Fall 2017: Free Time

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

NO WORK LEFT TO DO

A MACRON PRESIDENCY

INTERVIEW: RAÚL GRIJALVA

VOLUME XLIV NO. 3, FALL 2017 HARVARDPOLITICS.COM

FREE TIME

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FREE TIME

This issue’s cover topic was originally proposed by Erica Newman-Corre.

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No Work Left to Do Mikael Tessema

12 Free Time for the Unfree Sophia Z. Li

10 Spain’s Jobless Generation Devontae Freeland

20 Cities Transformed Henry Sullivan Atkins

25 A Macron Presidency Amanda Wasserman

CAMPUS

CULTURE

3

Reflecting on STEM Culture Celine Liang

34 Balance Katie Weiner

5

A Muslim-Jewish Alliance Amitai Abouzaglo & Bushra Hamid

37 Finding the Words for Hope Hank Sparks

UNITED STATES

INTERVIEWS

15 Cities Transformed Henry Sullivan Atkins

40 Raúl Grijalva Meena Venkataramanan

19 Louisiana: Lost Near Sea Beverly Brown

42 Craig Atkinson Marty Berger

21 The Old Guard Wyatt Hurt

ENDPAPER

WORLD

44 Coming Home Flavia Cuervo

24 Red Looked Good on Paper Anirudh Suresh 27 A Macron Presidency Amanda Wasserman 30 Who’s Got the Power?

Chad Borgman 34 Balance Katie Weiner Email: president@harvardpolitics.com. ISSN 0090-1032. Harvard Political Review. All rights reserved. Image credits: Facebook: 40- Jake Tapper. Flickr: 1- Elvert Barnes; 1- United States Department of Defense; 14- Elvert Barnes; 25- Gopal Vijayaraghavan; 28- Nicolas Nova; 37- PunkToad. Pexels: 23. Photographer: 5- Elmer Vivas Portillo. Unplash: 14- Kimberly Richards, 34- Gabriel Garcia Marengo. Pixabay: 24- xoracio.

The United States Navy: 8. Wikimedia: Cover- Jamelle Bouie; 1- Balatokyo; 1- Jim Bowen; 11- Kyknoord; 20- Ipankonin; 32; 34; 42- Keith Allison; 44- chensiyuan.

FALL 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 1

FROM THE PRESIDENT

HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW

Free Time

A Nonpartisan Undergraduate Journal of Politics, Est. 1969—Vol. XLIV, No. 3

EDITORIAL BOARD PRESIDENT: Ali Hakim PUBLISHER: Peter Wright MANAGING EDITOR: Samuel Plank ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Quinn Mulholland ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR: Samuel Kessler STAFF DIRECTOR: Ari Berman SENIOR COVERS EDITOR: Sal DeFrancesco ASSOCIATE COVERS EDITOR: Nicolas Yan SENIOR U.S. EDITOR: Chad Borgman ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Henry Brooks ASSOCIATE U.S. EDITOR: Drew Pendergrass SENIOR WORLD EDITOR: Jacob Link ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Derek Paulhus ASSOCIATE WORLD EDITOR: Akshaya Annapragada SENIOR CULTURE EDITOR: Chloe Lemmel-Hay ASSOCIATE CULTURE EDITOR: Russell Reed SENIOR CAMPUS EDITOR: Akash Wasil ASSOCIATE CAMPUS EDITOR: Katherine Ho INTERVIEWS EDITOR: Martin Berger BUSINESS MANAGER: Jennifer Horowitz ASSOCIATE BUSINESS MANAGER: Enrique Rodriguez SENIOR DESIGN EDITOR: Kyle McFadden ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Victoria Berzin ASSOCIATE DESIGN EDITOR: Eliot Harrison SENIOR MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: Sebastian Reyes ASSOCIATE MULTIMEDIA EDITOR: James Blanchfield SENIOR TECH DIRECTOR: Richa Chaturvedi ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Alisha Ukani ASSOCIATE TECH DIRECTOR: Will Finigan

STAFF Perry Abdulkadir, Victor Agbafe, Perry Arrasmith, Marie Becker, Devon Black, Evan Bonsall, Beverly Brown, Jiafeng Chen, Pedro Luis Cunha Farias, Justin Curtis, Ashish Dahal, Nick Danby, Sunaina Danziger, Hadley DeBello, Sophie DiCara, Casey Durant, Austin Eder, Steven Espinoza, Adam Friedman, Daniel Friedman, Miro Furtado, Melissa Gayton, Jay Gopalan, David Gutierrez, Olivia Herrington, Thomas Huling, Chimaoge Ibe, Michael Jasper, Cindy Jung, Matthew Keating, Daniel Kenny, Andrew Kim, Kieren Kresevic, Amelia Lamp, Jose Larios, Ashiley Lee, Elton Lossner, Elizabeth Manero, Patrick McClanahan, Olivia McGinnis, Jake McIntyre, Ayush Midha, Andrew Morley, Erica Newman-Corre, Iriowen Ojo, Nadya Okamoto, Mfundo Radebe, Anna Raheem, Anne Raheem, Alyssa Resar, Chico Payne, Darwin Peng, Juliet Pesner, Stefan Petrovic, Lily Piao, Allison Piper, Tess Saperstein, Lizzy Schick, Matthew Shaw, Audrey Sheehy, Wright Smith, Nick StaufferMason, Gloria Su, Anirudh Suresh, Sarah Tisdall, Richard Tong, Rachel Tropp, Nico Tuccillo, Derek Wang, Katie Weiner, Joseph Winters, Jenna Wong, Sarah Wu, Emily Zauzmer, Catherine Zheng, Anna Zhou, Andrew Zucker

ADVISORY BOARD Jonathan Alter Richard L. Berke Carl Cannon E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Ron Fournier Walter Isaacson Whitney Patton Maralee Schwartz

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A

h, free time—that elusive occasion during which worry fades to the back of one’s mind and the James Patterson novel on the coffee table or the dusty baseball hidden somewhere deep inside the coat closet seems to be the only thing of immediate consequence in one’s world. Seldom do we acknowledge, however, that how we spend our free time is a more fundamental reflection of our identities than countless hours spent in the professional, educational, and social realms. Indeed, every moment spent unconstrained by responsibilities to our jobs and our friends becomes an instance of pure self-expression. Perhaps that’s why we use the phrase “me time”— because it tells us who we are and what we want.

You may be wondering why a political journal should have any interest in the topic of free time. The answer is simple. Politics is the means by which members of a community bring their private concerns into a public forum and collectively set priorities—in other words, it is a means of self-expression. If the excess hours of the day offer us the best opportunity to express ourselves unbound by many of the restrictions imposed on us in the workplace, classroom, and elsewhere, then the subject of free time is of necessary importance to anyone interested in politics.

Furthermore, free time itself is often—although seldom obviously— politicized. Security services monitor how Americans spend their free time surfing the web. Governments impose curfews in the name of public safety.

Laws in many countries tell us who we should love and may marry. These are, fundamentally, issues regarding the relationship that a citizenry should have with their government.

And intrusive regulations are far from the only ways in which governing institutions place limits on free time.

Imprisonment and indentured servitude,

for example, are systems used by state and non-state agents around the globe; and while each arguably fulfills an important social or economic function, they also impose particularly harsh restrictions on both the amount of free time one has and what she may do with that time.

While governments often restrict the time citizens have to themselves, they can also enrich the public’s free time. Through publicly funded parks, squares, and after-school programs and through safe streets and clean beaches, government can actually enhance the hours that we have to ourselves.

In hopes of stimulating discourse on this deeply personal and inherently political subject, we proudly present to you Free Time, the Fall 2017 issue of the HPR. In it, Mikael Tessema stresses the importance of rethinking the cultural value of work in the face of the rapid pace of automation, a phenomenon that could eliminate jobs and reduce working hours for many Americans. Devontae Freeland examines the phenomenon of youth unemployment in Spain, which has given many recent graduates excess free time.

And Sophia Li illuminates the creative ways in which prisoners make the most of their time behind bars.

This magazine is the third produced by the HPR’s 49th masthead. I would like to thank and credit them and our entire staff, who have offered up countless hours of their free time to produce this issue. And finally, I would like to thank you for investing some of your free time into reading it.

Ali Hakim President

.REFLECTING ON. .STEM CULTURE.

Celine Liang

T

here has been as much written about the gender gap in STEM as there has been effort to counteract it. But the often-desired goal of “equality”—an approximately equal ratio of males to females in STEM fields—can backfire if we become too solely focused on test results, statistics, and data.

Obstacles to gender equality in STEM are comprised of two main aspects: barriers of entry to girls who want to explore STEM, and pressures that cause women already interested in STEM to drop out of these fields. While initiatives to increase the number of women in STEM aren’t perfect, the mere existence of these initiatives is already a step forward. My experiences are hardly representative of all females (and even within STEM, most of my experiences are math-related), but I hope that these reflections will shed some light on ways to restructure initiatives to keep women excited about STEM.

GETTING PERSONAL WITH OUTREACH The most common way to introduce a group of people to a field in which they are a minority is to connect them with others who have walked similar paths. One way many on-campus and off-campus organizations do this is by inviting speakers to present on a special topic or relate her journey to the audience. My first experience with a STEM speaker presentation was a math talk at a middle school summer program. Quite frankly, I don’t remember who the speaker was or the topic of the presentation; I snuck out of the auditorium 20 minutes into the presentation to run to 7-Eleven and grab slushies with friends. Seventh-grade

me felt that the talk was simply too impersonal, as most technical talks tend to be. And this is coming from someone who was already interested in STEM; how could such a talk have piqued the interests of a young girl who wasn’t inclined towards science and math?

Girls these days are constantly bombarded with STEM talks given by female scientists and mathematicians. But those talks are usually only directed towards girls who have already expressed interest in the field, rather than those who haven’t.

To increase interest among females who haven’t yet explored STEM, the talks should tone down the technical aspects and err on the side of being more personal. When I was first beginning to realize my interests in math and science in middle school, I was much more drawn towards people who talked about what it felt like to work in a wet lab, build spacecrafts for NASA, or spend months on a ship researching krill in the Antarctic, than those who discussed the technical details required of those things. Getting personal is key to inciting curiosity, and in fields where females are lacking, this is crucial to promote interest.

The same tactic can benefit young males as well. Female speaker presentations to an all-female audience can be effective and empowering, but they can be even more so to a mixed audience, especially when the speaker addresses personal struggles or interesting observations that she has noticed during her time in the field. What has been your experience with the gender divide? Do you have any advice for the audience or anyone looking to help with the movement? What is one thing you wish you could change about how females are viewed in your field? These

Anna Biggs

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are questions that everyone should be aware of, so that those who want to be more involved in the conversation—including men—can do just that. “If the other members who make up the STEM community are willing to be active bystanders and are educated about helpful, effective actions, women can focus on their work in STEM, instead of having to fight for a seat at the table,” Harvard student Grace Lin told the HPR.

THE PINK GROUP

Camps and workshops that actively encourage young women to explore STEM are another common initiative toward gender equality in STEM. Some of these initiatives are singlegender programs for the purpose of building communities for women. Others are programs that attempt to address the gender gap in STEM by lowering the acceptance standards for females.

Though the mission behind this latter group of programs is admirable, the lack of transparency regarding non-uniform acceptance standards can have an adverse effect on women’s selfconfidence.

The camp of slushie-escapade fame was one that I had received a scholarship to attend via another math competition, as did another male student (the scholarship was meant for one male and one female). Although I was excited to receive the scholarship, I knew he had placed in the top 12 of the competition whereas I had placed around fiftieth; seven years later, it still makes me slightly uncomfortable to know that we hadn’t received the scholarship on equal footing. In high school, I was invited to the more intensive Math Olympiad Program as one of the top 50 scorers of another math contest. But MOP invited the eight highest-scoring females as well, regardless of whether or not they scored in the top 50. The camp was grouped into color groups by score, and the girls who hadn’t scored in the top 50 but who were still invited by being one of the top eight female scores were dubbed the “pink” group. Although the nickname started as a joke and stuck for convenience, I could never really get over its somewhat pejorative nature.

On balance, I support initiatives like “pink” MOP. They help break ceilings that would otherwise remain unbroken at the highest levels and give the females involved opportunities to challenge themselves in ways they might not be able to otherwise. But I do believe there are some things that should be changed, or at least addressed.

Some females may begin to interpret the existence of lower cutoff programs as an indication that females are naturally weaker. Or, along a similar vein, these programs may cause females themselves to view their accomplishments through the lens of their sex. After participating in so many contests and programs with gender-based admission, I identified as a “strong female in math” when in fact, my evaluation of my personal strengths should have had nothing to do with gender. I believe that programs which admit females under a lower cutoff should address why they choose to do this. This transparency could provide a definitive answer to the “did I get in just because I’m female?” question (even if the answer is “yes”), raise awareness about the

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barriers that women face in STEM, and reassure women that they belong in the program.

FIXING THE CULTURE The problem that most strongly contributes to the gender divide is also most difficult to correct. STEM is a meritocracy which subliminally permeates a culture of “intellectual elitism”—where those who are knowledgeable and established are praised and admired, while newcomers are less welcome and struggle to “break in.” Hiro Tanaka, a post-doc in Harvard’s math department, told the HPR that the clearest example of this elitism at Harvard is the emphasis on the level of difficulty of the classes you take. It starts, according to Tanaka, “even before the first day of classes freshman year, when you are bombarded with the cultural archetypes of what 55-ers are, or with how you should identify your mathematical ability by 25, 23, or otherwise.”

There is also a bias against those who speak up during class and ask for help, especially in theory-based fields like math and physics, as if asking questions was a sign of weakness. The stigma against “speaking up” is slowly disappearing but is still present in many upper-level classes—to sit and nod in silence is to give off the impression that you understand or at least respect those who do enough to avoid slowing them down. What’s worse is when this impression of “weakness” becomes a label. Elba Monsalvo, co-president of Gender Inclusivity in Mathematics, told the HPR that she found it “unsettling to think that each time I raise my hand to get a clarification somebody might see that as a weakness expected of my gender.” This fact alone starts a vicious cycle for females trying to enter these fields: the tendency towards remaining silent when it would be best to ask questions hurts those who would benefit the most from that extra help or clarification, including newcomers.

The math department is by no means ignoring the issues that are present—in fact, the department has taken some steps to combat intellectual elitism. “Math Night,” an event on Mondays at 8 p.m. in Leverett Dining Hall, is an event where students congregate to do problem sets with friends and receive help at office hours. Additionally, the department works with GIIM to improve math advising for freshmen and prospective math concentrators. But STEM departments are going to have to do more to change the culture simply due to the way their fields are viewed.

I’m still optimistic about the progress that’s being made.

Many issues remain that I haven’t addressed here, such as the pressure that women face to balance their careers and families, and the fact that I have yet to take a STEM course at Harvard that is not taught by a professor who is white and male. But attempts towards more personal programs, explicit acknowledgement of measures being taken, and a correction of the stigmas inherent to STEM culture will all result in better support for women who are seeking to enter the STEM fields as well as those who are working to gain a stronger foothold in the STEM community.

A Muslim-Jewish Alliance Amitai Abouzaglo & Bushra Hamid

I

t began with smiles.

The internet beamed with a photograph of strangers capturing togetherness. At O’Hare Airport in Chicago, a Muslim father-daughter duo shared a frame with a Jewish father-son duo, and a new era of religious-minority cooperation in the United States commenced.

American Muslim and Jewish communities have responded to acts of profanity this year with a sacred togetherness, supporting one another in the face of egregious acts of discrimination and hatred.

Cooperation between our two communities, however, must go beyond isolated calls for unity and solidarity if we are to navigate the coming years stronger together: only a deeper, sustained sense of shared humanity can extinguish the embers of corrosive separation.

With this in mind, an unofficial collection of students, including the authors, have worked to develop a Muslim-Jewish alliance on Harvard’s campus. Our central goal has been to forge lasting bonds between these two communities and between individuals within them. Over two semesters, we learned firsthand that interfaith interactions cultivate friendship and palpable support across backgrounds.

Sahar Omar, a member of the Harvard Islamic Society, described in an interview with the HPR how this interfaith alliance fosters deep bonds. “They’re names with faces now, people on the street you smile at—they are your friends who are supporting you,” says Omar of the Jewish students she has gotten to know. “[The alliance has] moved on from being ‘I’m going to represent the Muslim side of community.’ The alliance has become a friendship in my eyes.”

FORGING FRIENDSHIP Last October, a group of 10 Muslims and Jews broke bread and discussed the religions’ high holiday practices and experiences under a Sukkah—a temporary hut constructed for Sukkot, a Jewish festival commemorating God’s sheltering of the Jews in the desert for 40 years. Our conversations translated into friendships, and these friendships laid the foundations for the campus alliance we sought to establish. Over brunch some weeks after, our organizing group decided to name the alliance after the event’s title: Sukkat Salaam, literally “the canopy of peace.”

We established this alliance in a political period rife with hostility toward minority populations, including religious minorities. In response to this, we set out to build a sense of inclusion and unity between Muslims and Jews. Ilan Goldberg, a member of Hillel, told the HPR that he is involved in the alliance because “I have a lot of friends who are Muslim and I know they are going through difficult times in the U.S.” Days after the U.S. presidential election, members of the Jewish community attended Jummah, a congregational prayer service Muslims hold every Friday. Muslim students responded in kind and attended Shabbat dinner at Hillel. We emphatically exchanged sentiments of deep care and together denounced hatred.

In a period of acrimony and finger-pointing, expressions of support across religious lines can be unexpected and valuable.

