to that four-year institution and get a degree. And now we’re seeing that more and more debt, even at public institutions of higher education, just makes it more difficult. The skills that are needed [today] do take a lot of education, and if you are graduating with this tremendous student debt, one of the things it stifles is the chance to do something alternative, which I did after college, like join the Peace Corps or Teach for America. You just can’t do that because you have student loans that you have to immediately start pay-

ing back and you want, I think, graduates to go out and get a little dirt under their fingernails in different ways and learn the ways of the world and make contacts that might take them into different paths of life that are very valuable. You cannot do that once you start having children and mortgages and all the pressures that come with those responsibilities. I mean, Steve Jobs and others that have done different things profited greatly from those years of not having a high student debt. I want to talk a little bit about your opinions on gun policy. Is there federal influence over the ability of a state to create gun legislation? It’s a mix. Certainly, we would prefer to have the federal government pass some common-sense gun safety laws. When I was in the United States Senate, we were trying to close the gun show loophole…We were also looking at the assault weapons. We already have a waiting period to buy a gun; we’ve passed that. To buy a gun, you need a background check but you can go to a gun show and buy it there and walk out with it, no background check. Why is that? Because [sellers] said that gun shows travel around. [The gun show] would be in one community one weekend and then in another community another weekend and there’s not a chance for someone to buy the gun and then come back a week after the background check and pick it up…There was a loophole and if you’re going to have the background checks, let’s stick to them universally. Many gun owners fear that “common sense” regulation like background checks and assault weapons bans will lead to more intrusion down the road. What do you say to that? Well, I just know that being in politics, I went to a meeting that had nothing to do with guns — it was about fire districts in Coventry — but many of the people that were standing around were saying “Hey, don’t take away my guns.”

So how do we get more people to vote in the primaries? It used to be that there weren’t primaries — you went to a convention…and out of the convention comes a candidate that a few delegates have elected. Maybe we need to go back — and it’s ever evolving, to elect delegates and they go to the convention and argue over who has the most successful chance in November, and we’ll pick that person rather than through the primary system where you build up and you’re committed to the winning of delegates. I’m curious, what did you think of the Republican primaries in the last election? It’s amazing to watch the Rudy Giulianis and the Mitt Romneys and the John McCains who I know as moderate — they couldn’t get elected in New York City or Massachusetts. And I know John McCain was good on environmental issues, he was good on immigration issues, he was good on tax policy when I served with him and when he ran for president, he changed. [He] was completely different on the issues. Completely different. It’s sad to see. What’s your prediction for the future of the Republican Party right now? They are going through a lot of soul-searching. One of the reasons I left the party is their focus on social issues that seem to galvanize the base, energize the base and that was part of their strategy, whether it’s immigration, or gay marriage or abortion — so many of these social issues that I don’t think the general public ultimately casts as priorities. I’d rather [have] us get the economy going, take care of health care and have good schools and low tuitions. How have your views changed since you left the Republican Party to become an independent? Well, my views haven’t changed and that is why I left the party.

Is there any chance we’ll see you on the Democratic ticket in 2014? Well, certainly I think about that. When I left the Republican Party, I became an independent and I did support Sen. Barack Obama for president in 2008 and again in 2012. I spoke at the Democratic Convention and heard the issues that I cared about, whether it’s environmentalism or even fiscal conservatism, which used to be Republican and is now more of a Democratic issue — no deficits, using the tools of government to help build up strong middle class….It seems that the Democratic Party has embraced some of those issues that I care about. What is your feeling on gay marriage in the Supreme Court? What are we going to see? A prediction? The Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act — President Obama’s health care bill — favorably, with Chief Justice Roberts being the key vote there. So I think they’ll see this as a constitutional right. Why should we be discriminating against two people that love each other and want to get married? I have some guarded optimism there. Last question: Who’s going to be on the ballot in 2016? Well, it seems like we just got done with ’12, doesn’t it? I know, but everyone is talking about it. Do you think Hillary Clinton is going to run? I do, at least that’s her plan right now. I don’t know whether the fatigue will set in, whether she can really keep this up. She’s going to do a book and then go on a book tour and eventually, it’s going to catch up to her. It seems like we just ended ’12 but that’s the sport that we’re in.

Check out BPR’s extended multimedia feature with Governor Chafee online at brownpoliticalreview.org

INTERVIEWS BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW INTERVIEWS

Were you politically active when you were a student at Brown? No, although [during] those years, everything was very politically active on campuses all over America. When the 1972 presidential election occurred, which was Nixon against McGovern, there was just a lot of involvement with students. Then Watergate came after that so there was a lot of involvement with students and the issues of the day.

I stand behind my votes against the deep tax cuts. In fact, John McCain and I were the only two votes against the Bush tax cuts which favored the wealthy and brought back deficits. I’m proud of my vote against the war in Iraq, I’m proud of my vote against the prescription drug benefit before we reform Medicare, because we are adding another unpaid benefit to Medicare. These are all conservative, Republican-like policies. And that hasn’t changed since becoming governor. I like being an Independent governor, the only one in the 50 states, and I don’t know whether governing has been easier since being Independent, but it has been interesting to be in this position. [There are] a few other Independents now in the Senate, like Bernie Sanders, but they caucus with the Democratic Party, so we’ll see.

