BPR Summer Issue: Present by Brown Political Review

Editors’ Note: Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s no longer uncommon to hear that we’re living through “unprecedented times.” Yet this global health crisis is not our only new reality—the present is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Just this year, a US president was impeached twice for the first time; worldwide, cities have faced record high temperatures; and we’ve seen calls for racial, environmental, and economic justice gain significant traction both online and on the ground. This issue’s contributors recognize that the present is ever-changing, and they share their perspectives on systems and movements that are evolving each day. Sam Trachtenberg interviews LeRonne Armstong, the Oakland Chief of Police, about the current state of law enforcement. Sarah McGrath examines neoliberal environmentalism, arguing that only social unification, rather than stratification, can combat defeatist attitudes towards sustainability. Finally, Alexandra Vitkin interviews The Bail Project’s Cameron Pipe, whose daily advocacy work focuses on getting people out of jails while dismantling the harmful, oppressive systems of pretrial justice that try to keep them there. We are incredibly grateful to all of our BPR staff members who made this issue possible; we cannot thank you enough for your contributions this summer and always, and we are so excited to continue producing content with you. – Hannah and Rachel

02 EDITORS’ NOTE BY HANNAH SEVERYNS AND RACHEL YAN

06 THE RISE OF NEOLIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM WHY “GREEN” CAPITALISM & WOKE TWITTER CAN’T SAVE US BY SARAH MCGRATH

COVER BY JESSE HOGAN

04 ASK THE CHIEF: OAKLAND AN INTERVIEW WITH LERONNE ARMSTRONG BY SAM TRACHTENBERG

N T 10 CRIMINAL JUSTICE SERIES PART I AN INTERVIEW WITH CAMERON PIPE BY ALEXANDRA VITKIN

ASK THE CHIEF: OAKLAND

LeRonne Armstrong I

interview by Sam Trachtenberg ’24 illustration by Nadia Kossman-Newcomb ’22

This interview is the first installment of Ask the Chief, a BPR interview series with police chiefs from around the United States.

LeRonne Armstrong is the Oakland Chief of Police. He served for 22 years at the Oakland Police Department (OPD) prior to becoming Chief of Police earlier this year.

Sam Trachtenberg: How important is gun control to keeping our communities safe? LeRonne Armstrong: There are some weapons that don’t belong in urban communities or any community. The fact that we have ghost guns being printed and not regulated is a problem. High-powered rifles are more like weapons of war than for protection. I think that the impact of mass killings and the devastation in our commu-

ST: What changes need to be made concerning how we approach law enforcement?

nities warrant stronger control over high-powered weapons. I would hope that as Americans we can say that these are not weapons that we want to see in our communities. These weapons are doing exactly what they’re intended to do: take lives.

“But the question is: How do we do better?” ST: Do you believe that there is deep-rooted systemic racism embedded into policing in America?

can to address these issues and make sure that officers’ biases do not come into play when they make decisions that could impact communities in a harmful way.

LA: I think we have to acknowledge the history of policing and our internal biases. It’s important that all law enforcement invest in training to help officers better understand how their upbringings and circumstances could contribute to how they do their jobs every day. A police department is just a microcosm of the country as a whole. To say that we deal with racism across our country but not in law enforcement would be unrealistic and disingenuous. It’s important that law enforcement be as proactive as we

LA: Policing has been done in an insular fashion for many years. Policies and training have been developed without community input. I think it is time for law enforcement to accept the fact that the community has a voice in how they’re policed. Law enforcement has to become more open to civilian oversight. If we’re doing things the right way, if we are following our policies, if we want to be legitimate in the eyes of the public, then we have to be transparent and willing to talk to the public and pull the curtain back.

In the city of Oakland, we have a Director of Race and Equity, Darlene Flynn. This position is something that all law enforcement leaders should implement, someone who looks at policies and practices to see if they are equitable and just.

ST: What are your thoughts on the Derek Chauvin verdict?

“I think it is time for law enforcement to accept the fact that the community has a voice in how they’re policed.”

LA: There is a time for all of us to acknowledge when we see something wrong. We all should feel comfortable saying that is not what police officers should be doing. I think that’s what we experienced with the George Floyd incident. I think police officers across the that those country agree appear to be actions do not training or in line with our expect from what we would police officers in this country, and I think the ruling was consistent with what most of us thought should have happened.