“There was a whole lot of warmth and unexpected support [from the Jewish community], especially with regard to political turmoil,” Omar said. “Having a Jewish contingency at Jumah

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prayer meant a lot to us, and it came from this group that people would not have expected.”

This feeling of gratitude was not limited to Omar. For Amanda Jowell, a former member of Hillel, the evening “was one of the best Shabbat dinners” she experienced at Harvard. “It was so beautiful that we shared this moment together because for me that’s what college (and being American) should be all about,” Jowell told the HPR. An ask-all session about Judaism and Islam with Imam Taymullah Abdulrahman and Rabbi Dani Passow fostered inter-religious learning. A petition from the Jewish community opposing the executive-order travel ban garnered 220 signatories. Hillel partnered with the Harvard Islamic Society to host a “Combating Islamophobia” teach-in: Muslim students shared personal experiences of being targeted by Islamophobia, and Jewish community members spoke of a “moral conscription” to stand up against anti-Muslim bigotry.

Interpersonal relationships helped strengthen the growing alliance. Shireen Younus, a member of both the alliance’s unofficial leadership team and of the Harvard Islamic Society, recalls the crucial role friendships within and across faith backgrounds played in this year’s interfaith events. “My friends are the people I reached out to [come to the alliance’s events]. People who otherwise would not get involved will come because they have someone there. It’s a positive thing sometimes when you take a leap for someone and it ends up being a great experience,” Younus told the HPR, adding that she joined the alliance because a friend brought her along to Sukkat Salaam.

Everything we experienced during this past year—the teachings, the friendships, the displays of solidarity—etched the sheer beauty and power of interfaith in our hearts.

STRATEGIES FOR THE ALLIANCE Having experienced this beauty and power on several occasions, we contemplated the possibility of a nationwide MuslimJewish interfaith alliance. There are several points that would be essential to building this alliance.

First and foremost, to jumpstart interfaith community building, synagogues and mosques, as well as other Jewish and Muslim community centers, can invite members of the other faith to learn about each other’s prayer services. Interfaith engagement works best in the form of iterated interaction.

“If we want to create an alliance the way to do things is to create continuity, to create established traditions. If you make something a tradition like that it sticks there,” Theo Motzkin, Hillel vice president of community relations told the HPR. Therefore, we suggest that communities host educational series for members of the other faith. Learning the basics would enable Jews and Muslims to talk more openly about personal experiences regarding religious traditions and philosophies.

Additionally, as members of both communities get to know one another, organizing community-wide gatherings corresponding to religious holidays would allow Muslims and Jews to celebrate their sacred togetherness. It would also signal to our fellow Americans the presence and strength of a growing nationwide Muslim-Jewish alliance.

There is significant value in consistently engaging with other religions in this way. Extending warm invitations to those of all religions will demonstrate the possibility of bridging differences

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with engagement and kind-heartedness.

INTERFAITH ON CAMPUS A Muslim-Jewish Passover Seder convinced us of this most inspiring insight. Experiencing the tradition and richness during Passover brought us an enlivening opportunity to build interfaith community, and has since crystallized our response to the “Why interfaith?” question.

The Seder is a rituals-based retelling of the Exodus story that takes place at the beginning of Passover. For millennia, it has stood as a cultural, spiritual, and communal tradition for Jewish people around the world, and it remains a powerful source of Jewish identity today. But the Seder and the Exodus story convey universal themes through a journey from bondage to freedom—topics that participants of the Muslim-Jewish Seder were eager to engage with, regardless of faith.

Preparing for the night, this time markedly different from other Passover nights, one of us wrote a prompt to spark discussion. The intro was standard: “The story of Passover is one of exodus. It’s generally regarded as a communal retelling of a distinguished transition from freedom to slavery.”

The intro continued, “But an exodus is more than a journey that carries on from a downtrodden point A to an uplifting point B. Exodus is a transcendent experience that reconditions its participating actors into agents of positive transformation for all of humanity.”

At a time in which differences are increasingly represented as unsettling or treacherous, these words, with their unifying power, felt right. The Passover story, in which the Israelites fled slavery and thereafter became a free nation, inspired us to reach for and connect to something universal.

Though Passover is a Jewish holiday, the symbol of Exodus— a liberation of humanity manifested in the unity of a people— was something we, as Jews and Muslims, could all connect with together. The words “all of humanity,” were breathed into existence the night Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters sat together in bond. That evening illustrated the Seder’s enduring power: its impetus to simultaneously forge a strong sense of identity but also togetherness.

Rabbi Passow, the Seder’s host, and Basil Baccouche met up the next week, discussing the goal of “making the alliance tangible” for over two hours. The idea of a prayer service struck them both.

“We talked about an interfaith prayer event, side by side prayer, in own prayer methods, in a way that glorified God,” Baccouche told the HPR, suggesting the event should be public, perhaps next to Widener Library steps, and open for all to participate.

Interfaith, the dialogue between religious expressions, always leaves more to be unearthed. Friendships bloom and ongoing conversations reconnect us to our own religious endeavors.

We are motivated to emulate divine compassion and strive for global harmony.

A five-hour procession of religious rituals, storytelling, and commentary brought two peoples together for a night dedicated to spiritual and personal renewal. In this spirit we left, committing ourselves to further understand and embrace the commonalities and distinctions we had encountered.

CAMPUS

NO WORK LEFT TO DO

Mikael Tessema

S

ince its founding, the United States has been a nation of work. The emergence of a strong middle class in the 20th century—long a source of national pride—was largely due to an abundance of well-paying jobs accessible to the American masses. Millions found secure jobs that required neither highlyspecialized skills nor higher education. Today, college degrees have become a prerequisite for many middle-class jobs, manufacturing has been outsourced abroad, and working-class jobs have declined. Nevertheless, the belief that all Americans should have the opportunity to find a job has held strong.

But this could all change in the near future. While many have enjoyed the benefits of technological advancement over the past few decades, others are beginning to feel the pain of “technological unemployment,” as robots learn to do more of the work that humans typically do. Many experts speculate that we’re headed towards a world without work—one where machines perform all our jobs, the owners of these machines rule the world, and humans become permanently unemployed. Some believe that mass

technological unemployment will happen within our children’s lifetimes, if not sooner.

As a nation, we need to have a frank dialogue about what work means to us today, how our culture values work, and what we’ll do without it, lest we find ourselves blindsided by the automation revolution. The consequences of a world without work will reach far beyond the initial economic shock: our cultures, lifestyles, and sense of purpose will all be impacted. Addressing the challenge of automation requires rethinking the meaning of work itself.

BEWARE THE ROBOTS? A growing body of research suggests workplace automation will affect vast swathes of American workers. A widely cited 2013 Oxford study found that as many as 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be wiped out due to automation within the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, recent research by McKinsey & Company claims

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nearly all industries could be automated to some extent. Few workers would be spared from the triumph of technology over labor. Even those with traditionally “secure” occupations, such as surgeons and financial analysts, might see more of their work performed by machines in the future. The potential economic and political implications of an automated workforce—including systemic inequality, mass unemployment, and universal basic income—have been discussed at length among media commentators, public figures, and policy makers alike.

While a world where human labor is obsolete most likely remains some distance away, most experts agree that automation will continue to evolve at a breakneck pace. However, they aren’t completely certain that such developments will necessarily lead to mass unemployment. John Russo, a professor of labor studies at Youngstown State University, spoke to the HPR about his view on the impacts of technological automation on work in America.

Russo cited studies that had arrived at divergent conclusions on what drives mass unemployment. Some had found technology to be responsible, while others identified government and corporate policies as causes. Although Russo is hesitant to blame technology for current unemployment trends, he predicts that automation will play a larger role in the future. “New transformational technologies have only just begun to reshape the nature of work in our social and economic lives,” he said.

LABOR’S LOVE NOT LOST Even if robots can perform all human work in the future, would people really miss having jobs? The answer is complicated: data on Americans’ relationships with their jobs reveal a mixed picture of workplace alienation and engagement. A recent Pew survey found that seven out of ten U.S. employees say that they are at least “somewhat” satisfied with their jobs, with half feeling “very” satisfied. This finding was echoed by a 2016 Conference Board survey which found job satisfaction to be at its highest point since 2005. Yet in 2015, Gallup reported that almost 70 percent of employees felt unengaged in the workplace.

Furthermore, the same Pew poll which found relatively high rates of job satisfaction found that only half of U.S. workers say their job provides them with a sense of identity. The other half say that their work is just what they do for a living, and almost a third say that their job is only “to get them by” as opposed to a meaningful career.

Research relating specifically to U.S. workers’ perception

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of automation and job security reveals an interesting paradox.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center last October found that nearly two-thirds of Americans they will be alive to see computers and automated systems perform most of the jobs that currently belong to humans. Nevertheless, over 80 percent of Americans believe that their own occupation will exist in its current form after 50 years. Of the workers who do worry about losing their jobs, only 10 percent cite technological automation as the likely culprit. Like many experts, most Americans expect the workplace of the future to look radically different, but aren’t worried about their place in it. We seem to agree that technology will bring big changes to the future of work, but not to our own lives—even when technological displacement is already becoming a reality.

Russo isn’t surprised that Americans remain optimistic for their job prospects in the face of technological change. “It’s a kind of psychological adjustment,” he said. “[Unemployed] steelworkers here in Youngstown keep saying ‘Don’t worry, the jobs will come back.’ In this country, there is a type of technological determinism … that things will always work out.” Russo further explained that for most of us, belief in the power of modernity to improve our lives is stronger than any fear of technology, so we assume that there will always be work left to do. Throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, most people become so accustomed to the idea of working for a living that the prospect of a life without work is unimaginable.

RETHINKING WORK Even though most Americans remain untroubled about technological change, those responsible for the automation revolution are beginning to take action. Technology elites are beginning to take accountability for the socioeconomic disruptions that their innovations might cause if left unchecked. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, whose company’s driverless technology could put millions out of work, recently reaffirmed his support for a universal basic income, explaining that without substantial employment, a permanently unemployed society will need to be financially supported.

But replacing work isn’t as easy as giving everybody a paycheck. Musk acknowledged as much at the World Government Summit in Dubai, saying that people might lose their purpose in life if they don’t have to work: “A lot of people derive meaning from their employment … so if there’s no need for your labor, what’s your meaning? Do you feel useless?” Facebook CEO Mark

FREE TIME

Zuckerberg echoed those sentiments in his recent commencement speech at Harvard, when he called for graduates to create jobs that provide meaning to communities in the face of technological change: “When our parents graduated, a sense of purpose reliably came from your job, your church, your community. …

But today, technology and automation are eliminating many jobs.

Membership in a lot of communities has been declining. A lot of people are feeling disconnected and depressed, and are trying to fill a void in their lives.”

Some “post-workists,” however, see the current state of work as more of a burden than a boon to society. They believe that the coming automation revolution will be a chance for us to renegotiate our relationship with work, and point to increasing working hours, stress, depression, and disengagement as reasons to look forward to the end of work. Their concerns aren’t without merit: along with the aforementioned finding about employee disengagement, numerous studies have chronicled the toll of the modern workplace on health and well-being. Our working lives are getting in the way of enjoying our personal lives.

Post-workists claim that technology has the potential to allow us to work fewer hours, get closer with our loved ones, and live healthier, more meaningful lives. If automation can help us reclaim that, they argue, why not embrace it?

Benjamin Hunnicutt, a professor of leisure studies at the University of Iowa, spoke to the HPR about historical expectations for technology and a post-work world in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The so-called “Luddite fallacy”—the fear that new technology will eliminate jobs for humans, named after a 19th century English anti-industrial movement—was largely discredited in the late 20th century once it became apparent that technology was creating jobs (although it is regaining traction as of late). But for many working-class laborers in late 18th and early 19th century America, the automation of work was a welcome phenomenon. “The new age of technology was supposed to usher in a realm of freedom, one where people could concentrate more of their lives on living, and not just making a living,” said Hunnicutt. It’s the same technological determinism that Russo attributed to Americans, only in the other direction: hope that technology would give us less work, not more of it.

Hunnicutt believes that this hope for liberation only gave way to fears of wage-enslavement after the 1970s, when we started working longer hours for the same pay and the work-life balance collapsed over our heads.

All the noise about a post-work society does beg one question, though. If the people of the future won’t (or can’t) work,

how will they use their time instead? The question might have already been answered—by retirees. More Americans are staying engaged in their retirement than ever before. They’re enjoying leisurely pursuits that often get overlooked in our work-oriented culture, but are just as important to living meaningful lives.

Retirees are spending time with their friends and family, rediscovering the joy of learning for its own sake, engaging with the arts, taking care of their well-being, and getting more involved in civic life. Yet there is a bizarre irony in discovering our passions only when we have less time to enjoy them. In a world without work, we might be able to find more of the interests and hobbies that make us human at an early age, uninhibited by the demands of the office.

THE WORK AHEAD It is important to note that the changes brought by a postwork world would lead to more than just an increase in free time; they would demand nothing less than a full reexamination of our values and our society as a whole. Our education system was designed to teach children to become productive workers, not how to create meaningful lives. Companies shower rewards on industrious super-employees logging long work weeks—at great cost to both parties—while optimizing for productivity.

We look forward to retirement as an escape from work but for too many of us, this is when we finally discover how we can best enjoy our lives. Put bluntly, our social institutions aren’t ready for a post-work world, and neither are we.

In reality, many of the consequences of a post-work world will be dealt with in the realm of public policy. But work is more than just an economic metric. As Hunnicutt noted, we frequently present ourselves to each other in occupational terms—work is how we construct our identities. A world without work would not only impact our financial prospects—it would also impact our culture, our values, and our lifestyles. Yet the conversation surrounding a post-work world has thus far failed to address these latter concerns. Rethinking work means taking a critical look at the current state of labor and all of its shortcomings.

Admitting and remedying them is no easy task, but the coming automation revolution and the threat of mass unemployment makes the task more urgent than ever. Technological advancement holds the promise of a better, healthier, and more engaged society that we can all look forward to. If we are to secure that future, however, our introspection needs to start now.

FALL 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 9

.SPAIN’S. .JOBLESS. .GENERATION. Devontae Freeland

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espite sweeping fiscal austerity measures, Spain’s tenyear recovery from the worldwide Great Recession and housing market crash has remained slow. The national unemployment rate peaked at over 27 percent in 2013, and the hardest hit remain Spain’s youth. For Spaniards aged 18 to 25, the unemployment rate recently dipped below 40 percent for the first time since 2010. The lack of youth in professional sectors of the economy has dampened economic growth and strained Spanish families. “It’s a shame,” Alejandro Díaz de Argandoña Araújo, a college student from Madrid, told the HPR. “At the end of the day, young people are the future of the country. We want to get jobs and learn careers. It’s going to be a big problem in the future if young people don’t have experience.”

Although many blame bad policy for Spain’s widespread youth disenfranchisement, the true narrative is far more complex, striking evenly across economic and cultural bounds. The problem has been so far-reaching that new, youth-centered parties that have emerged which have ruptured the nation’s traditionally two-party system.

UNIVERSITARIOS Díaz de Argandoña, 19, is in his second year at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas, a small, private university where he is joint majoring in telecommunications engineering and business administration. A native of Alicante on Spain’s southeastern coast, Díaz de Argandoña currently lives and studies in Madrid, a four-hour drive from his home. While he doesn’t work during the school year, Díaz de Argandoña was searching for a summer job when he spoke with the HPR in June. “So far this summer I

have been giving private lessons in math and Spanish … for some pocket money” Díaz de Argandoña said.

While Díaz de Argandoña attends school away from home and works seasonally for some extra spending money, not all young Spaniards share the same lifestyle. Diego Gutiérrez Sánchez, 20, is a third-year student at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, a top-tier public university. Gutiérrez grew up in Madrid and is living at home with his parents and siblings while he completes his undergraduate studies. In an interview with the HPR, Gutiérrez noted that staying so close to home is pretty normal among his peers: “Many students at Complutense are from Madrid. People don’t really go out of state for school.”

As a young person without a degree, Gutiérrez explained that it can be difficult to find work and that he usually only works during summer break.Díaz de Argandoña agreed with Gutiérrez that young Spaniards who seek work while still in school look for summer jobs on temporary contracts in tourism and hospitality. However, Díaz de Argandoña added that job-hunting often becomes more difficult after school. “People over 23 who have graduated college have a huge struggle to find work in their fields,” Díaz de Argandoña said, hoping he does not eventually face those same issue himself.

Realizing Spain’s economic difficulties, Díaz de Argandoña chose his joint major in business because he worried that even in a traditionally high-demand field like engineering, he could still have difficulties finding a job. With this second major, Díaz de Argandoña hopes to display a broader skillset when applying for jobs. With similar concerns in mind, Gutiérrez noted that he chose to become a veterinarian because with “the small supply of vets, [he] could probably find a job after college.”

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Gutiérrez and Díaz de Argandoña are roughly the same age, and at the same stage in their life, but they are from entirely different parts of the country and pursue completely different academic interests. Gutiérrez represents the distinct cultural trends that inhibit most Spanish students from leaving home for college. Díaz de Argandoña, who is on scholarship, represents those who can afford to study away from their families. Despite this divide, however, their experiences as students and soon-tobe members of the job market have overlapped significantly.

EL STATU QUO ESPAÑOL In many ways, high unemployment rates in Spain have become a norm, especially when analyzed against employment trends among college-aged youth in the United States. Americans have a unique culture of post-secondary college attendance, with most young people moving away from home and searching for employment right after college. This is not the case in Spain.

