The Politic - Spring 2013 II

The Politic

SPRING 2013 II THE YALE UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF POLITICS VOL. LXVIII

Master of the City How Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. ruled New Haven 1

The Politic

Dear Reader,

This is our last issue as Editors-in-Chief of The Politic, Yale’s undergraduate political journal. We both agree this has been one of the most valuable experiences of our Yale adventure. If you’ll permit our self-indulgence, we’d like to share what we’ve learned managing a staff of 30 writers after 10 months, 4 issues, endless late hours, and pitless cups of coffee.

Running a magazine is a bit like administering a cabinet of government officials.

The Politic board is not quite Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals”; our Edwin Stantons, Salmon Chases, and William Sewards debate oxford commas, not the future of the Union. But did Lincoln have the right idea to embrace a diverse range of opinion and talent! Each page of the magazine you hold in your hands is the product of all hands on deck. Every decision went through an assembly line of writers, photographers, business developers, and editors. Also, carrots work better than sticks, particularly when those carrots come in the form of cake from Claire’s.

We told our reporters to go out and dig up stories no one’s read. We are proud to say they did just that. Aaron Mak took yoga lessons for his piece on the People’s Art Collective. Sibjeet Mahapatra toured a New Haven marine base, underwent a military fitness exam, and trained in the tactics of counterinsurgency. Larissa Liburd returned from Haiti to recount her first visit back to her hometown in nine years. We just sat at our computers.

We thank you for your readership. The Politic has undergone many changes this year, from a new website, to a reimagined blog, to this redesigned magazine. As the two of us prepare to hand off the reins to next year’s editorial board, we are confident in the bright years ahead.

Faithfully, Josef Goodman Noah Remnick

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Editors-in-Chief Josef Goodman Noah Remnick

Managing Editors Justin Schuster Eric Stern

National Editors Cindy Hwang

International Editors David Lawrence Eli Rivkin

Feature Editor Larissa Liburd

Online Managers Rod Cuestas James Pabarue

Director of Development Raphael Leung

Layout Editors David Mandelbaum Yuyeon Cho

Editors Emeriti Byron Edwards Jacob Effron

Copy Editor Stephanie Heung

Photo Editor Anna-Sophie Harling

Illustrators Madeleine Witt

Board of Advisors John Lewis Gaddis — Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History, Yale University David Gergen — Editor-at-Large, U.S. News and World Report Anthony Kronman — Former Dean, Yale Law School Ian Shapiro — Director, Yale Center for International and Area Studies

Pictures Pictures from Creative Commons used under Attribution Noncommercial license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses

Disclaimer This magazine is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. The opinions expressed by the contributors to The Politic do not necessarily reflect those of its staff or advertisers.

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COLLECTIVE WISDOM Aaron Mak

10 THE NEXT COURSE Rishabh Bhandari

16 TEMPORARY TEACHERS J.R. Reed

20 BRINGING FM 3-24 TO FALLUJAH

SPRING 2013 II THE YALE UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF POLITICS VOL. LXVIII

30 THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD Matthew Nussbaum

34 THE ASCENDERS Rachel O’connell

38 REVISITING HAITI Larrissa Liburd

40 ABOUT FACE Eric Stern

Sibjeet Mahapatra

24 MASTER OF THE CITY Jacob Wolf-Sorokin

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Write for The Politic

Gay Marriage in the United States SUPPORT FOR GAY MARRIAGE 60%

Legal

Illegal

30%

9.7.03

8.29.04

8.28.05

6.4.06

4.24.09

2.8.10

3.13.11

3.10.12

3.10.13

Data Source: ABC News/Washington Post polls

SENATORS WHO SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE 50

3

22

43

SENATORS WHO OPPOSE GAY MARRIAGE MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA)

ROB PORTMAN (R-OH)

“I’m a lot, like other people said, my views have evolved on this. But my state has a very strong constitutional amendment against gay marriage, and I think I have to honor that.”

“I’ve thought a great deal about this issue, and like millions of Americans in recent years, I’ve changed my mind on the question of marriage for same-sex couples.”

New Hampshire

North Dakota

Montana

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Oregon

New York

Wisconsin South Dakota

Idaho

Pennsylvania Nebraska

Iowa Indiana

Illinois Utah Colorado Kansas

Missouri

Oklahoma

Arizona

New Mexico

Arkansas Alabama

Texas

West Virginia

Kentucky Tennessee

Virginia North Carolina

South Carolina Georgia

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Maryland District of Columbia

Same-sex marriage prohibited by state law or state constitutional provision State issues licenses for same-sex marriage State does not recognize or prohibit same-sex marriage

Mississippi

Louisiana Florida

Alaska

Connecticut New Jersey Delaware

Ohio

Nevada California

Rhode Island

Michigan

Wyoming

Email us at YalePolitic@gmail.com Make sure to visit us online at www.thepolitic.org

Maine

Vermont

Washington

Data Source: Los Angeles Times

Hawaii

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AARON MAK

Collective Wisdom THE PEOPLE’S ART COLLECTIVE FINDS ITS SPACE

It was 7:18 in the evening on January 16, 2010 and Jewu Richardson was driving under the influence. A beer in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, Jewu reached the end of his joyride on Spring Street, when a couple of cops noticed a busted light on his blue Acura and pulled him over less than a mile away from the Yale School of Medicine.