ST: Does it offend you when people say “fuck the police”? LA: When I hear a statement like that, it’s a slap in the face, but I understand what it is rooted in. It’s rooted in people’s mistrust of law enforcement. What offends me is that I know in my heart why I come to work every day: because I want to make Oakland a safe community. We can talk about how we can do better, but I think saying “F the police” does not help us move forward. We can’t look at the number of violent incidents that have happened in this country and not accept the fact that had police not intervened, these incidents could have been much more deadly. But the question is: How do we do better?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

THE RISE OF NEOLIBERAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

by Sarah McGrath ’24, an intended Internation al and Public Affairs and English concentrator and a Staff Writer for BPR

ism Why “Green” Capr Citalan’t & Woke Twitte Save Us

After a year of routinely exceeding 12 hours of screen time a day, there’s a phrase that’s been dominating my social media feeds: “There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.” This statement, with its overt ties to Marxist political theory, essentially argues that exploitation is inevitable under a capitalist system of labor and profit. In my experience, this saying is most often deployed by TikTok or Instagram users in an attempt to justify their financial support of notoriously problematic companies such as SHEIN or Amazon. This catch-all phrase attempts to signal the user’s skepticism of all corporations—as if that somehow cancels out the moral weight of purchasing from them. While they’re certainly oversimplified, I can empathize with these Kim ’23 illustrations by Joanne feelings of defeatism.

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From environmental activists’ constant calls to go vegan to the endless supply of hate comments left on teenage girls’ Forever 21 hauls, my social media feed never fails to remind me of all the ways I could be doing better. It’s not that boycotting Amazon or avoiding fast fashion shouldn’t be encouraged. But relying solely on individual solutions to systemic problems will inevitably be insufficient. And when we combine this individualistic approach to sustainability with the distorting performance incentives of social media, we risk creating an online activist It seems that the internet culture that values the appearproduces such strong ance of personal morality at the incentives to shame expense of system-wide solione another that we darity. often forgo all that we Neoliberalism and soknow about empathetic cial media are uniquely alike persuasion and allow the in their ability to activate our social reward of activism identities as individuals. In the itself to become our case of neoliberalism, Ronald focus... after all, if there’s Reagan’s deregulated econ‘no ethical consumption omy strove to define market under capitalism,’ why forces as the central organizeven bother? ing principle of modern life. On the psychological level, this emphasis on market competition transformed public citizens into private consumers: A 2017 Cambridge University study found that those who came of age under Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal economic policies were more likely to express individualistic tendencies than earlier generations. Whether it be calls to take shorter showers or even have fewer

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children, the environmentalist movement of the past several As someone who owns decades has morphed itself to a plastic ‘There Is No match the neoliberal framework, Planet B’ laptop sticker promoting a set of responsibilthat was shipped to ities sociologists Michele Mime on an airplane that cheletti and Dietlind Stolle refer released excesses to as “sustainable citizenship.” of greenhouse gases Dutch political scieninto the atmosphere, tist Karijn van den Berg argues I am well aware of the that because governments have inherent irony of ‘green shifted responsibilities to the capitalism.’ individual, “sustainability has become an empty buzzword without significant meaning, employed by big corporations that seem to focus on economic sustainability only.” Reliance on market forces to fix market failures such as climate change is inevitably limited in its usefulness. As someone who owns a plastic “There Is No Planet B” laptop sticker that was shipped to me on an airplane that released excesses of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, I am well aware of the inherent irony of “green capitalism.” Similarly, social media platforms constantly push us to overvalue our own opinions. As a result, opinion formation can seem like an appropriate substitute for actual political organizing, giving rise to a new era of so-called “eco-shaming.” Admittedly, researchers have found that in some instances, social shame can be incredibly productive in inspiring individual changes; however, this shame becomes less useful when we consider how social media’s engagement algorithms can utterly distort our sense of scale. In order to compete in the internet’s marketplace of ideas, social media companies incentiv-