Most Spanish students never “go off to school.” Like Gutiérrez, students in Spain predominantly commute to local colleges, and many continue living at home even after they earn their bachelor’s degrees. In early 2016, Spanish news station Antena 3 reported that half of all young people between 18 and 34 live with their parents.

Not just a minor cultural idiosyncrasy, the extended home life of young Spaniards actually depresses the economy. Stagnant mobility and stubborn family ties inhibit labor force growth and skew unemployment metrics when young professionals become disenchanted with the modern economy. Perhaps most significantly, work-ready adults have no incentive to seek employment

and enter the labor force when some of their major personal expenses, such as rent, are covered by their family. In its current state, Spain’s top-heavy labor economy is over-saturated with middle-aged workers and can only support large-scale youth employment in temporary or seasonal low-paying jobs.

In an interview with the HPR, José Manuel Martínez Sierra, a Spanish political scientist at Harvard University who focuses on Spanish and European politics, explained how job hunting for educated young Spaniards connects to the nation’s recent political unrest. “Unemployment is extremely linked to socioeconomic inequality,” he said, emphasizing that much of Spain’s political turmoil began with the middle and upper-middle classes. Workers from this cross-section of society are mobilized by their struggles to find decent employment, unlike the working class, whose interests have rarely been at the forefront of political conversations.

“We have on the one hand unemployment [for] well-educated people, and on the other hand an internal devaluation of salaries. These people are often holding temporary jobs with low salaries,” Martínez commented. He continued, “Nobody wants to live with their parents if they have a decent job and can afford it.

The problem is not the laziness or training of Spaniards, it’s the job market.”

“If you are educated, the job that you have and the salary that you get doesn’t allow you to buy a house or have a decent living.

And if you do, you certainly wouldn’t be able to support a family or have a baby,” Martínez explained. Poor job prospects for educated Spaniards has led to a brain drain among qualified professionals—since 2010, the country has seen negative net migration rates. As Díaz de Argandoña and Gutiérrez have shown, young

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Spaniards are aware of the economic realities plaguing Spain, this has led them to disrupt the nation’s political system.

JUNTOS PODEMOS Spain’s ever-erratic labor economy made the nation ripe for unrest. The highly developed democracy, with millions of educated but unemployed young people living with their parents, has faced protests, demonstrations, and political upheaval. One such protest, on May 15, 2011, featured major demonstrations across Spain against austerity policies and unemployment. Hundreds of thousands of protesters, many of them young people, occupied the Puerta del Sol, a major public square in Madrid, in an Occupy-inspired show of community organizing and political solidarity. These demonstrators branded themselves Los Indignados, “the indignant,” and their youth-centered protest marked the start of the anti-austerity 15-M Movement. Political strategists based in Madrid and Barcelona have capitalized on this sort of civil unrest, energy, and ‘indignance’ to drive the Spanish political system into an unprecedented new era.

Since Spain’s transition to democracy in the late 1970s, the Spanish parliament has maintained a two-party system. The socialist PSOE party and the conservative PP party have alternated majorities for almost 30 years. This power-sharing was upended when the Madrid-based Podemos Party and the Barcelona-based Ciudadanos Party entered the scene, augmenting the Indignados movement’s infrastructure and captivating many of the latter’s supporters. By 2015, a traditionally two-way race transmuted into a four-way political brawl.

The center-right Ciudadanos—or “C’s”, as they’re often referred to—primarily sought to advance national unity and prevent Catalonian secession, while the far left Podemos emphasized economic issues. “Podemos, especially, tackled the issue of economic disaffection. The majority vote of Podemos was younger, college-educated individuals who were well-trained but unemployed or with low-paying jobs,” Martínez noted. The charismatic leaders of Podemos and C’s (Pablo Iglesias and Alberto Rivera, respectively) heavily contested the PP’s and PSOE’s establishment candidates, employing anti-establishment rhetoric to woo young Spaniards like Gutiérrez and Díaz de Argandoña.

As a college student and native of the nation’s capital and largest city, Gutiérrez notes the anti-establishment phenomenon in his everyday interactions. “I don’t think young people feel the same sense of inertia that I have seen older voters in Spain feel

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about their political party. The older they are, the more difficult it is for them to change their vote.” Gutiérrez continued, “They believe that maybe if they vote for one of these new parties, things could get worse. But for us, we feel less inclined to stick with the status quo.” Most adults in Gutiérrez’s community tend to support the conservative PP, and though he and his friends do not discuss politics frequently, Gutiérrez noted that “most of them, those who are less influenced by their parents, I guess they support Podemos or Ciudadanos.”

The anti-establishment message clearly resonated with a large cross-section of Spanish voters. In the 2015 parliamentary elections, Podemos won 69 of 350 seats and became the thirdlargest party in Spain after only two years of existence. Though they fell short of a majority, Podemos, C’s, and other minor parties held 137 of the 350 seats in parliament. This insurgent bloc upended the power of the PP and PSOE and kicked-off a yearlong leadership struggle. After months without a government, King Felipe VI was forced to call a new election. Nonetheless, Podemos and C’s remained bitterly in conflict with each other, unable to reconcile left and right-wing political views, despite their shared dislike for the status quo. In the new elections in 2016, the PP’s incumbent prime minister succeeded in maintaining control via a minority coalition in large part because of the incoherence of the new opposition parties.

Gutiérrez and Díaz de Argandoña’s experiences demonstrate that politics has recently been less about policy or ideology and more about breaking from traditional establishment politics. In this way, the struggles of students and young professionals, 39 percent of whom remain unemployed and half of whom still live with their parents, have served as mere talking points in parliament without significantly influencing any political agenda. The inability of the conservative PP and socialist PSOE parties to address the economic grievances of the educated middle class has made them vulnerable to the rising anti-establishment trend.

However, so long as these anti-establishment groups remain fractured among the far-left Podemos and the center-right C’s, there is hope for the ruling PP regime or a PP-PSOE coalition to put forward a comprehensive, proactive jobs plan suitable to their bases and to disaffected young voters nationwide. If they fail, and if some new movement consolidates the supporters of Podemos and C’s into a coherent political ideology (and not a messy set of anti-establishment movements that scatter the political spectrum), it could mean the end of the traditional parties’ power-sharing inertia not just now, but for the foreseeable future.

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FREE TIME FOR THE UNFREE Sophia Z. Li

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n prison, ingenuity becomes a way of life. A roll of toilet paper turns into a deck of playing cards. Headphones transform into television speakers. Bic pens replace tattoo guns, and cherry Dr. Pepper serves as the base for fried ramen noodles. In conversations with the HPR, incarcerated individuals described harsh restrictions on what they can do with their free time. Hence, creativity is key.

Every correctional facility in the United States has its own regulations that govern the daily schedules of inmates. Some prisons offer their inhabitants a range of activities like vocational workshops, educational programs, and organized sports leagues. Others, however, confine prisoners within their cells for the majority of the day without offering sufficient rehabilitative opportunities. Free time in prisons varies significantly both across and within state borders due to security protocols and budgetary irregularities, among other factors. These inconsistencies result in severe consequences for prisoners that the public often fails to notice, leaving many inmates at risk of recidivism—relapsing into crime.

months. “Everyone was crazy about books,” Ferrara told the HPR. “Everyone read Game of Thrones and the Jack Reacher series. Lots of people read fantasy. It was an escapist kind of thing.”

Others, like Sammer Elkhateeb, who served ten months at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Faribault, spend most of their time writing letters to friends and family. For prisoners who might not have such familial connections in the outside world, pen pal writing is a popular option. WriteAPrisoner.com, a pen pal website, currently has over 10,000 listings of inmates seeking to correspond with people on the outside. Another website, Friends Beyond the Wall, features over 2,500 personal ad profiles of inmates from 46 different states. The connections that inmates make through these programs and similar services help them stay updated on real world issues. Research has also shown that inmates who maintain contact with people in the outside world tend to have more success reintegrating into society and are less likely to be convicted of future crimes.

FILLING THE GAPS

While recreation may offer therapeutic value, prisons focus on rehabilitation in an attempt to prevent inmates from relapsing into crime once released.. With some exceptions, almost every prison has a basic GED curriculum, which is funded by the federal government. Other programs vary by state and individual facility. “In terms of rehabilitation, we spend close to $500 million annually on our core curriculum,” Bill Sessa, a Public Information Officer for the California Department of Corrections, told the HPR. “We have courses like ‘Criminal Thinking’ that attempt to change how inmates think or how they value things,” Sessa continued. “We want them to make different decisions once they’re back on the street and confronted with the same issue that put them in prison in the first place.”

Like California, New York also provides prisoners with a variety of academic opportunities, such as a program for inmates with math and reading deficiencies and a bilingual program for non-native English speakers. Many correctional facilities across the United States also offer vocational training in crafts such as cabinet-making and welding to ensure that inmates have tangible skills when they leave the state’s custody. In 2013, researchers at the RAND Corporation, a global policy think tank, found that inmates who partook in educational programs had a 43 percent lower chance of returning to prison compared to those who did not. Several other studies, including one conducted by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have also shown that education leads to a reduction in recidivism.

On paper, prison education appears effective. In reality, however, such programs fall far short of their stated goals. During Steven Tanner’s* two years at the Bibb County Correctional Facility in Brent, Alabama, only two classes were offered: Creative Writing and Art Interpretation. Tyler Cameron,* who served two years at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, found similar deficiencies while at the George Beto Unit, where he enrolled in a government class and was frustrated by the inefficient teaching system. “It wasn’t set up for learning because the teacher was video-conferencing with two different facilities, and it was one-way,” Cameron said in an interview with the HPR. “If she was talking, she couldn’t hear us. If we had a question, she had to stop her mic, and we would have to turns ours on. Not many

Recreation plays a large role in an inmate’s wellbeing, as noted by Christopher Brosco,* who served eight months at the California Correctional Center in Susanville. The college courses offered at the prison “were kind of a joke,” Brosco told the HPR. Furthermore, the basketballs were “half-deflated,” and the only available gym equipment was a solid piece of metal for pull-ups.

For many in the prison, the most blatant problem came not from the facility’s bland food or lackluster amenities, but from its lack of organized sports. To alleviate their jail-time woes, some inmates formed their own basketball and softball tournaments, while others played frisbee to fend off boredom.

The true worth of such activities became fully apparent when a riot broke out during Brosco’s time at Susanville, and inmates were locked in their rooms for two months. Correctional officers cut off the electricity and removed the television as punitive measures, leaving the inmates with scarce opportunity for interpersonal entertainment. According to Brosco, who passed the time by reading and drawing, the inmates were “stagnant and bored out of their minds.”

Although Brosco’s fellow inmates simply wanted an athletic outlet to help pass the time, research suggests sports have numerous additional physically and psychologically positive impacts on inmates. Sports in prisons have been linked to lower rates of depression, distractibility, and loneliness. In an inquiry conducted by the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies, researchers concluded that sports-based programs are a cost-effective way for prisoners to prevent health issues and maintain general well-being, which in turn helps ameliorate daily prison issues such as stress and emotional instability.

In addition to sports, inmates like Brosco turn towards art and literature for entertainment. In a 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, 89 percent of inmates reported reading a book within the last six months, with the most popular genres being fictional novels, reference materials like encyclopedias, inspirational works, and religious texts.

This statistic certainly rang true in Norfolk County Corrections in Dendum, Massachusetts, where Sam Ferrara served three

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PREPARING FOR TOMORROW

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questions were asked simply because the process to do so was so difficult.”

West Virginia currently face high vacancy and turnover rates in their prison staffs.

In some facilities, educational courses are undermined by incentives that are easy for inmates to exploit. For example, in the state of Connecticut, inmates are provided stipends to attend GED classes, and because class size is limited, those under 21 are prioritized over older inmates. According to Blake Wally,* who served two years in several Connecticut prisons, there was little incentive to do well in the classes. Because passing a course meant an inmate could no longer receive a stipend, many inmates intentionally failed the course in order to retake the class and continue receiving financial assistance. The misalignment of incentives in Connecticut’s Department of Corrections creates an artificial demand for education, and as a result, the system ends up both wasting valuable resources and ignoring older inmates who have a real desire to rehabilitate. Furthermore, warped incentives also cause inmates to place low-quality classes ahead of interpersonal skills offered by recreational leagues or other social activities.

Funding poses another salient concern among prisons, and it is one of the most likely factors to vary across states. California, for example, spends around $71,000 per inmate annually. The state also invests around eight million dollars a year into Art in Corrections, a partnership between the California Department of Corrections and the California Arts Council, which gives grant money to various arts organizations to help combat recidivism by providing inmates with artistic opportunities such as theater, painting, poetry, and sculpture. In contrast, Mississippi spends around $18,000 per inmate annually—just one quarter of California’s allotment—resulting in limited rehabilitation and recreational programs.

Government funding aside, inmates sometimes need to pay for recreation themselves, often at a high cost. In Wally’s Connecticut facility, a variety of entertainment options such as a radio or a television could be purchased from the commissary.

However, prison markups ensured that many of these devices exceeded the typical inmate’s budget. “Everything was grossly overcharged,” Wally told the HPR. “A radio you could buy for $60 at Walmart was $250 here. A Nintendo costs $200 outside but $400 in here. They pretty much tax you on everything you can buy that would take your mind off being in prison.”

Wally’s observation was not an anomaly. In Illinois, the Unified Code of Corrections only allows commissary goods to be marked up by 25 to 35 percent. However, a 2011 investigation by the Public Policy Board discovered that the Department of Corrections had been affixing an extra charge to commissary goods before adding the allowed percentage markup, thus charging inmates more than what was legally allowed. Commissary markups in the Texas Department of Corrections average almost 33 percent more than retail price. Instant ramen, the most popular item, carries a hefty 44 percent markup.

Between unreasonable markups, severe understaffing, and immense interstate discrepancies, free time in prison varies widely. Some prisoners are fortunate enough to live in facilities with sufficient funding and plentiful rehabilitative programs. In California, almost every prison has a yoga master. Other inmates are less fortunate and are forced to endure outdated prisons that lack enough manpower to allow prisoners to go outside.

While educational programs and vocational workshops play a significant role in rehabilitation, well-used free time clearly deserves more recognition for its proven impact on inmates’ mental health, recidivism rates, and overall well-being. With the majority of prisoners eventually returning to society, the unfree people of today will require the necessary wellness offered by recreation in order to succeed as the free people of tomorrow.

I can add the following into the conclusion: “In 2010, researchers at the National Institute of Justice found that 76.6 percent of released prisoners were rearrested within five years of release. With better-used free time, that alarming statistic, as shown by the RAND study, decreases by over 40 percent.”

DISPARITIES AND DIFFERENCES The most salient factor affecting how prisoners spend their free time is security level. Inmates in lower-security facilities are typically allowed more time outside of their cells and are less restricted in movement. Meanwhile, in super-maximum prisons such as Colorado’s ADX Florence, nicknamed Alcatraz of the Rockies, prisoners classified as “most dangerous” are confined to their cells 23 hours a day and are supervised by multiple guards during their solitary recreational time.

During his sentence, Cameron lived on two different lowlevel security facilities: the H.H. Coffield Unit and the George Beto Unit, both located in Anderson County, Texas. On weekdays, Cameron worked on a nearby hog farm, raising animals for slaughter. After work, he was free to wander the facility, spending most of his time practicing yoga and meditation with his friends on the recreational field. Inmates at Cameron’s facility had access to televisions in the day room, a basketball court, and a handball court during the day, and they could check out Scrabble, chess, and other games at any time.

Things were very different, however, when Cameron was at a higher-security facility. “You could only leave your cell during certain times, and you were always under supervision,” Cameron told the HPR. Correctional officers monitored all prison activities including showers. Inmates were prohibited from going anywhere by themselves and even entering the day room for recreation required a guarded escort. Texas law mandates that state prisons allow inmates to go outside for recreational time.

However, in units like those Cameron stayed in, the facilities were so understaffed that guards frequently did not have the manpower to allow inmates outside.

Chronic prison understaffing has long been a national concern. Between 1994 and 2004, the number of federal and state prisoners increased by 51 percent, yet, the number of correctional officers increased by only eight percent over the same period.

In 2012, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice lost around 500 guard positions after lawmakers slashed the state budget, and many states such as Michigan, New Mexico, Kansas, and

*Names have been changed.

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CITIES TRANSFORMED URBAN DECLINE AND THE PATH TO RENEWAL

Henry Sullivan Atkins

“T

he story I tell is one of a city transformed,” opens Thomas Sugrue in his book The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Once America’s fourth-largest city, boasting over 1.8 million residents and a multitude of car manufacturers, steel mills, depots, and parts plants, Sugrue noted that by 1996, Detroit had “lost nearly a million people and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Vast areas of the city … now stand abandoned. Prairie grass and flocks of pheasants have reclaimed what was, only fifty years ago, the most densely populated section of the city.”

Twenty-one years later, America still finds itself locked in a discussion of how to revitalize shrinking cities like Detroit, which lost 25 percent of its population in a single decade. Urban population loss leaves deep scars on cities, from economic decline to crippled infrastructure to an increase in the local crime

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rate. In the worst cases, such an exodus may cause a “perpetual spiral” of worsened living conditions—spurring further flight from the city. The geographic concentration of urban decline further amplifies these effects, with half of the 20 fastest-shrinking cities located around the Great Lakes in the so-called Rust Belt.

In the face of this urban decline, policymakers have struggled to maintain basic government services: in Detroit, for example, it took police on average to arrive at a high-priority crime scene.

Worse still, cities have tried for decades to stem the outflow of residents. But whether it’s tax cuts or business investment, efforts to mitigate population loss have been largely unsuccessful. Some observers have even deemed the future of these areas hopeless, suggesting that residents should instead “accept that some of these big cities need to die.”