LINCOLN CHAFEE

INTERVIEW BY emily gelber

But isn’t it that more polarized and politically extreme people vote in the primaries? Yes, that’s one of the problems.

Check out BPR’s extended multimedia feature with Governor Chafee online at brownpoliticalreview.org

INTERVIEWS BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW INTERVIEWS

Allan Fung

Allan Fung is the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island. Elected in 2008, Fung previously served as City-Wide Councilman from 2003 to 2007 and was a prosecutor in the RI Office of the Attorney General from 1999 to 2001.

INTERVIEW BY EMILY GELBER

You’re the only Asian-American Mayor in Rhode Island. Do you feel ties to both cultures? How does that affect your legislating abilities? I am proud of being a minority and being Asian-American. I bring a different perspective. It wasn’t until 2008–2009 [that] I first won that election and took office as the first Asian-American in the history of our state to become mayor. I am representing a different set of the population who in the past never had that voice. But overall I represent all 8,000 people in the city of Cranston. I can raise issues that are important at the state level as well.

BROWN POLITICAL REVIEW INTERVIEWS

The majority of the population in Cranston is Italian, Portuguese and Irish and only about 5 percent is Asian-American. Is it difficult for constituents to identify with you or you with them? I don’t see it as an issue. Being a product of Cranston for so long — my family’s restaurant being in Cranston for so many years, serving many of the residents — overcomes a lot of those initial fears of “Oh, here comes another politician.” At the end of the day, even though I grew up in Providence, the race issue did come into play. I can remember that just before Election Day the headline of one of the local papers was “Voters Have Their Choice. Will It Be Chinese or Italian?” I was running based on my qualifications in city council and right smack before the election day they put out the race issue, which really had some subtle undertones during the election process. It’s interesting that you stayed in Rhode Island, which is not the case all of the time. We have some great universities here but we are not keeping the young people in the state. And that’s very sad and disappointing. What is disappointing for me as a mayor and elected official is the lack of job opportunities for the next generation. If they are leaving Rhode Island, it does not help our economy in the future. What you’re going to have is a more mature population and not enough people to support them, to support the services for Cranston or the state of Rhode Island. Rhode Island has the fourth-largest average student loan debt in the country, with students graduating with about $30,000 of debt. Does Rhode Island have jobs to pay for that?

That’s where the position of governor or my position as mayor has a great responsibility. What leaders have to do is make sure the jobs they are bringing in are not the lower-paying jobs. They should be the type of jobs that match what kids coming out of colleges and universities have the skill set for. It is going to be a balance of economic development to tie into what employers need, but also making sure the students have the skill sets that meet the employers’ needs. You have been very successful in bringing Cadence here, which is a major surgical supply company. You also have Alex and Ani [a jewelry company] stationed here. What have you done in Cranston that Rhode Island hasn’t done to keep these companies here? The first step is providing stability in government. Every time you hear about economic development, the first thing the average taxpayer thinks is, “You have to cut them a tax break.” I didn’t cut Alex and Ani a tax break, and I didn’t have to cut Cadence a tax break. I think in the end, what a lot of the companies want is…government and tax structure [that are] stable. They don’t want to see fluctuations up and down. And when they’re looking to start a business, we work with them from the beginning so they don’t encounter those red tape situations that you often hear about in government…That’s less expenses that they are going to have to incur and more opportunity to get their doors open. Sometimes simple things like that are a key component to show that businesses and government have good relationships. You recently hired Patrick Sweeney [as a campaign consultant] but you’re not up for mayoral reelection until 2016. Why the sudden help? I am taking a serious look at the gubernatorial race. I love this chief executive job. You have so much opportunity to do things and help residents. In Cranston you can see we’ve sustained a good economic pace. One of the reasons I’m considering that governor race is because it’s the same type of challenge — same economy on a bigger scale. I strongly feel a lot of the initiatives I have placed in the last four years in Cranston can translate well to help the state and the economy. That’s why I brought Patrick on board. As I take a serious look at that gubernatorial race, I need help on the campaign side to see if this is the right opportunity. Are you the only mayor in Rhode Island who does not support gay marriage? I am the only one who has taken a public traditional view for a couple of reasons. I am more of a traditionalist, and for religious reasons as well. If it passes it passes. If you are running for governor, do you want a bigger race? Instead of the traditional two-party system, we have an independent and a face-off in the Democratic Party potentially. Is that a good thing for you? You never know…Ideally, we should start thinking about having run-off elections as other states do because who ever is in that office needs to have a majority of the vote, otherwise you’re going to have this fractured vote. The election process should be providing some stability in government and confidence in the person that’s there, rather than people saying, “We don’t like him” because only 30 percent of the people elected him. At the end of the day, the electorate and the officials in office have more confidence in the stability in government.

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Allan Fung

INTERVIEW BY EMILY GELBER

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