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ize users to convey potentially nuanced points as hot takes designed to take down the other side. Driven by profit-maximizing algorithms, these sites have effectively turned activism itself into a product to be bartered and sold. It seems that the internet produces such strong incentives to shame one another that we often forgo all that we know about empathetic persuasion and allow the social reward of activism itself to become our focus. In doing so, we risk overwhelming otherwise sympathetic consumers from making any lifestyle changes at all—after all, if there’s “no ethical consumption under capitalism,” why even bother? My goal is not to give anyone, myself included, a permission slip to support irresponsible corporations or to live unsustainably. On the contrary, as we each strive to do better, it’s worth remembering what we’re actually fighting for: If we truly want system-wide change, building social cohesion in our own communities, both online and in-person, has already proven extremely effective in helping societies take action against climate change. Ultimately, with “green capitalism” and activist social media still both utterly entangled in the very capitalist structure we’re attempting to denounce, we must create an alternate path forward–one that brings us closer together, rather than tears us apart.

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Cameron Pipe is an Ope ations Manager at Th re Project, a non-profit Bail dedicated to combating mass incarceration throug ha revolving bail fund. To date, The Bail Project has pr ed bail assistance to ovid over 16,000 people.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE SERIES PART 1

“I will never forget every time I walked into a jail to give cash to a clerk knowing that it was going to get a person out of a cage.”

Cameron Pipe interview by Alexandra Vitkin ’24 illustration by Nadia Kossman-Newcomb ’22

Alexandra Vitkin: What aspect of The Bail Project’s mission speaks to you the most? Cameron Pipe: Growing up in Okl ahoma, you hear people talk abo ut the incarceration rate in the state, whic h has historically been the highest in the nation. As a result, a lot of grea t reform efforts have begun over the past 5 to 10 years. But what stuc k out to me about The Bail Project is that the model is simple: Freedom sho uld be free.

AV: You were a bail disruptor. What does that position entail? s go into jails CP: Bail disruptor t only to pay on a daily basis no th clients to bail, but to work wi eir supportdetermine what th will look like. ive release plans ore rewarding There’s nothing m n of paying than the transactio rget every bail. I will never fo a jail to give time I walked into owing that it cash to a clerk kn a person out was going to get Operations of a cage. I’m an t I’ll always be Manager now, bu heart. a bail disruptor at

AV: How do you select bail disruption sites?

CP: We’re in jurisdictions where the need is the greatest or there’s an appetite for reform. Beyond that, there’s an opportunity to enter jurisdictions where we believe our model will be influential in determining what may replace cash bail. We don’t want risk assessments or algorithmic-based determinations of release to replace cash bail. It’s better to be in a state before these alternatives are implemented.

AV: What does The Bail Project do to advocate against those forms of pretrial oppression?

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CP: We want to end cash bail and replace it with something that is going to serve the community and the people. Risk assessments, other algorithmic-based determinations of release, and electronic monitoring are alternatives to cash bail that we advocate against. We have a policy called After Cash Bail that outlines preferable alternatives to cash bail. It provides a framework for how to implement these alternatives in a given jurisdiction, emphasizing how we prevent those harmful systems of pretrial justice from taking hold.

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Another exciting piece of news when thinking about The Bail Project’s growth is our new initiative, BAIL OUT the SOUTH. This initiative is a commitment by the organization to focus on the southern

AV: Do you have a piece of advice for anyone who is hoping to get involved in advocacy work?

CP: Do it. To be clear, when approaching reform or bail work, it’s important to note that we’re not on the backside of a mountain sliding down. We’re progressing. This system is oppressive, and it’s been in place for a long time, but systems don’t go down without a fight.

AV: What’s the future of The Bail Project? CP: As long as there’s a need for bail assistance, I feel confident that The Bail Project is going to keep its doors open. Meanwhile, I’d love to see The Bail Project continue to think about how we strategically enter jurisdictions where cash bail may be on the way out or where cash bail is still happening but there’s a progressive prosecutor or presiding judge who would like to think about alternative forms of pretrial justice.

states that have had and continue to have particularly oppressive cash bail laws. They levy large fines, fees, and court costs on their detainees. The difficulty is that these costs are deducted from the cash bails that are paid. This reality could make it difficult for us to operate successfully because we rely on our revolving bail fund—every time a dollar is spent, the dollar is returned to the fund as long as our clients make their court appearances.

For bail specifically, it’s important to have a large collective of individuals who are committed to the abolition of cash bail. One of the most important facets of advocacy is education. Educate yourself and others about cash bail and how the bail bond industry operates. Understand why charging folks who don’t have money to buy their freedom is oppressive.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.