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While at first glance the havoc caused by population loss may seem irreversible, America’s declining Rust Belt cities still have the ability to survive and even thrive. A key to their revitalization may be found in another, lesser-known trend: a quiet, but significant influx of college-educated young adults. Various metropolitan areas have enjoyed an increase in college graduates of over 30 percent since 2000 alone. Attracting a college-educated population is crucial for any city hoping to grow, as doing so boosts entrepreneurship, tax revenues, and economic growth.

THE ROOTS OF DECLINE Expanding the college-educated population becomes even more important if a city is shrinking. As city populations fall, economic consumption and city tax revenues will decrease while the city continues to pay for an infrastructure built for twice its remaining population. And demographic shifts suggest that the Rust Belt’s overall population, along with its workingage population, will continue to shrink in the near future. As a result, simply attracting more residents is not a viable strategy for Rust Belt revitalization; the residents themselves must become a more productive workforce. Even as urban policymakers take other measures to improve their cities, strong investments to attract and maintain an educated population remain crucial in helping urban areas in the Midwest and Appalachia to stem their population loss and economic struggles.

To understand the importance of building and attracting an educated population, it’s crucial to first understand the economic problems facing shrinking Rust Belt cities. In large part, this economic decline takes root in damage to local manufacturing sparked by globalization and improving technology. In Pittsburgh, for example, as the steel industry faced increasing foreign competition in the 1980s, the city’s economy collapsed with it, resulting in an unemployment rate that hit 18.2 percent in 1983.

Similarly, the proportion of Cleveland’s jobs in the manufacturing sector dropped from 32 percent in 1975 to 11 percent today.

And in Detroit, a place so dependent on the auto industry that it garnered the moniker “Motor City,” automation, high energy costs and increasing production overseas left one of America’s largest cities in the lurch.

As urban populations and job opportunities have fallen, so too have incomes: median household incomes in some of the region’s largest cities have declined since 1970, and often continue to lag behind state and national income growth. Housing prices have also plummeted, to the point where some neighborhoods have become so blighted and depopulated that city governments have demolished and converted them to green spaces. Business growth is down, with a net loss of businesses in the regions home to cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit.

While some analysts have optimistically pointed to a socalled “rust-belt revival” catalyzed by the region’s low real estate costs and new investment, for much of the Midwest and Appalachia, economies continue to underperform in rural and urban areas alike. Furthermore, the types of high-profile stimulus investments that could jump-start their economic growth may prove unfeasible for many regional cities. Not only has population loss hammered many cities’ coffers, but legislatures in states like Ohio and Michigan are increasingly cutting their funding obligations to municipal governments. In Flint, for example, a nationally-known water crisis failed to dissuade the state of

Michigan from cutting state funding to the city’s government.

TUITION TODAY, TAXES TOMORROW It’s clear that Rust Belt cities are struggling economically, but despite the broader demographic challenges in shrinking cities, college graduates’ staggering economic contributions can help cities weather population decline. Most obviously, if the problem in shrinking cities stems in part from disappointing levels of economic activity, attracting more college graduates strongly boosts consumption in the local economy. For citizens who attain a college education, lifetime earnings often shoot up dramatically compared to those without a degree, allowing them to spend more in the local economy. In fact, a Brookings Institution report estimates that, on average, households with a bachelor’s degree holder spend roughly $13,000 more per year on local goods and services than those with a high school diploma.

College graduates don’t just consume: they also produce.

Increasingly, college graduates are demonstrating interest in entrepreneurship, with one survey showing as many as 45 percent of recent graduates hoping to start a business. Furthermore, a college degree tends to boost an entrepreneur’s likelihood of success, in part by helping people to build what The Atlantic’s Robert J. Zimmer calls “the social capital to help them make connections, build networks, and establish life-long relationships.”

Moreover, because residents with a college degree tend to earn more, local governments raise more revenue, with an average bachelor’s degree holder coughing up $44,000 more in local and state taxes over a lifetime than a resident without a college degree. While this won’t make up for the declining cash flow from state funding, the additional revenue could help urban areas provide better services to residents, as well as the tax relief and stimulus needed to generate local economic growth.

GETTING THE GRADS And if more college graduates can help revive an area, a city must then consider how best to grow its college-educated population. Pittsburgh offers a textbook example of successfully attracting these college-educated adults: the number of city residents aged twenty-five and older with a college degree skyrocketed by 37.3 percent from 2000 to 2013.

This demographic sea change didn’t occur in a vacuum; rather, it was the result of a series of careful policymaking decisions that came from the city. Firstly, the city invested in providing a top-notch education for its residents, collaborating with Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh to transform Pittsburgh from the Steel City of the 1980s into a STEM juggernaut in fields like computing, robotics and biotechnology.

Other cities, too, have seen the benefits, monetary and otherwise, of close partnerships with universities and businesses to produce and maintain a more educated population. In Detroit, Michigan’s University Research Corridor—comprised of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, and Wayne State University—generated an estimated $958 million in economic activity in 2015 alone. Wayne State University’s police department routinely patrols the streets of Midtown Detroit, helping to cut crime in the area, helping the Detroit Police Department to cut its response times by nearly 43 minutes. The University

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of Wisconsin-Milwaukee touts the 59,000 service hours its students completed in the 2015-2016 school year. And technical and two-year degree institutions have shown equal potential to contribute to a metropolis’s growth, with community colleges across Ohio contributing $6.5 billion annually to the state’s economy.

But cities must be on their toes when keeping their collegeeducated graduates, who often move on after receiving their degree. In Milwaukee, for example, students often leave after they graduate. Cities like Philadelphia offer incentives for students to stay after earning their degree, preventing the kind of brain drain that many feared. Pittsburgh has shined in retaining college graduates: even as it upped its investment in its institutions of higher education, the city coupled its attention to local colleges with a strategy that German urban affairs researchers Thorsten Wiechmann and Karina Pallagst term “public/private/ neighbourhood partnerships” to attract jobs in “high-tech industries, education, health care, culture and tourism.” By ensuring the right economic climate existed to tempt graduates to settle down in the Burgh, the city was able to grow its college-educated population substantially.

That focus on the city’s cultural attractions may have been just as important as its attempt to draw high-skilled jobs: while some young people have flocked to the city for its jobs, many stay because of its professional sports teams, museums, and outdoor recreational opportunities. Despite their seemingly aesthetic appeal, these cultural improvements have led to tangible results.

A recent article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote: “From 2010 to 2015, worker productivity shot up 10 percent, average annual wages increased 9 percent and the overall standard of living rose 13 percent in the Pittsburgh region.”

Cities across the Rust Belt are following Pittsburgh’s example. They’ve discovered that to bring in college graduates, they need to appeal to millennials in general. That means providing amenities like affordable housing and public spaces, as well as businesses like restaurants, fitness centers and movie theaters that are tailored towards younger residents. Indianapolis, for example, has appealed to young people in part because of its “walking and biking paths, its proximity to the minor league baseball stadium, and a growing night scene with mom and pop restaurants.” In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the state and city to invest in new lofts, gardens, and farmer’s markets to attract young people.

PUTTING RESIDENTS FIRST But this generally optimistic outlook for Rust Belt cities comes with a few caveats. Firstly, cities must be careful that their efforts to develop and attract a more educated population do not

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stigmatize less-educated residents. Despite the large movement of college-educated adults to many Rust Belt cities, they are not close to being the majority: even in Pittsburgh, just. 38.3 percent of city residents age twenty-five and up have a college degree.

If policymakers want to protect less educated residents from marginalization, they will need to grow and leverage an educated population to benefit the city as a whole, not to grow the educated population as an end in itself.

Cities must be also be aware that even as their collegeeducated population may drive wages and economic growth in general, that growth will be uneven, and may even have harmful effects on some residents. As Sugrue wrote, “It will take more than a few thousand hipsters or white urban professionals or avid sports fans to revitalize a sprawling, mostly African American, working-class city.” Urban issues are complex, and no one policy is a panacea. Even as college graduates spur economic growth, their migrations have caused gentrification across Rust Belt cities. Neighborhoods in places like Minneapolis have seen astronomical increases in rent that have forced some residents to choose between food and housing, and cities must take measures to ensure that individual neighborhoods aren’t being left behind in the economic growth.

But rather than assuming that college-educated residents will always have a negative impact on their less privileged neighbors, cities can harness the additional tax revenue and economic growth generated by college graduates to help improve the lives of other residents. This means programs like targeted, geographic tax relief, through programs like Detroit’s Neighborhood Enterprise Zone Tax Relief Program, which provides struggling neighborhoods with individualized property tax cuts. It also means generously funding investments in affordable housing— and locating that housing in desirable neighborhoods to combat gentrification and segregation. Revenue from upper-class individuals and businesses can also fund increased investments in such vital services as public education, as a proposed new $400 to $600 million tax on downtown businesses and wealthy residents to fund the Chicago Public Schools demonstrates.

Lastly, urban policymakers need to realize that, fundamentally, a shrinking population is still a less empowered one, and efforts must be made to attract additional residents however possible if urban areas wish to truly prosper. This means adopting policies that signal support for immigration and investing in quality K-12 education so that families can grow and remain in the Rust Belt’s urban areas.

Regardless, area policymakers must recognize the opportunity that comes with attracting a more educated college population—an opportunity that could help struggling cities not only survive, but thrive as well.

LOUISIANA Lost Near Sea Beverly Brown

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magine a coastal community slowly swallowed up by the water that provides its way of life. This is what Earl Armstrong, a resident of Venice, Louisiana, and many others throughout southern Louisiana have been experiencing for decades.

Appropriately named, Venice is the southernmost community in Louisiana accessible by car; the tip of the boot. It is also home to many former residents of Pilot Town, a community eight miles south of Venice. Once a quaint but lively island town populated by riverboat captains, fisherman and offshore oil workers, Pilot Town is now boarded up and abandoned. The everincreasing intensity of storms and hurricanes paired with coastal erosion and school closings—all products of climate change and oil canal drilling—have forced many, like Armstrong, to abandon their childhood homes and head north.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED Simply put, the state of Louisiana is sinking. Most of the land in southeast Louisiana is loosely-packed sediment deposited by

the Mississippi River. As this subsidence compacts, it pulls down low-lying regions, and water around the land rises. Armstrong has seen this first hand. In the ’80s, boating with his father in marshes that have since become open water, Armstrong told the HPR how the two would argue over the sinking-land phenomenon. Armstrong’s father would begin: “The water’s rising,” and was always corrected by Armstrong: “No, the water’s rising and the ground is sinking.”

Along with subsidence and rising sea levels, land loss in Louisiana is caused by levees and canals built by oil and gas companies. Subsidence on its own would not be a large problem: the compression of sediment can be counteracted by the frequent overflow of the Mississippi River, which deposits new sediment to build up land. Before levees were built in the 1930s, this natural process built land faster than it was lost.

Flooding only became a real problem around the turn of the century, when land around the mouth of the Mississippi River became prime real estate. Soon after, the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 prompted the federal government to protected the land by building large levees to prevent the river from flooding. This

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allowed the lively—and below sea level—city of New Orleans to grow into the worldwide attraction that it is today. But the levees prevent the Mississippi from depositing much-needed sediment across the region. In an interview with the HPR, Denise Reed, coastal marsh sustainability expert at the Water Institute of the Gulf, said, “Once you’ve lost those wetlands, the natural processes that built them are no longer available.” As a result, sinking land on the coast is simply lost to the rising water from the Gulf.

Residents can see the difference. Armstrong built a pier in Venice four feet above the water in 1983. Now it barely sees air during low tide. What was waterfront property years ago is now underwater, and the water only continues to rise: it is expected to rise another 14.5 inches by 2040. Although that rise does not seem exceedingly threatening, the average elevation of the town of Venice is 0 feet—at sea level. By 2040, the entirety of Venice could be underwater, and the refugees of Pilot Town could be left stranded again, forced to move even farther north.

IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT TO A SIX YEAR OLD… When the oil and gas industry took off in the ’50s, oil companies dredged about 10,000 miles of canals through the Louisiana marsh. This immediate land loss was magnified, as turning marsh into open water causes wave erosion and increased hurricane intensity, destroying even more of the marsh.

Coastal erosion went predominantly unaddressed until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, possibly because of how hard it is to understand the scale of the problem. Many compare Louisiana’s coastal land loss to football fields: one is lost roughly every 45 to 60 minutes. This is misleading, of course, as land is not lost at a constant rate. Hurricanes, no longer abated by abundant marshes and barrier islands that absorb wind energy and lessen the height of storm surges, take out land at a much faster rate than a dry sunny day does.

As Reed points out, land loss also occurred faster in the 1950s and ’60s as a result of canal dredging and a rapid loss of the most vulnerable land to rising water and wave erosion. But after Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana’s coastline in 2005, coastal erosion plans were passed by the legislature every five years starting in 2007. The third installation passed this May. But while Louisiana citizens and legislators alike seem united in favor of addressing coastal erosion, they aren’t aligned in their views of climate change.

BIG OIL, BIGGER PROBLEMS The Louisiana economy runs on oil and gas. In 2014, the industry added around $78 billion to the state coffers and economy. This demanding presence is evident in the workers of Venice. Armstrong, for instance, owned crew boats that transported workers through the marshes to oil and gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. Harsher regulations on fossil fuels or a shift to green energy could mean job loss for people like Armstrong.

In Louisiana, climate change caused by fossil fuels would lead to a detrimental, and therefore unacceptable, reality.

In addition, coastal restoration efforts are primarily funded by oil and gas companies. In an interview with the HPR, Robert Verchick, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans, said, “We’re depending on the same industry that’s eroding our wet-

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lands to restore it.”

Implementation of the 2017 coastal erosion plan depends on payout money from the BP oil spill, severance taxes on oil and gas produced in Louisiana, as well as a revenue stream created through royalty sharing from federal leases. Reed believes that without money from the BP oil spill, the plan would simply be an “academic exercise.” With a budget deficit of around $315 million and a legislature which refuses to increase the tax on a can of beer by three-quarters of a penny, more funding from Louisiana won’t appear any time soon. Not only is Louisiana economically dependent upon the oil and gas industry; its coast is in the hands of those who damaged its marshes through canal dredging and climate change.

Louisiana’s Democratic Governor, John Bel Edwards, has been a supporter of the state’s 2017 coastal erosion plan to address coastal erosion, but said in a radio interview in September that he was not ready to point to “human conduct” as a cause for climate change. Many people who witness Louisiana’s coastal erosion and rising sea level share the Governor’s viewpoint.

Explaining the rising waters, Armstrong was similarly hesitant: “It’s due to global warming, they say; I don’t know much about that. All I can tell you about is what I see.” Because of this widespread unawareness or denial of human contributions to climate change and a dependence on oil and gas to keep the economy afloat, Louisiana is not only sinking; it’s voting to sink.

COUNTERINTUITIVE AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE “As a state, we vote against any attempt to curtail climate change,” Verchick told the HPR. Legislators like U.S. Representative Garret Graves (R – La.) oppose regulations on the oil and gas industry, claiming they impede the success of coastal restoration efforts by reducing collected royalties used to fund coastal protection. Louisiana may never be able to fully address coastal erosion because much of the funding dedicated to the issue comes from the oil and gas industry.

In 2014, former governor Bobby Jindal signed a bill to quell a lawsuit filed by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority East against 97 oil and gas companies. The plaintiff sued the companies claiming they contributed to an increased risk of flooding due to storm surges, and therefore cost the plaintiff money in increased flood protection infrastructure. The bill meant to undermine the suit was later declared unconstitutional, so it had no real effect. Nonetheless, its existence confirmed that a measure actively opposing accountability for oil and gas companies can be passed in both houses and signed by the governor, even if it would mean foregoing revenue for flood protection.

The case was later dismissed because the effects of coastal erosion were deemed too far removed from the cause. Other suits against oil and gas companies are currently pending. It may be several years before we know if Louisiana laws are broad enough to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its contributions to such a large problem.

The 2017 coastal erosion plan is expected to cost more than $50 billion over 50 years, and coastal erosion will continue even after that time. Climate change may even get worse. Without a more permanent funding stream, in 15 years when the BP payout money runs out, the only way to save Venice will be another oil spill.

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THE OLD GUARD VS. THE NEW WAVE Wyatt Hurt

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s the sun rises in the western half of Colorado, it shines down on the desert landscape of Mesa County, the lush green Rocky Mountains of Pueblo County, and the craggy peaks of Greeley. Rich in geographic contrasts, Colorado’s 3rd congressional district is politically diverse as well. Blood-red areas like Mesa, Delta, and Montrose Counties have ensured Republican victory since 2010, but the swing district also has liberal havens like Pitkin, La Plata, and Eagle Counties. These contrasts combined with enormous geographic size—the district covers nearly 50,000 square miles, 164 zip codes, and 34 incorporated cities—make Representative Scott Tipton’s (R – Colo.) job a difficult one. In a part of the country where voters deeply

distrust the political establishment in the best of times, the 2016 election caused the established political structure to rapidly transform.

While the rest of the country enjoyed relative economic prosperity, Colorado’s 3rd was left behind. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2015, 84,000 residents, or 12 percent of the district, did not have health insurance. Average household income is only $50,010 per year, and 11 percent of families live below the poverty line. Less than a third of the population has a Bachelor’s degree or higher. The area’s economy relies almost entirely on natural resource extraction, an industry which is slowly dying, weakened by low oil prices. As a result, the 2016 populist wave

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was particularly strong in rural Colorado. In the Democratic Caucus, Bernie Sanders won between 60 and 70 percent of the vote in every county in the district.

Since 1990, the district has switched hands three times, with both parties obtaining solid margins when elected. The politically-turbulent area mirrors the nation as a whole: just like the United States, the 2016 election caused the established political structure to implode. However, while national media focuses on insurgent candidates, there is another, more compelling force at work: an insurgent political revolution is changing the way politics is structured.

CONSERVATIVE REVOLT On October 12, 2016, the insurgent group Mesa County Deplorables (a play on Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” gaffe) shocked the Mesa County political establishment and broke away from the Mesa County Republican Party. As one organizer of this group complained to a local news station, “It’s worse than that [the Mesa County Republicans] are useless.

They’re actually trying to sabotage Donald Trump from getting elected.”

While elites may have been shocked, the group saw a groundswell of support from everyday citizens frustrated by the local Republican Party’s inaction. With no budget, a group of four disenfranchised Republican operatives organized the ‘Deplorables’ on Facebook, eventually accumulating nearly 1,000 members. They adopted as their mascot a Photoshopped Revolutionary War-era painting that shows George Washington carrying a Trump campaign flag. The group bled patriotism and worked themselves into a frenzy, posting headlines like “List of debunked groper allegations by corrupt media against Donald Trump,” and “George Soros RIGGED Voting Machines In These 16 States! Is YOUR State on the List?”

But this group is not a bunch of uneducated farmers rallying together. Matt Patterson, one of the founders, is a journalist and has written for Forbes. Marjorie Haun, another founder and a well-known Colorado political operative, has worked for successful state Senate campaigns. Their first event, a women’s march, happened in October 2016 and despite being organized in just five days, was attended by nearly 100 women. They later organized an inter-faith forum on the importance of conservative Supreme Court justices (though only Christian faiths were represented). They even welcomed Trump when his campaign held a rally at the Grand Junction Regional Airport, attracting over 10,000 supporters.

Following Trump’s election, the Mesa County Republican Party elected Laureen Gutierrez, one of the members of the Mesa County Deplorables, as their chairwoman. Their revolt against the political establishment complete, the group disbanded. In an interview with the HPR, Haun explained: “How can we have the time, or the means, or the money that the liberals have? We don’t have George Soros funding us. But the other thing is that we can’t be constantly antagonistic and angry because we all have regular lives. We have jobs and families. We aren’t focused on 24/7 resistance like the liberal groups which are springing up today.”

PROGRESSIVE FRUSTRATION After the election, a different kind of insurgency rose up. On

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a local level, angry progressives felt cheated by neighbors who voted for Trump, by the political system, and in many cases by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton. After Trump’s inauguration, four former congressional staffers wrote the “Indivisible” guide on resisting the Trump agenda, and groups formed across the country to put that guide into action. One of those groups was D3 Indivisible, bringing the resistance movement to the district. It began when four progressives who co-own a yoga studio in the small town of Ridgway hosted a meditation session and community gathering after the local Women’s March on Washington. The group believes it is counterproductive to assign members titles or promote individuals in the press; when interviewed for this article, one of the founding members asked only to be identified as a spokeswoman for the group.

As she told the HPR, the founding members were shocked when they held their first public meeting—in a town of 900 people, over 100 crammed into downtown Ridgway’s historic Sherbino Theatre. The group’s momentum has not slowed, and organizers were impressed by the level of talent that exists in their small community. The group has active issue committees, composed of volunteers who research current legislation and policy, making recommendations on what positions Indivisible should take. They also send out daily action alerts on how citizens can easily get involved, and developed a sleek and modern website which helps people take civic action. Five months in, their momentum is not slowing, and meeting numbers are growing, not shrinking. They are currently planning an organizing summit, where future organizers, volunteers, and candidates will be trained by professionals on how to take political action.

“This is something which has never been done before,” the D3 Indivisible spokeswoman said. “We don’t totally know where we’re going yet, and that’s okay. For the first time in a long time, we are witnessing the birth of a new political structure.”

Many members of Indivisible are Bernie Sanders supporters who felt party leadership cheated them out of a candidate who could have beat Trump in the general election. The Mesa County Democrats perfectly demonstrate the divide in local liberal politics. The previous chairwoman of the party, who served through the 2016 election, was an “old-school Democrat.” Strongly religious, an ardent supporter of Clinton, and disdainful of Bernie Sanders, she struggled to lead the local party in a Sanders-loving county. After the 2016 election, many local progressives wanted her to resign immediately, and the November monthly meeting was contentious to say the least.

That changed when Jeriel Brammeier, a well-known 26-yearold political operative and activist in Mesa County, was elected chairwoman of the Mesa County Democrats. Currently serving as a community organizer for a grassroots progressive activist group, she got her start in politics after becoming pregnant in high school and organizing a campaign to bring healthy relationship and teen pregnancy awareness into her school district. The election of an activist outsider as chairwoman closely parallels the Deplorables’ rise to power in the Republican party.

“I was not necessarily jumping up and down with excitement to be the Chair of the Mesa County Democrats, but no one else stepped up who I felt could bring in new people who were disillusioned with the local party and build bridges,” Brammeier told the HPR. “The gap between Clinton and Sanders voters still exists in our local party, but it is closing, and I’ve worked to bring people from both campaigns into the leadership of the party.”

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She no doubt has a hard task in trying to unify the fired-up progressive wing of the party and the more moderate Democrats who provide much its funding.

Brammeier is currently working to transform the local party into something which mimics D3 Indivisible and other progressive groups on the rise. “Grassroots participation is so important, because democracy is supposed to be about the people, and not for the leaders,” she said. “For me, I didn’t look at this leadership position as a top-down approach; I looked at it as an opportunity to listen to what people want, find common ground, and move towards common goals.”

On a local level, it seems that both the Republican and Democratic parties, upended by insurgent groups, are reforming their leadership styles and working to build bridges with those who have traditionally felt disenfranchised with the party system.

DISTINCT PARALLELS Both conservative and liberal grassroots groups feel political change is needed—the establishment system doesn’t work for them. “The system is broken,” the spokeswoman for D3 Indivisible told the HPR. “Politics right now is so far from anything that’s real and is driven by money. People who are participating in our group and becoming more active are very creative and exhausted of the status quo. People do not want to compromise their morals, and want to operate within their values.” Haun, speaking for the Deplorables, agreed, and told the HPR that, “The constant press attention, fancy luncheons, and being in a big city makes politicians lose sight of their own constituents.”

Though both groups are frustrated with political parties, they are daunted by the prospect of running their own candidates and campaigns. D3 Indivisible is working to run a progressive candidate in the congressional race against Tipton. Their spokeswoman repeatedly told the HPR that Indivisible was uncomfortable with the idea of compromising with an establishment Democrat.

However, with no budget, no political infrastructure, and very little experience, an independent candidate winning seems unlikely even to grassroots groups.

Brammeier concurs, and believes that Democrats have a role to play in both electing candidates and enacting societal change: “I don’t think that an independent candidate could win—both Republicans and Democrats in this area see an independent as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as an undercover candidate for the other side.” Brammeier added that established political parties are the only ones with enough infrastructure and resources to effectively run successful candidates. She also understands the concerns of progressive groups like D3 Indivisible, and her experience in being a part of these groups shows: “Hopefully they don’t feel like they have to compromise with the Democratic candidate. We want to find a socially progressive candidate that satisfies a broad range of progressive people.”

The divide between rural and urban areas can’t be overstated, and grassroots groups in CD3 spend a lot of time trying to close the gap. Pueblo, the largest city in the district, has approximately 108,000 residents—compared to Denver’s 2,000,000. Denver, which is the state capital, is five hours away, and the journey requires travelers to cross sometimes treacherous mountain passes. State officials rarely visit western Colorado more than once a year, and even lobbyists from the area rarely visit the capital in person. Brammeier, Haun, and the spokeswoman for

D3 Indivisible all discussed their respective groups’ strategies to overcome this divide and increase their political capital.

Frustration with this divide often leads even those who hold elected office to see themselves as being isolated from the establishment. Haun told the HPR, “I don’t think that anyone in this district, elected official or not, is part of the establishment. The establishment is in Denver and in Washington, D.C.” All three Mesa County Commissioners, who each raised tens of thousands from establishment Republicans, worked with the Mesa County Deplorables. Scott McInnis, a Mesa County Commissioner, was so concerned about missing an upcoming Trump rally that he apologized beforehand, telling the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel: “Don’t let my absence mislead you, I’m a strong supporter of Trump.”

McInnis was at one point a U.S. Representative and candidate for governor of Colorado. These elected officials, paid six-figures every year to run the government, stood arm-to-arm with the angry grassroots to say that they were tired of politics as usual, ready to upend the establishment and bring government back to the people.

THE DIVIDE In an era where dialogue is dominated by a narrative of political division, isolation from the state capital encourages groups in western Colorado to attempt reconciliation with the other side of the aisle. Haun expressed interest in understanding progressives, telling the HPR: “I want to know what their background is and what experiences have driven them to support these policies.” On the other side, D3 Indivisible is reaching out to county Republican parties to see if they can collaborate on certain issues. However, it is hard to imagine Republicans working with an Indivisible group, as demonstrated by countless posts in the Mesa County Deplorables Facebook group, as well as Haun, who told the HPR that she firmly believes George Soros and his allies are funding D3 Indivisible: “They’re all a part of this ‘new left.’ Maybe they don’t get paychecks, but you look at their website and their infrastructure, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of money involved. It wasn’t easy for us conservatives when Obama was elected, but we weren’t focused on 24/7 resistance like the liberal groups which are springing up today.”

While liberal and conservative politics have both seen their power structures fundamentally shift, they remain bitterly opposed in policy terms. Haun summed up the divide: “I’ll always be a Deplorable. America is defined by its red county areas.

When you’re overseas, and you talk to a German, they talk about John Wayne. They don’t talk about Michael Bloomberg. We need to remember that spirit and that rugged individualism that is still very much alive.”

Those on both sides of the aisle have seen the power structure of local party politics fundamentally shift. Grassroots organizers from both parties formed their own groups to pressure for political change, and have succeeded in gaining real political power. While all groups are attempting to close the political divide, idealism is quickly overtaken by significant policy differences. At least for now, it seems that unity evades Colorado’s 3rd congressional district.

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RED LOOKED GOOD ON PAPER

The Surprising Failure of Communist Revolution in India

Anirudh Suresh

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he 20th century featured frequent communist upheavals of established governments, especially in Asia. Through the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks created the Soviet Union, the world’s first communist nation, from the ashes of the czarist autocracy and the Russian Provisional Government. From Russia, communist fervor spread to China, with Mao’s Communist Party of China establishing the People’s Republic of China as a communist state

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in 1949. Over the course of the century, violent revolutions and movements in many other Asian countries—including Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Afghanistan—played to the tune of the more famous communist insurgencies in Russia and China. These communist insurrections followed similar patterns— most involved an active agrarian population that sided with the communists, a corrupt or despotic incumbent government that lost favorability with the people, and various economic and social struggles in the aftermath of war or independence from

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colonial powers. Yet despite showing all the same indicators, the communist threat in India has been limited in scope and scale, defying the very pattern that has seemed to define Asian countries’ geopolitical experiences with communism.

India’s overall makeup since achieving independence from Great Britain in 1947 appeared to have all the makings of a country ready to turn communist—a hierarchical social organization scheme in the caste system, huge issues with agricultural productivity relative to the demands of an exploding population, slow economic growth due to heavy allocation of resources toward defense, poverty and economic inequality within the country, and a democratic but nearly authoritarian government under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s reign. Given these characteristics, why didn’t communism find a foothold, attract a revolutionary and possibly insurgent following, and ultimately reign supreme across the nation?

This question is partly misleading, as communism actually did gain some traction and a militant following in India. In May 1967, an uprising led by a group of peasant leaders with strong Maoist sentiments began in Naxalbari, West Bengal. The militant “Naxalite” movement that arose was built upon the communist ideological tenets in the Historic Eight Documents written by Charu Majumdar. Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal, another leader of the Naxalite cause, founded the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), breaking away from the less radical Communist Party of India (Marxist). The Naxalite and CPI (ML) movements spread rapidly throughout West Bengal—which already had a communist state government—in the late 1960s and across the rest of the country in the 1970s. Even to this day, a “Red Corridor” along much of the eastern seaboard of India demarcates areas of heavy Naxalite influence. Clearly, the Naxalite threat was never fully extinguished, and the communist dream has managed to live on in India well into the 21st century. To refine the previous question then, why did the communist threat fail to dominate Indian society the way it did in Russia, China, and several other Asian countries?

THE TYRANNY OF THE BOURGEOIS ORDER Despite Majumdar’s effort to incite a revolutionary tide in the manner of Mao in interwar China, several roadblocks prevented a successful communist takeover of India. Most explicitly, more organized and stronger government crackdown helped contain the communist threat. Some of this was pure serendipity from the standpoint of the Indian government. The War of 1971 pitted India and the newly formed state of Bangladesh against the governments of West Pakistan and East Pakistan. The eastern front of the war featured Indian militarization along the India-East Pakistan border, leading to heavy troop presence in West Bengal.

This played into the hands of Indira Gandhi, who used the opportune timing of the war and the previously designated “President’s rule” over West Bengal to order a counter-communist insurgency operation via both the army and police. Operation Steeplechase led to the death or incarceration of thousands of Naxalite sympathizers in West Bengal, dealing the movement a permanently crippling blow. Instead of attempting to win hearts and minds like previous Asian leaders, Indira Gandhi favored brute force in her response to communist insurgency.

In the aftermath of the Naxalite struggle in West Bengal, other communist insurgents across the country, and particularly in

the Red Corridor, have typically been contained by local police.

In more recent years, that containment effort has transitioned to a more aggressive extinguishment of the communist flame. To a large extent, this evolution is attributable to a greater awareness of the guerilla nature of Naxalite warfare and a shift among local police toward a more active, confrontational form of counterinsurgency.

In an interview with the HPR, Brigadier Basant Kumar Ponwar, who helped set up the Counter Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College in the Naxalite-affected state of Chhattisgarh, explained how efforts like that of his institution have improved police forces’ counter-Naxalite capabilities. “Before training, the police had no idea of what to do [to eliminate the Naxalites]…

State police [trained at CTJWC] are doing a good job, they’ve not had many casualties, and many of them are getting bravery awards… They have got to relearn their fighting methodology, because they need to prepare for the method of fighting they will need against these Naxalite guerillas.”

Certainly, the confidence and specific fighting style introduced in settings such as the CTJWC are improving domestic counter-insurgency capabilities. Compared to a peak in violence in 2010, when 1,180 casualties (including 626 civilians) were suffered, the 186 casualties in 2017 represent the containment forces’ effectiveness. Though some may feel that the long march of the last half-century to combat communism has been ineffective, India’s containment and attrition of the movement have quelled any hope of a widespread revolution.

THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES In addition to government opposition via force, people’s own objections to communism may have played a pivotal role in leading India toward a different fate than Russia, China, or Vietnam.

Surely, it is difficult to diagnose the apathy or antipathy people may have felt about the Naxalite movement with certainty, but a few possible explanations exist. For one, India differs tremendously from the other hotbeds of communist insurgency due to its long history of nonviolence in almost every aspect of life.

Ranging from the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist ethic of ahimsa— broadly defined as “nonviolence toward all living things”—to satyagraha—a form of nonviolent civil disobedience preached and practiced by Mahatma Gandhi—nonviolence clearly carries a significance in Indian society unfamiliar to most other cultures. In particular, Gandhi’s advocacy and successful implementation of satyagraha two decades earlier might have had a tremendous impact in revealing to its very brainchild—the modern Indian state—the power of nonviolent movements, thereby turning people away from the insurgency of the Naxalites.

Other recent developments may have also played a role in heightening people’s doubts about communism. The former British raj left India with a strong western influence. To this day, India maintains many traces of western imperialism, ranging from education, to industrialization, to the widespread use of the English language. Another important area of British imperial influence was government, as India adopted a democracy framed in the model of the British parliamentary system. “India has a democratically elected government in place,” explained Gurjinder Pal Singh, Inspector General of the Chhattisgarh Police Department, in an interview with the HPR. “We have a constitution of our own. The [Indian] people were involved in

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the making of the Constitution. They deliberately selected a particular form of government.” Singh’s comments shed light on the role that western anti-communist ideology had in lightening communist appeal in India relative to other Asian nations (indeed, western influence was likely more respected in India after its peaceful parting from Britain than in Vietnam’s spiteful bloodshed against the French in the First Indochina War).

Another possibility for India’s antipathy towards communism is grounded in its pivotal role in the Non-Aligned Movement. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a leading figure in the movement, which aimed to create a coalition of countries that sided with neither the American-led Western Bloc nor the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc. When his daughter Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of the country, she reemphasized the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement, bringing India back its forefront. India’s place as a socialist yet democratic state optimized its ability to inhabit the middle ground between the Western and Eastern Blocs. In the aftermath of colonialism, the rhetorical and political appeal of not being attached to either side may have resonated strongly with people, leaving Naxalite intentions as an impediment to India’s effort to carve out a unique and independent path for itself in international politics.

Yet skeptics of the power of these ideological concerns may point out the rigid caste system as an obvious reason for the popularity of a communist revolution. Of course, for supporters of communist insurgency, the notion of a more egalitarian, classless society was a major impetus for change, as it was in Russia and China. However, in an Indian society defined for thousands of years by the caste system, relatively few bought into the communist message in that regard. This inconsistency can be explained by the ties social inequality had to religion.

Compared to societies less directly influenced by religion like China and Vietnam, breaking trust in India’s religious social order, which had been dominant for thousands of years, was much harder. What’s more, India’s religious nature was quite unique in comparison to Asian countries that experienced successful communist revolutions—India was secular but deeply religious nonetheless. Meanwhile, China and Vietnam have huge irreligious or religiously unaffiliated populations, and Russia, at the time of the Russian Revolution, had considerable secular or irreligious populations. The inherently religious nature of daily life for almost all Indians likely contributed to an incompatibility of Indian society and communist appeals.

A COG IN THE MACHINE Perhaps most critically, leadership failures among the Naxalites and CPI (ML) ranks proved impossible to overcome.

Lenin, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh—albeit not necessarily paragons of administrative leadership over a country—were great rhetoricians and revolutionary leaders who facilitated the ascendancy of communism through their abilities to persuade and attract converts to the communist cause and to manage revolutionary efforts intelligently and effectively. Mao, for instance, defeated the Guomindang despite scarcer resources precisely because he did a far superior job wooing the people of China to the communist cause, employed a better military strategy, and focused on

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controlling the rural areas of China rather than cities. Through his efforts, Mao essentially allowed the Guomindang to wear itself down against the Japanese in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945).

In direct contrast, communist leadership in India was severely lacking. Majumdar in particular idolized Mao’s vision and tactics, but he failed to replicate the successful nature of Mao’s revolution. His military leadership was inadequate, as Operation Steeplechase and aggressive efforts by the West Bengal police led to the death, capture, and torture of thousands of Naxalite sympathizers. In addition, Majumdar proved far too extreme for the likes of the CPI (ML), as he had actively advocated an “annihilation line,” ordering his followers to assassinate members of the bourgeoisie—landlords, capitalists, police officers, academia, and non-communist politicians. He began to face challenges to his leadership in the early 1970s, and by 1971, he had been ousted from the CPI (ML).

After Majumdar’s arrest and death in 1972, the radical communist movement declined as a result of extreme sectarianism.

Pro-Majumdar members of the CPI (ML) formed their own party, which later split into a variety of factions. Anti-Majumdar portions of the CPI (ML) experienced similar fates. In the 45 years following Majumdar’s death, a number of variant parties claiming the title Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) have emerged, most of which condemn the type of insurgency promoted by Majumdar and engage in democratic elections across India.

Meanwhile, one of the few groups that continues to practice Majumdar’s model of communist revolution and assassination is the pro-Majumdar faction of the CPI (ML) that was led by Mahadev Mukherjee in the aftermath of Majumdar’s death. This party, along with sectarian insurgent groups, constitutes the modern embodiment of the Naxalites, working in disorganized underground networks to promote violent and nonviolent civil disobedience and a communist revolution centered on land redistribution. “The leadership is in trouble, a lot of surrenders have taken place, and recruitment has gone down,” said Ponwar.

“Meanwhile, development is going on at a good speed in remote areas. A number of states, like West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, have eradicated more or less the Naxal movement in their areas.”

The Naxalites appear to be doomed, not only as a result of modern India’s impassive obstacles to violent communist insurgency, but also because of their own debacles. A pattern of poor leadership and sectarianism has created the far-flung and ragtag groups of rebels, whose numbers continue to wilt away to this day. “Communism is a dying philosophy in India,” Singh explained. “[Communist insurgency] is concentrated only in very small patches, which are very intractable, but only a handful of people support them. So it’s natural that they will not be able to succeed now—the people have rejected them outright.” Whether the Indian example represents a model for governments combatting communist insurgencies, a guide of what not to do for communist groups, or simply an exposition of the elements of post-colonial India that defeated communism, it certainly marks a watershed moment in the history of communist revolution and an oft-overlooked but critical chapter in the history of communism in Asia.

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A MACRON PRESIDENCY The personality, politics, and particulars

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mmanuel Macron’s political career has been an exercise in contrasts. He is a scholar who rose to political prominence through the gilded path of the French elite, but remains a novice to party politics. Despite the historical strength of France’s left and right, he has built his party, En Marche!, into the country’s first notable center space. The party, while lacking establishment within the French political system, has shown strength. Macron, as the head of En Marche!, won the presidency in May, and the party went on to win a majority in the June parliamentary elections. As France finds itself with a president unlike any other in the Fifth Republic’s history, the victories of Macron and En Marche! represent an unprecedented cry for change and the reformation of the traditional two party system.

Despite his successes, however, Macron will begin his presidency facing a number of significant challenges.

Macron has inherited a nation in dire need of economic overhaul. With France facing a sustained unemployment rate of about 10 percent, former president François Hollande’s failure to reorganize the labor market has left many in the French electorate wondering whether Macron can successfully institute reform. Although Macron’s policy agenda does not differ substantively from that of Hollande’s, his one-of-a-kind image, unique approach to cooperation, and strong sense of political opportunism offer him numerous opportunities to galvanize his newly-created center space and explore political avenues that were closed to Hollande.

THE INSIDE BREAKS OUT Macron represents a blend of the insider and outsider persona, a man with the expertise to lead but the independence to avoid the gridlock of party politics. Educated at Sciences Po and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, Macron worked in investment banking at the prestigious Rothschild Bank and was later appointed Minister of Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs in Hollande’s cabinet. However, he never held elected office and resigned from the Socialist Party one year ago to begin his En Marche! Party, newly renamed La République en Marche (La REM). The move distinguished him from numerous French politicians who hesitated to relinquish the two-party system and establish an independent platform.

Suzanne Berger, a professor of political science at MIT and director of the MIT-France Program, argued in an interview with the HPR that Macron’s decision to situate himself in the center of the ideological spectrum indicates the advent of a truly novel French political landscape. “In the past, people running from the center of France have failed.” This historical precedent “makes Macron’s success a radically new phenomenon within France.” Berger cited François Bayrou, who ran as a centrist candidate in the 2002, 2007, and 2012 presidential elections, but withdrew from the 2017 election in February to form an alliance with Macron.

DIFFERENT AND THE SAME Macron’s policy agenda may not be as revolutionary as his public image would imply. He has detailed few specific plans for the country’s struggling economy, but his statements so far do not veer too far off key initiatives proposed during Hollande’s term.

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Throughout his campaign, Macron pledged to lower regulatory barriers that prevent industries from producing at their full potential. In 2013, the Hollande administration expressed a similar desire with The National Pact for Growth, Competitiveness, and Employment, a law which increased access to funding for business, supported research and development, and streamlined procedures for international investment. Specifically, the bill created a competitiveness and employment tax credit for small/medium sized enterprises, lowered the corporate tax rate, created a Public Investment Bank, and renewed funding for industry partnerships known as innovation clusters.

Macron has promoted the idea of decreasing bureaucratic roadblocks in the labor market, and has expressed his desire to create more flexibility for employees within the confines of the 35-hour work week. These proposals bear numerous similarities with the 2015 Law on Economic Growth and Activity, or Macron Law. The legislation, which Macron championed as Minister of the Economy, makes it easier to lay off workers without complex severance packages, allows some shops to open on Sunday, and grants employees greater freedom in creating their work schedules. Despite advocating in favor of the law, Macron still sought more ambitious changes. “One of the reasons why Macron left [the Socialist party] was that he never really had a chance to put through the larger reform policy that he was proposing with respect to a performance labor market,” Berger said.

Serious economic reform in France, however, has proven difficult to implement. The Macron Law lacked the widespread support it needed to gain sufficient votes in the National Assembly, and was destined to fail as soon as it hit the floor of the lower house. In response, Hollande invoked Article 49 of the French Constitution, which allowed the bill to bypass the National Assembly and head straight to the Senate, where it passed, enraging those who saw Hollande’s decision as an affront to democracy. Although a more ambitious reformer than Hollande, Macron may find it comparatively easier to implement his agenda. La REM won an astonishing 350 seats in the parliamentary elections with its centrist ally, the Democratic Movement. While Macron’s proposals may struggle to gain favor with the more extreme fringes of the left and right, his party’s baseline level of support within the legislature suggests that it will not be necessary for Macron to use the constitution’s most powerful weapon to strong arm the National Assembly.

TO STEP FORWARD, LOOK BACK France’s economy is beginning to exhibit signs of recuperation, but the persistently high unemployment rate continues to emphasize the failure of Hollande’s policies. If Macron’s policy objectives are similar to those of his predecessor, what factors will allow him to push his agenda forward in a way that Hollande could not? Beyond his image, the answer lies in French political culture and the disarray of Hollande’s Socialist Party.

Moíses Naím, former Executive Director of the World Bank and now a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the HPR that Macron’s character will play a far more important role in his success than any specific policy initiatives. “People in France tend to vote for people—individuals matter more than ideas,” Naím said. “In the first round of the election, it was true that the policy proposals of Marine Le Pen were abhorrent to a lot of voters who went for Macron just

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to prevent Le Pen from reaching the presidency.” Policy differences were important, Naím argued, but what mattered more to the electorate was Le Pen’s brash personality, history with her father, and trajectory as a political figure.

The public also perceives Macron as far more ethical than Hollande. In his recent showdown with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Macron directly addressed Syria, the repression of gay men in Chechnya, and fake news. His frank speech was a savvy political move which was “applauded by the world,” according to Naím. In comparison, Hollande’s romantic escapades while in office left a sour taste in the mouths of French voters, many of whom wish to see the return of dignity to Élysée Palace.

“Macron was pretty clear from his very first staging of his victory night at The Louvre to his first day in office that he wanted to restore authority to the Office of the President,” said Berger. She said that both Hollande and his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, had degraded the esteem of the office during their tenures.

Beyond his personal ability to appeal to French political culture, Macron has surrounded himself with a party that, while ideologically diverse, shares his commitment to reform. The factionalism that plagued the Socialist Party prevented Hollande from garnering widespread support for his policy initiatives, a dynamic which effectively condemned his legislation to failure before it reached the floor of the National Assembly.

In an interview with the HPR, Arthur Goldhammer of Harvard’s Center for European Studies emphasized that the leftwing factions of the Socialist Party, or les frondeurs, “revolted against Hollande’s policies” and were appalled by his use of Article 49 to pass Macron’s Law, a source of tension which contributed significantly to Hollande’s inefficacy as president. “The lesson that Macron took from that was that it was going to be impossible to find a compromise between those factions. Instead, he’s going to try to build a different coalition that exists outside of those uncooperative groups,” Goldhammer said.

CONFLICT IN COMPROMISE Macron’s desire for cooperation will not be met without difficulties from inside his own cabinet, a threat far more pressing than his party’s shaky infrastructure. Macron drew a number of key members of his administration from other political parties, a move which recognized the need to collaborate with France’s

existing political institutions. However, this ideological diversity is likely to result in clashes of opinion and disagreements as to how the cabinet should govern. “There are tremendous divides between someone like Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who doesn’t care much for environmental issues, and the Minister of Environment Nicolas Hulot, one of the most ardent supporters of environmental reform,” Berger said. “It’s hard to say how this group of people will govern together.”

When Macron won the election, there was widespread concern as to whether or not his party was capable of claiming more than a handful of seats in the June parliamentary elections.

However, with the Socialist Party plagued by internal divisions and the Republicans reeling from François Fillon’s failure to reach the second round of the election, it was hardly a challenge for Macron to sweep the National Assembly. Macron’s largest opposition bloc is the Republican-led right, which holds 137 seats. The Socialist Party lost 287 seats and emerged with just 44, while The National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, clinched 8 seats. Minority parties have little choice but to work within the confines of La REM’s mandate, but for Macron, the legislative victory could descend into chaos if he fails to find commonality and foster collaboration within his massive bloc.

Macron must work to build a broader support base among everyday voters to compensate for La REM’s somewhat shaky coalition, a task which could be made easier by his strong social media presence. The media, enamored by Macron’s youth, played an important role in sensationalizing his marriage to his ex-teacher and helped parliamentary candidates ride on the coattails of his presidential victory. When asked about the relationship between anti-establishment candidates such as Macron and social media, Naím said that technology and the Internet are “not compensating fully for a lack of political machinery on the ground, but surely are helping candidates that don’t have political infrastructure.”

Macron is, in many ways, a permutation of the traditional two-party system. His public persona juxtaposes his political background and policy agenda with an extraordinary electoral victory and style of governance. His election has solidified a political culture based on personality, but he is still faced with the challenge of using his center space to implement serious reform in France. According to Berger, “whether that political space in the center is really possible to build, and whether it’s really possible to create action, remains to be seen.”

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WHO’S GOT THE POWER?

Chad Borgman

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s part of its rebuilding efforts, the Russian military recently made use of a new sort of psychological weaponry.

Frontline Syrian rebels received demoralizing text messages, broadcasted by Russian military personnel, detailing the income, offshore back accounts, and holiday trips of their commanders. On the Crimean front, these text messages addressed Ukrainian soldiers by name, with personal references to their wives and children in Kiev.

On the surface, the latest addition to Russia’s arsenal represents just one part of its rebirth as a military power. With an extensive reformation of its conventional and cyber capabilities, Russia has reasserted itself as a challenger to U.S. control in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. But Russia is just one of many challengers to U.S. hegemony sprouting across the world.

With an emerging economy and military, China continues to challenge longstanding notions of dominant U.S. influence in both Southeast Asia and Africa. Even in America’s backyard, Brazil has emerged as a regional hegemon capable of resisting U.S. economic influence. The rise of these powers, and the subsequently complex world order to come, has stoked worries of “chaos” on the world stage.

Fears of instability have also stemmed from the advent of the internet, which has expanded the cast of powers on the world stage. While the United States may retain control of the flow of goods through international waters, the free flow of information through the internet, beyond American purview, has diffused information and power to many non-state actors. Apple, for example, boasts a net worth of $710 billion, which is more than the GDP of Switzerland, and the New York metro area claims a Gross Metropolitan Product of $1.66 trillion, more than the

GDP of Canada, South Korea, and Russia. Technology’s ability to empower these non-state actors, from terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, to international corporations like Apple, and international trading centers like New York City, has sparked fears of a chaotic world order in which a vast number of players with differing interests will inevitably lead to friction and conflict.

However, these fears of multipolarity—a disorderly world in which power rests in the hands of many actors—fail to recognize the United States’ unique place as the world’s premier power.

Not only does America boast the world’s largest economy and military, but also the world’s most extensive network of economic and military partnerships. While the rise of regional powers and non-state actors will undermine the United States’ ability to unabashedly impose its foreign policy will, the United States’ role as a truly global leader appears secure for the foreseeable future.

UNRAVELING UNIPOLARITY In response to the deceleration of U.S. growth, the rise of China, Russia’s military resurrection, and the development of young powers like India and Brazil, many have pronounced the end of American unipolarity—the concentration of world power into the hands of the United States—dead after a short reign.

The rapid growth of multiple military powers in the eastern hemisphere lends credence to theories of unipolarity’s demise.

Between 2000 and 2015, Russian military spending grew more than five times as quickly as American military spending. In that same period, the growth of Chinese military spending outpaced U.S. growth by more than nine-fold. Advocates of the multipo-

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larity theory cite America’s failure to maintain stability in the Middle East as further evidence of its military decline.

Economically, the same argument can be made. China now boasts a rapidly-expanding 15 percent share of the world’s economy. While U.S. GDP growth has stagnated at 3 percent of real GDP per year, China and India claim respective annual growth rates of 7 and 8 percent.

Perhaps the most telling indicator of the United States’ economic deceleration is its annual growth in GDP per capita— which measures the productive a country’s economy is becoming. As shown in the figure below, while the United States remains on the lower end of economic growth (less than 1 percent), actors in South America, Eastern Africa, and Southeast Asia continue to grow at rapid rates of up to 8.4 percent.

The increasing ability of regional leaders to resist America’s foreign policy impositions affirms these apparent power expansions. The United States has required the assistance of European nations in sanctioning states like Iran and Zimbabwe, who have demonstrated resilience in the face of U.S. demands for reform.

Until recent Chinese sanctions, North Korea also proved capable of resisting U.S. pressure with the help of Chinese banks. In perhaps the most explicit challenge to U.S. economic leadership yet, China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative aims to establish China’s economic footprint as far north as Scandinavia, as far west as Spain, and as far south as Kenya, a space including roughly 65 percent of the world’s population and a third of the world’s GDP.

THE MYTH OF MULTIPOLARITY But while emerging powers can challenge American hegemony on a regional, and even continental scale, to assess world power on a purely regional basis would ignore the globalist reality of the 21st century. After all, regional powers like India and China would never be able to grow so rapidly without excessive demand from well-established powers in Western Europe and North America. “This world is no longer one that we can put in an envelope someplace and say, ‘this is the piece we worry about, and the rest of it [is] inconsequential,’” Tad Oelstrom, Director of the National Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, told the HPR. From a global perspective of power distributions, America remains perched safely upon its pedestal as the world’s premier economic and military power. Although the emergence of regional powers prevents the United States from throwing its weight around as it did in decades past, the United States remains the bedrock for global commerce. It accounts for nearly 25 percent of the world’s GDP, and two of its closest economic partners, Japan and the European Union, account for an additional 28 percent. Of the next nine strongest economies in terms of GDP, the United States ranks among the top four export recipients for each. While economic powers like India and China continue to rise, maintaining a healthy U.S. economy remains crucial for their growth.

In terms of military expenditures, the United States spends nearly $20 billion more than the world’s next eight highest spenders combined. Of the next nine highest spenders, six are close allies of the United States.

But what distinguishes the United States from the next highest spenders is its ability to project force around the globe.

Through its vast naval superiority and international network

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of military installations, the United States projects its power to secure what Oelstrom called “global commons.” Ranging from the high seas to the open sky, these commons serve as avenues through which nearly all goods transfer between states and non-states. By securing these commons, states allow for the safe passage of shipping and travel throughout the world.

America’s navy remains its most versatile tool of force projection, and consequently, what distinguishes it most from the other world superpowers. While China and Russia claim impressive land capabilities, the fact remains that 90 percent of the world’s goods travel by water. No matter how many regional powers continue to challenge U.S. hegemony in different corners of the globe, none can match the global reach of the U.S. Navy.

The gap between America’s navy and the rest of the world’s is exemplified best by its marquee vessel—the aircraft carrier.

The United States leads the world with 19 aircraft carriers in its arsenal. France comes in second with just four. Russia and China own a combined three, each with a tonnage of roughly 43,000, compared to America’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, which boasts a displacement of 100,000 tons. American carriers also account for roughly 70 percent of the combined tonnage of the world’s aircraft carriers.

Combine its numerous carriers with its extensive forward operating base network, and the U.S. military can threaten rapid land, air, and sea deployments anywhere on the globe. The United States maintains roughly 800 military bases in 70 countries abroad, and stations more than 275,000 overseas personnel in more than 160 countries. Meanwhile, China claims only one foreign military base in Djibouti, and Russia touts only nine, all concentrated in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Until another country gains this ability to project power anywhere on the globe, America will continue to lead the way in securing the global commons, and thus the international flow of goods.

Theorists favoring multipolarity correctly identify the diminished ability of the United States to impose its will upon other countries. But the United States remains the only nation capable of securing the peaceful globalist structure of trade and commerce so many developed and developing countries rely on.

Therefore, the ambitions of rising powers are checked by the disincentive of destabilizing U.S. power.

For example, the solidified role of the U.S. dollar as a centerpiece to the international economy was recently described in a piece by Kimberly Amadeo in The Balance: “the United States is the world’s best customer … the very countries that could cause a dollar collapse are those who need Americans to keep buying their products.” In his article titled “The Age of Nonpolarity,” Foreign Affairs scholar Richard Haas wrote: “many of the other major powers are dependent on the international system for their economic welfare and political stability. They do not, accordingly, want to disrupt an order that serves their national interests.”

THE RISE OF NON-STATE ACTORS Consequently, most scholars don’t fear a dangerous collapse of American power in the foreseeable future. Instead, what alarms most analysts is the instability originating from the one global commons the United States remains unable to dominate— the internet. By freely diffusing information to many non-state actors, the internet has granted them significant influence on the

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world stage. These actors, though bound by their lack of conven- access, the United States further solidified its stance on intertional warfare capabilities, can leverage their significant clout in net freedom, and Google reaffirmed its security promises to its the digital realm to go toe-to-toe with even the world’s supercustomers. Despite their disagreements, each actor reserved any powers. Add these non-state powers to an already shifting world outright hostility because each understood that future economic stage, and friction appears inevitable. opportunity rests on a stable relationship between all three.

Nowhere has this potentially dangerous diffusion become Like Google, nearly all of the non-state players who have more apparent than in the cyber successes of terrorist groups emerged as a result of the internet’s diffusion of information like ISIS and Al-Qaeda. While the United States has decimated have an incentive to maintain the global political stability that each group’s conventional military capabilities, terrorists conpreserves it. Alibaba CEO Jack Ma said at a recent event in tinue to wage successful worldwide recruiting efforts through Detroit, “If you missed the chance to sell to the USA, you missed the internet. your chance to grow. If you’re missing the chance to sell into The diffusion of information catalyzed by the internet has China, you’re missing the future.” For their companies to comempowered more than just terrorists. Non-state ‘hacktivist’ pete on a global stage, countries must maintain their access to groups like WikiLeaks, along with state-sponsored cyber groups both well-established markets like the United States and rising like the Russian “Fancy Bear,” have wielded significant political economies like China and India. That means maintaining the sway in Europe and the United States. Global corporations like U.S.-led institutions that secure this access.

Amazon, media outlets like BBC, and even social media sites like Trump’s reluctance to support international institutions like Facebook have also gained significant international influence NATO, along with declarations of China’s push for “Everything due to the internet.

Under the Heavens” have led many to pronounce the United However, assertions that a world with non-state actors will be “difficult and dangerous,” as Haas wrote, confuse friction for conflict. While the many state and non-state actors often have opposing interests, most of these actors, with the exception of increasingly-weakened terrorist groups, have an interest in maintaining the stability of the current world order.

The withdrawal of Google’s Chinese search service in 2010 demonstrates both the modern power of non-state actors and their desire to maintain the current order of global power. As Harvard Kennedy School professor Joseph Nye noted in a report that year, Google “inflicted a noticeable States’ demise as top dog on the world stage. Some have even cost upon Chinese power” when it announced its decision to described Trump’s election as “The Day American Hegemony withdraw its search engine in China. Though China offered Died.” But the reality is captured by the title of a Wall Street a significant market for Google, Chinese security attacks on Journal op-ed written by Trump’s national security advisor H.R. Gmail threatened to compromise the brand’s invaluable security McMaster and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn: “America reputation, forcing the company to cease its search service there. First Doesn’t Mean America Alone.” What multipolar theorists “Google needed to preserve the soft power of its reputation for and even Trump himself can’t deny is that the United States bensupporting freedom of expression to recruit and nurture creative efits from its role as a uniquely powerful, global leader. personnel, and the security reputation of its Gmail brand,” Nye Although the rise of regional powers and of non-state actors wrote. has diminished U.S. capacity to project power abroad, the system The tension between Google and China even rose to the of global governance it has maintained since World War II is interstate level. Before Google announced its withdrawal, it insimply too beneficial for any rising actor to seriously consider formed the Obama White House, and Secretary of State Hillary challenging it. Until that system ceases to benefit the United Clinton incorporated the news into a speech on internet freeStates, or, even less likely, another country emerges as a potential dom, aimed at China. substitute to American leadership on a global scale, the United Despite the ensuing political name-calling between the States will continue to lead the world. For now, the power rests Drew Pendergrass United States and China, the general outcome for each player in America’s hands. was positive. While China reasserted its authority on internet

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BALANCE WHY (SOME) WOMEN STILL CAN’T HAVE IT ALL

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or many parents, striking a healthy balance between professional and personal lives poses a serious challenge, as mothers and fathers strive to be involved and available to their children while also achieving success and fulfillment through their work. Women in particular struggle to “have it all,” often finding it difficult to reconcile the expectations of motherhood with career-related pressures.

Recently, as the gap between the number of women and men who attend university and subsequently enter the workforce has continued to shrink and almost disappear, women in elite fields trying to balance careers and families have shared their experiences, offering strategies for achieving the elusive “work-life balance.” Books like Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg offer advice and encouragement to working mothers, while articles like AnneMarie Slaughter’s have received attention for shedding light on the obstacles that continue to confront them. Women have emphasized the incompatibility of achieving professional success and fulfilling traditional expectations of parental roles, which tend to place the mother as the caretaker and the father as the breadwinner. Sexism in the workplace, furthermore, has played a major role in instilling a sense of frustration among many working mothers. Given these challenges, questions of having, doing, and being it all are ubiquitous for working mothers.

MISSING VOICES Much of this discussion of the tension between motherhood and professional success, though, comes from women leading a certain lifestyle—one that is far from universal. Sandberg’s perspective is rooted in her experience as chief operating officer of Facebook; when Slaughter wrote her Atlantic article, her career included leadership at elite institutions like Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Chicago, and as director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department. Both women, as well as the many others with impressive credentials and resumes who have contributed to this conversation, have undoubtedly grappled with difficult questions regarding the balance between work and family. But this perspective, while important, isn’t the whole picture, and the reflections they offer do not apply to every working mother.

Unfortunately, discussions about work-life balance too-often prioritize the voices of relatively wealthy, privileged women with elite professions, leaving out the perspectives of the major-

ity of working mothers. The reality is that, whether or not any woman can “have it all,” some women will have a harder time in that pursuit than others, and many of the things that make being a working mother so difficult for some are linked to experiences that women like Sandberg and Slaughter cannot fully understand. In an interview with the HPR, Ellen Kossek, a professor at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management, emphasized that “every person faces societal pressure and different demands and stresses, but these female professionals aren’t facing the same challenges as a low-income person faces, and recently, in particular, we have left out this most vulnerable population.”

A key factor determining the extent to which women feel pulled away from their families by their careers has to do with the nature of their jobs; those with intense, rigid schedules tend to have a more difficult time than those with more flexible ones.

This isn’t something that breaks down clearly along lines of wealth or status—some elite professions have incredibly grueling schedules, involving considerable travel and long work days, while others are far more flexible. Slaughter herself describes the noticeable difference between her time in academia and her time in the State Department; while the first allowed her to largely set her own schedule, when she began working in government, she found herself “working long hours on someone else’s schedule,” and “could no longer be both the parent and the professional [she] wanted to be.” But flexibility is something that, despite some obvious exceptions, tends to come as you move up the professional ladder—women high up in companies, particularly relatively new ones based in places like Silicon Valley, may have some ability to complete tasks remotely and exert greater control over when and where they work. Meanwhile, the vast majority of women in the workplace, who occupy more traditional jobs, have little control over their work schedules.

Furthermore, the threat of losing a job may be more daunting to women who live paycheck to paycheck, who are the sole provider for their children, or for whom the prospect of finding a new job is more challenging than it is for more high-profile professionals.

HELP AT HOME The extent to which women have assistance with their children, furthermore, can change the level of individual burden they feel in striking a balance between work and family. “We’ve

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Unfortunately, discussions about work-life balance too-often prioritize the voices of relatively wealthy, privileged women with elite professions, leaving out the perspectives of the majority of working mothers.

underestimated the power of community social support,” Kossek said. “When people feel alone, it’s harder. If you’re a working mother, yes, you need resources, but you also need social mechanisms that help you feel like you’re not alone.” Women with involved spouses and extended families or who have enough expendable income to hire babysitters and nannies have a level of flexibility not available to single, poor mothers. Given that the rate of poverty is three times higher for children living with only one parent than for children living with two, many women face intense challenges as they struggle to be the sole provider for their children both emotionally and financially. Ultimately, class and gender intersect catalytically to make the obstacles that confront poor mothers even more daunting.

Thus, while elite, professional women have been publicly pondering questions about whether they should continue to work after having kids and how to find both professional and personal fulfillment without sacrificing too much of either, some women do not have the luxury of seeing work as optional or as having the primary purpose of personal fulfillment. Unfortunately, it tends to be these very women who do not have the time to write books and articles reflecting on the challenges of being a working mother. And the danger of forgetting or ignoring these voices is not just that the conversation is incomplete—by failing to acknowledge the nuance within the entire population

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of working mothers, this conversation can leave women feeling as though their inability to strike the healthy balance celebrated by these elite professional women is a personal failing and not a symptom of more systemic obstacles. Furthermore, it ignores the need to design policies and programs that work for all women, not just those with the largest platforms through which to share their perspectives. These policies and programs must be multifaceted. Kossek believes the process will require societal change, employment change, and policy change but argues that governments should take the lead where companies won’t.

“If we want to focus on welfare for caretakers, I don’t see companies leading on this, and I would not hold [my] breath,” Kossek said. “Share value doesn’t include investment in families and workers.” For working women, questions of “having it all” and of balancing the professional with the personal are difficult, and each woman has a set of experiences and realities that help to determine what decisions are most pressing and what the stakes of those decisions are. To create a holistic, honest perspective on the experience of being a working mother, though, it is crucial to broaden the scope of which voices are elevated in this discussion and to acknowledge the ways in which these experiences and tensions differ from person to person.

FINDING THE WORDS FOR

HOPE Hank Sparks

FALL 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 37

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“I

ktsuarpok” is a word with no direct English translation.

From Inuit, it best translates to “the frustration of waiting for someone to show up.” It is a word imbued with special meaning, and a word that may now be threatened. The Endangered Languages Project classifies the Inuit language as “vulnerable,” with only around 20,000 speakers. For iktsuarpok, it seems, time may be running out.

Uncommonly pithy words that native English speakers struggle to pronounce, like “iktsuarpok,” are often presented to the general public as reasons for saving endangered languages.

If we lose these languages, the argument goes, we lose their beautiful words as well. But Gregory Anderson, president of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, argues that romanticizing unique words from endangered languages is an inadequate way to capture their value to speakers and communities around the world.

In an interview with the HPR, he explained that “there is nothing special, per se, about a language being endangered.”

Instead, he carries out his work for different reasons. “We have a fairly narrow set of windows of opportunity to understand how language develops and how humans divide their collective experience and metaphorize it,” he said. “The more of these windows that get permanently closed, the less we’ll ever be able to know about what is and what isn’t possible and why.”

It is our “vocalized expression of humanness,” as he calls it, that separates humans from animals. Around the world, the race to document and pass down these expressions is on. Leading the way are students and teachers, emboldened by technology to move away from learning hegemonic languages and instead dedicating their time to protecting endangered languages.

ENDANGERED AROUND THE WORLD Linguists estimate that there are over 6,500 languages in existence today. As many as 2,000 of these languages are spoken by 1,000 people or fewer. This means roughly a third of the world’s languages are vulnerable to extinction, usually brought on by hegemonic languages like English.

Additionally, these “killer languages”, as some linguists call them, are gaining ground in the very places where linguistic diversity is highest and most delicate. In Papua New Guinea, the most linguistically-diverse nation in the world, about 325 of the country’s 800 languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. In this former British colony, English language proficiency is widely perceived to be superior to proficiency in a local language.

Losing a Papuan language to English means losing centuries of cultural values and perspectives along with it.

Modern technology often does more harm than good; it homogenizes and sometimes eliminates linguistic differences that have existed for centuries. Speakers of Icelandic, for example, struggle to find way to use their native tongue on digital devices.

Monolithic devices like the iPhone or Amazon’s Alexa don’t

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understand Icelandic inputs, and GPS units have just as much trouble understanding Icelandic toponyms as American tourists do. This represents an existential threat to the Norse language: if Icelanders can’t use Icelandic on their devices, they will continue to switch to English, as many already have. Former president of Iceland Vigdís Finnbogadóttir worries that the language “will end up in the Latin bin.”

Some, however, are working to curb this trend toward linguistic homogeneity. Ground-breaking educational initiatives are at the heart of this battle for linguistic diversity. In Morocco, where multilingualism is a way of life, most of the population can speak Modern Standard Arabic, the colloquial “Darija” dialect of Arabic, and some French. Some, however, speak a dialect of Tamazight, which is the language of Morocco’s first nomadic settlers. And although Tamazight dialects are spoken by almost 40 percent of the country’s population, the language has little use in education and government, and it is therefore in decline.

In 2011, after a long campaign by Amazigh activists, the language was added to the government’s list of official languages and the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM in French) was opened in Rabat.

Mohammed Al-Bouzeggyouy, a Tamazight teacher at IRCAM, believes that the language is in jeopardy. “Now even Moroccans with Amazigh background do not speak the language either because their mothers speak Arabic, or because of their environment,” he told the HPR. That environment is one in which all private and public schools teach in either Arabic or French, and the only official instance of Tamazight in public life seems to be the nightly Tamazight-language news programs sponsored by the government.

Al-Bouzeggyouy says his friends and family love his work because he “defends the language and gives it value” by teaching it to future generations of speakers. But his optimism has limits. “I don’t think that Tamazight will be widely used in Morocco,” he lamented. He believes that the IRCAM was established to slow down the powerful Amazigh movement in Morocco and merely serves the interests of the government.

MORE LANGUAGES FOR MORE PURPOSES Despite these tempered expectations, educators like AlBouzeggyouy work with a group of students increasingly keen to challenge language-learning norms. Languages have long been seen by students and parents as an essential tool for the global market. With globalization on the rise, the story goes, students who speak multiple international languages will be more successful than their peers. While this story is often beneficial as a motivator to students, its effect on endangered languages is deleterious. Lisa Frumkes, the Senior Director for Content Development at the language software company Rosetta Stone, told the HPR that the modern high school’s focus on French and Spanish “does us all a disservice,” adding, “I think we need to be

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teaching more people more languages for more purposes.” Part of that, she believes, involves teaching endangered languages.

Fortunately, students of these languages are finding motives beyond mere academic or financial success. For some, the main motive can be health and wellness. In an interview with the HPR, Mary Linn, the Curator of Cultural and Linguistic Revitalization at the Smithsonian, described the Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative of the Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma. Through hands-on lessons in sustainable agriculture and community outreach programs, the initiative helps the Mvskoke people put their diet and health in their own hands instead of in the hands of agribusiness. The initiative also hosts Mvskoke language lessons, which teach agricultural terminology in Mvskoke so participants understand the cultural context of the food they’re growing. Thanks to these lessons, students begin to understand that the goals of health and wellness are “really attached with language,” Linn noted. She concluded, “it really has been moving youth towards this ability to say ‘I am a strong person in this culture.’”

For others, better linguistic understanding is an issue not just of cultural value but of legal value. In the 1990s, Judge Gregory Bigler, one of only two judges at the Muscogee Nation’s District Court, started Euchee language classes in his community. In an interview with the HPR, he said that these classes taught students how to “respond and interact in the language.” And although Bigler has passed on the organizing of the classes to the next generation and is not completely fluent in Euchee himself, he has seen immense rewards from the classes over the years.

Bigler said that there have been “consistent, coherent attacks” on the sovereignty of tribes based on lack of tribal language fluency.

He said the attacks are often along the lines of: “Well, you’re no different than these non-Indians, so why should you have your own tribal government?” Learning Euchee, he maintains, helps them to answer that question and defend their sovereignty. “The continuation into the future is not something that’s going to happen by accident,” he concludes.

WHAT REVIVAL MEANT In linguistic circles, “Hebrew” seems to be the watchword for endangered language revitalization efforts. In modern world history, it is the only language to have been successfully “revived” on an international scale. Over the course of , Eliezer Ben Yehuda realized his dream that the Hebrew language would go “from the synagogue to the house of study, and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and ... become a living language.” While the ancient liturgical language of the Jewish people was once used merely for religious ceremony, it is now spoken by over But reviving Hebrew took an overwhelming confluence of dedicated effort and world events. In order to revive a language once used mostly at temple, Eliezer Ben Yehuda had to create

words for modern terms like “electricity” and “ice cream.” Ben Yehuda also recognized the importance, as other endangered language communities do today, of educational initiatives. At a Jewish school in Jerusalem, Ben Yehuda taught for only a few months, but after his tenure students could still “chatter fluently in Hebrew on daily topics connected with eating and drinking, clothing, daily life and events inside and outside the home.” In today’s Israel, his focus on education lives on; for the first few years of a child’s education, Hebrew is And although it has meant a lot to millions, the revival came at great cost. Ladino, the language of many Sephardic Jews, is expected to disappear entirely from Israel within just two generations. In order to revive Hebrew, the Israeli government adopted policies to discourage the use of diasporic languages like Ladino. Immigrants to Israel had to adopt a Hebrew name and begin learning Hebrew, which often forced them to abandon languages like Ladino. Karaim, a language once common to Turkish Jews, is in similar peril. The legacy of Hebrew’s revival is marred by the languages left forgotten at Israel’s doorstep.

But for many experts in the field, aspiring to the “wonderful goal” of Hebrew, as Linn phrased it, is unrealistic. She argues that most communities don’t want to reach a point where they solely use their endangered language. Instead, most Native American youth want to be bilingual and simply use their tribe’s language as much as they can.

So instead of looking to the success of other revived languages, some linguists are looking at the success of past social movements. Gregory Anderson works with the National Geographic on a project called “Language Hotspots,” which aims to bring public attention to those “hotspots” around the world where linguistic diversity is highest and most delicate. Its inspiration, Anderson says, is the global movement for biodiversity. Biodiversity hotspots were successful in “making conservation of ecology something that every little child knows as a kind of cultural practice of being right,” Anderson told the HPR. Anderson hopes language hotspots will have a similar impact, and will help people see the conservation of language as a common-sense cause.

Anderson explained that two generations ago, conservation of ecology was not universally seen as valuable. Today, however, that perspective has radically changed thanks to organizations that focus on biodiversity like the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International. The “Language Hotspots” initiative, Anderson affirms, hopes to do the same with linguistic diversity.

One of the hotspots the project is working on is the Oklahoma-Southwest area, where Judge Bigler’s language, Euchee, is threatened. Through a confluence of public awareness efforts like the hotspots project, teaching efforts by determined individuals like Bigler, and documentation efforts by Linn, the language is being passed on from five elderly speakers to two dozen eager learners. For Euchee, and other endangered tongues, there seems to be hope.

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Raúl Grijalva with Meena Venkataramanan Recently, you stated that “a comprehensive and sensible approach to border security spans well beyond only walls and militarization.” How can the United States reconcile its respect for tribal sovereignty with its desire to secure its borders?

Rep. Raúl Grijalva: Proponents of enforcement always make it an either-or proposition. To them, either we have security or we do not have it. It is not an either-or proposition. The issue of sovereignty and the trust responsibility that the federal government and the nation have to Native sovereign nations is in the Constitution. It is part of the history of our nation, and it is a response to a very sad and tragic legacy of the treatment of Native people in our country by our government and others.

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The desire of the Tohono O’odham people to have 90 miles of no border wall is a legitimate, sovereign desire. They have borne a considerable amount of the social and financial costs in terms of the law enforcement activities that are going on within their reservation. It is not a question of them turning their backs on security. It is a question of them exerting their rights as sovereign nations to decide what happens and what does not on their land. They are—for historical reasons, cultural reasons, and tradition—opposed to this wall. It is necessary for the United States government and the agencies responsible, Homeland Security and Justice, to understand that.

Last fall, you traveled to Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. What can the

INTERVIEWS

Tohono O’odham Nation learn from the Standing Rock protests?

Coalition-building. If the issue of their position on the wall comes to a head in this present administration, then it is all about coalition-building and gathering allies from a spectrum of people. That is something that was very important to see in Standing Rock. Coalition-building would bring tribal support across the country because the border wall would be a test on sovereignty—a fundamental legal, moral test on the issue of sovereignty for a Native nation.

But it would also bring other people into supporting the O’odham. One of the important things that we learned in Standing Rock is that the tribe has to be in charge of constructing the narrative of what that issue is. They are pretty solid on that.

There is a lesson to be learned here: it is about allies and it is about the support for Indian country not only here but internationally.

That support can be replicated. I use the example of the Oak Flat Apache protest. It gained national attention, and it was the same kind of the intrusion as Standing Rock: a land deal in the middle of the night that is going to affect not only the land but also sacred sites for the San Carlos Apache people. It gathered a lot of national attention, but it was a precursor to what happened at Standing Rock. By that time, the momentum had grown. Given what happened at Standing Rock, that the momentum for the O’odham will be fast and strong.

Why do you believe that there has been less media attention directed toward the Tohono O’odham border wall protests compared to the Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline protests?

Because there has not been a federal action yet. As soon as there is a federal action or a threat of an action to supersede, override, or force the question of sovereignty versus the wall, I think there will be more media attention. With Standing Rock, once the Army Corps granted the permits, it became a fight.

Given that the House recently passed a spending bill to allocate $1.6 billion to fund the construction of the border wall, how do you plan to defend tribal sovereignty if the border wall comes to fruition?

It is going to be really hard-pressed for Congress to try to do something to effectuate a border wall on sovereign land. First of all, there would have to be an act of Congress to suspend the sovereignty of the O’odham nation in order to build a wall. Trust me, that would be brutal, historic, and unprecedented. It would be very difficult for them to get. The consequences of legal precedent, constitutional precedent, and historic precedent would be tested in that.

What steps should be taken to ensure that tribal entities in Southern Arizona, and in the United States as a whole, are adequately protected during

the Trump administration?

It is about protecting sovereignty. Many times, tribal governments have been able to work with both sides of the aisle, but I think they are going to find themselves unable to do that with this administration. This administration sees resources on tribal land as critical. They are working under the mythology that because there is gaming in some tribes, that the resource support, trust responsibility, and obligation of the federal government can be lessened. To this administration, healthcare, education, and the vital social infrastructure monies that go to tribes can be reduced. That is going to be a budgetary fight.

Also, this administration is dealing with Indian country at a time when the definition of sovereignty is being expanded. It is not “I live in this little territory, therefore I am sovereign” anymore. Sacred sites, religious ceremonies, burial sites, ancestral lands, cultural traditions, and historic resources are expanding sovereignty issuance outside the boundaries of a reservation.

The administration is going to confront that as well. The recent Bears Ears Monument designation is a good example of a landmark that is outside a reservation boundary but still within tribal ancestral land. The Standing Rock example also falls within this framework. The privatization of resource extraction in Native country and restricting tribal resident recognition and trust land acquisition will make Indian country come to the realization that this administration is not its friend.

Historically, what happens in Indian country has been bipartisan. What the Environmental Protection Agency is doing in terms of cutting spending on the water, soil, and air protections that affect Indian country is another indication that the government is pulling back from its obligations. It is going to be an adversarial situation. That is the direction in which I see it heading. For instance, the Department of the Interior has not yet figured out what is going to happen with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and they are promoting ideas to restrict trust land acquisition. They want Congress to be the only arbitrator on tribal recognition. Politicizing the issue this way is dangerous.

To what extent do you believe there is an awareness of contemporary Native American issues within the 115th Congress, and what could be done to promote a greater awareness of these issues among your colleagues?

There is a greater awareness since I have ever been there.

Symbolically, there have been some issues that have galvanized that sense with respect to not only Standing Rock, but also others across Indian country. The power of Indian country is being recognized politically and socially.

But you still have the paternalism. You still have the benign neglect. You still have the abject neglect. There are still people who feel that assimilation is the way that this can all be solved, if we just made Native people more ‘white.’ We tried that. It did not work, and the consequences were awful. That attitude is a dangerous one, because it says that Native people are not coequals to us, but that they are wards of us.

FALL 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 41

INTERVIEWS

with Marty Berger

Craig Atkinson Your Director’s Statement notes that the Boston Marathon bombing inspired this film. What did you observe?

The Boston Marathon bombing was the first time that I had seen the armored vehicles and the weapons that police were using in SWAT work. I was comparing it to my father’s era of SWAT: the initial War on Drugs era of policing and SWAT tactics from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Clearly, the level of equipment had been updated. My father retired in 2002, and I had not thought about anything to do with police work until I saw the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.

I went up to the Boston area and started to interview people who had experienced the aftermath firsthand. They explained how SWAT units came into their homes, despite their protests that they did not want their homes searched. Some individuals reported being handcuffed on their front lawns for over four hours without being told why they were charged or detained.

It seemed like the police was more of an occupying force than a force that would protect and serve. They were dealing with an unknown level of danger, but it was shocking to see some of these other elements play out.

How did you gain access to the police?

It is not unprecedented for film crews to go out with police departments; the TV show Cops has been doing it since 1989.

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with Marty Berger

What people are responding to is our approach where we are much more observational in our style of capturing the unfolding scenes. We are placing the camera right in the middle of a search warrant without glorifying the police or condemning the suspects where a similar TV show might do.

The police can almost indict themselves. It is just a matter of being honest with our intentions. Initially, with the police departments, we kept promising them an authentic portrayal of whatever we did together. Audiences have been shocked by what the police departments chose to show us, such as a routine search warrant which only yielded one-and-a-half grams of weed but destroyed someone’s home in the process. That was one of three raids taking place that day.

That raid ended in uncompensated damage to the house, a young man’s arrest, and the forfeiture of his assets. How do officers justify these invasive raids?

That I do not know. What was used to get the search warrant for that particular raid was an informant testimony. There was not a significant amount of police investigative work that was conducted prior to raiding the home. The number of raids has increased from 3,000 raids per year in the ‘80s to somewhere between 50,000-80,000 per year today.

A large factor in that increase is due to the fact that they’re

INTERVIEWS

not doing proper investigative work. That is why the officer in the film says, “SWAT raids are 50/50,” meaning that this level of entry leads to an arrest 50 percent of the time. You are using equipment that was designed for home entries on the battlefield of the Middle East for routine search warrants that are only yielding small personal amounts of marijuana.

How do you think the filming of that raid influenced the officer’s behavior, if at all?

That particular team was very open to having us film the entirety of the raid. This was just another routine raid. In fact, Cops was filming that raid with that department while we were filming as well. I do not think that our presence influenced the raid one way or the other. I think that this was a very accurate representation of the style of raid that happens on an ongoing basis throughout the country.

You returned to interview the family that had been raided. In making the film, how did you balance the perspectives of officers against the protestors and victims of brutality?

We tried to give everyone as much of a voice as they were willing to share with us. We were told initially by the police department in South Carolina that we would be raiding a drug kingpin. We were in shock to see that it was a 22-year-old college student who was home with his family. I felt awful that I had a camera on this family while they were experiencing this horrible home entry, so I felt compelled the next day to go to speak with them. If I did not have their permission to use that footage, I would not have because it seemed so invasive.

Many of those SWAT officers were white, and they raided an African American family’s home. Could you discuss the racial dimension of the film?

When we were doing additional training exercises with these police departments, they said they were preparing for ISIS and terrorist events, but they would use the equipment on a routine basis. We do not raid the homes of any white people. We do not stop-and-frisk any white collar crimes. When you see $876 for civil asset forfeiture from the young man who had one-and-ahalf grams of weed, they know with near certainty that he is not going to hire a lawyer. The raids are effective and wealthharvesting tools for police departments, especially because these communities are unable to defend themselves.

As a white man and the son of a police officer, how did your background shape your interactions with SWAT team members?

As the son of an officer, I was able to relate more with officers than someone who did not come from a police officer background. I am not against the equipment; I am against its improper use. We can find a perfect example of how it was used effectively during the Pulse nightclub shooting; the officers

took an armored vehicle, punctured a hole in the side of the nightclub, and were able to free hostages. But those same police departments, months prior, were using SWAT teams to raid barbershops for cutting hair without a license. I can see where the overuse of SWAT has created such ill-will in the community that it is making the officers’ lives more dangerous.

That is the perspective that I also try to communicate to law enforcement officials after we would go on these engagements and have the opportunity to speak. We are bringing the film to police departments themselves because we are not saying anything new to communities that have been experiencing this for decades. We had a successful screening at the John Jay Criminal Justice College in New York, which is the New York Police Department feeder school. There were 300 students there; many were active NYPD. That is the true goal of what I am hoping to do with this film.

One professor you interviewed argued that race can and should be used to predict the likelihood that a person will commit a crime, even before that person is born. Why did you include this footage, and what are the implications of this approach?

The film looks at the surveillance technology that is returning home from wars and repurposed in local police departments.

In 2014, after the events in Ferguson, everyone was looking at the military hardware equipment that had been given to police departments for the last three or four decades. There was one company that was taking the exact same platform that the NSA uses to do mass data collection and was licensing it to police departments for $1,000 per year subscription. When we asked how were they going to use this, they took us to West Virginia University, where they showed us that they were using it to find people who were smoking weed in their dorm rooms.

When you look at Professor Richard Berk’s predictive policing algorithms, he is using algorithms to determine the likelihood of an individual committing a crime in the future. He is using Comstat data, a crime statistical data for a geographic region. Dave Grossman, the trainer in our films, speaks about how he knows of many police chiefs throughout the country who have been fudging the numbers on crime data. If crime is not going down in your particular city, you might not get the federal funding the following year. What some police chiefs have been doing is taking some aggravated assaults and calling them simple assaults and re-categorizing crime to make it appear that crime is going down in their city.

Here we are, all these years later, and that is the same data that Richard Berk is using to run these algorithms to determine whether someone is going to commit a crime by the age of 18. If we are not careful, we are going to crystalize and digitize our old thinkings about race and crime, rather than looking at it from a holistic level. That is going to lead to more unjust policing if we are not making sure that the data that we are using to run these algorithms is sound.

FALL 2017 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 43

ENDPAPER

CALLING HOME Flavia Cuervo

B

efore moving to Cambridge four years ago, I had a lot of expectations about Harvard. The classes would be difficult. My peers would be the smartest people I’d ever met.

I’d grow into a better version of myself. Freshman year proved these to be true, and I was thrilled to know that Harvard was everything I thought it would be. I took classes about political theory and storytelling; religion and the history of psychiatry.

As I tried to explore my many interests, I had a difficult time explaining to my parents what exactly it was that I was doing.

My parents never really understood the ins and outs of American higher education, but they knew that Harvard was the place where people went to change the world. It’s where I would go to become a doctor or a lawyer.

So, when I shared my excitement about existentialist texts or African fables, my parents didn’t see the merit in it. I was embracing a liberal arts education that was gradually broadening my understanding of the world, while simultaneously opening a chasm between myself and my family.

For the next couple of years, I gave them brief overviews of my classes without getting into too much detail. I did the same with my extracurricular activities, because it was frustrating that they didn’t already know what Model United Nations conferences were. I began to feel like my family understood very little about my life. I had developed interests I’d never had in high school and was slowly adapting my political views to reflect my newly formed perspective of the world.

My parents complained about how infrequently I called, how little I shared, and how irritated I was when I did. I let myself off the hook by telling myself that they needed to make a bigger effort to understand me. It’s not that I didn’t want my parents to know about my life, but when I couldn’t ask them to proof an essay about Darwinian attraction or help with a resume for a job interview, I felt isolated and unsupported.

The presidential election, in which none of my family members (all of whom live in Florida) voted, pushed me to think hard about the distance I had allowed between us. Much of public

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discourse at the time centered around how we as a country had let ourselves become polarized and deaf to the concerns of the other side. I was perpetuating that problem. I had walled myself off from them in my ivory tower at Harvard, complaining about their lack of understanding instead of actively engaging them in my life.

It has become a blessing and a curse to receive the education that my parents never had the luxury of having. I struggled with wanting to share everything I had learned with them but feeling that our differences couldn’t be bridged by a conversation when our experiences were rooted in different times and different cultures.

Hoping to better understand my family, I took a class about the Cuban revolution. While most of the material in the class was not new to me—I had grown up hearing about it from my grandfather—it made me pause and reflect on their experiences.

Learning about the political climate of their adolescence and focusing on the difficulties they faced, I realized I wanted them to be a part of my struggles. I decided that I could not afford to push them away any longer.

I had expected them to simply understand my new life, but ultimately, I was the one who hadn’t tried to share my experiences with them. It was easier to bury myself into my classes than it was to make time to familiarize my family with my day to day life. Even when they were willing to listen and learn, I let my disappointment over their lack of understanding be an excuse for not prioritizing bridging the distance.

This morning I called my mom to talk about commencement plans. We agreed on who would come and when to book flights and where they would stay. When she asked me about the classes I’d finally decided to take, I said I wasn’t taking any economics courses, but classes in the Romance Languages and Folklore and Mythology departments. When she asked why I’d decided to do that, I didn’t sigh loudly or respond with “just because.” Instead, I chose to start explaining.

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