Thirty years old with a troubled history and a hopeful future, Jewu seemed in the midst of an earnest attempt at recovery after a stint in jail on charges of drug possession.

The New Haven resident has been 6

described as “gentle,” “soft-spoken,” and “really calm,” but as officer John DuPont waited for backup to arrive, Jewu stepped on the gas and drove away. During the chase that followed, Jewu struck two cars, one of them a police cruiser. The two officers pursued him to a gas station on Whalley Avenue, at which point they hopped out and began approaching Jewu’s car on foot. The cops then recall that a panicked Jewu rammed his vehicle into one of the officers, who then shot Jewu through the windshield, lodging a bullet in his chest. The officers later determined that Jewu’s blood alcohol

level was over the legal limit.

For someone sitting in the defendant’s chair, Jewu is oddly calm.

Bespectacled and dressed in a dark suit, he appears professorial. Even though he could receive up to 30 years in prison, Jewu shows no sign of anxiety as he hears police witnesses testify against him. In fact, he is nearly still.

In the gallery sit around twenty people, all supporters who maintain Jewu’s innocence. They glare disapprovingly at the prosecution and cheerfully nudge each other when Jewu’s attorney corners those same police witnesses on cross-examination. The young cohort

is here as part of an effort to “Pack the Courtroom,” an initiative intended to express solidarity with Jewu and to ensure a fair trial.

Everyday throughout the twoweek-long trial, supporters sat in the gallery with these goals in mind.

Recent Yale graduates Diana Ofosu ’12 and Kenneth Reveiz ’12 sat among them. Ofosu and Reviez are the founders of the People’s Art Collective (PAC), one of the activist groups that has helped Jewu throughout his case. PAC, founded in 2012, describes itself on its website as “a group of artists and activists collaborating to address social, racial, economic, environmental and human injustices in New Haven.”

Perhaps their most significant collaboration so far has been the operation of the Free Skool, a community center of sorts where New Haven residents can meet to plan activist projects and take free classes in a variety of subjects. Among other decorations on its light pink walls hang the iconic image of Ché Guevara in sunglasses, a diagram asserting that capitalism is a pyramid scheme, and a poem asking that we elect a “dyke president.”

Ofosu, Reviez, and other PAC members don’t exactly fit the stereotypical image of left-wing activists. They exhibit neither the chaotic theatricality of Abbie Hoffman, nor the austere militancy of Malcolm X, yet their generally nonchalant demeanors complement their determination and enthusiasm.

This enthusiasm became evident as Reveiz discussed Jewu’s case. He vigorously disputed the officers’ account, asserting that “[The police officers] decided to try and assassinate him.” He elaborated. “It was an illegal pursuit,” Reveiz said. “Jewu was surrounded by police officers in his car, which was immobile, with his hands up. Someone jumped on the hood and shot him through the windshield. [The bullet] hit his chest, inches away from his heart.

He spent the next four days in jail without receiving medical attention.”

According to Reveiz, officers on New Haven police force have had a history of harassing Jewu, which started when they allegedly planted narcotics on him to force him to become an informant. When he refused, they beat him and put him in prison on charges of drug possession. Supporters claim

that the prosecution has used this arrest to label Jewu as a convict, thus allowing them to make unassumingly racist attacks on his past and character. After Jewu was released, he filed a civil suit against the department, yet officers continued to harass him. He claimed he fled from police in his car because the officer who pulled him over took his gun out of his holster.

Given his past run-ins with the NHPD, Jewu thought that the officer was going to kill him. Ofosu shared Reveiz’s assassination theory and added, “Jewu has a history of speaking out against police brutality in New Haven. I feel like they have cause to get rid of him because he’s outspoken.”

Chris Garaffa, one of the founders of the group People Against Police Brutality (PAPB), points to Jewu’s car and eyewitness accounts as the most important pieces of evidence that exonerate Jewu. Unfortunately, the New Haven Police had destroyed the car, which could have proved whether the car was moving and the angle of the officer to the vehicle when he shot Jewu.

Garaffa went on to claim that, two weeks into the trial, there had been no witnesses from the scene of the incident who testified to seeing Jewu hit the officer. One of the witnesses, according to Garaffa, said that “Jewu’s car was being rammed by the officers and came to a stop. One of the cops got out of his car, ran like he was Superman and jumped on Jewu’s car hood and shot him. Those were his words: ‘like he was Superman.’” And this was a witness for the prosecution.

Garaffa sees Jewu’s trial as representative of a long-standing trend.

Asked how long he thinks police brutality has been an issue in New Haven, he responded, “As long as there have been police. The abuse of power as a means to control people by the wealthy and the propertied has been an issue as long as there have been social classes.”

Garaffa elaborated by asserting that the police are only in New Haven to “protect and serve the banks and corporate interests,” and refers to other cases of New Haven police blackmailing and beating citizens. His comments echo Ofosu, who noted that the NHPD is known for solely protecting New Haven’s privileged communities, while ignoring or even instigating conflicts

among the rest of the population.

PAC began to support PAPB by offering the Free Skool as a place for PAPB members to teach the community how to deal with repressive police officers. A list of instructions from those classes recommends people check the accuracy of warrants and avoid physically resisting police officers.

PAC has also assisted specifically with PAPB’s “Justice for Jewu” campaign by, among other things, hosting a “FUNraising” party to raise money to pay for Jewu’s legal fees. “It’s pretty ridiculous how much money you need to exercise your right to trial,” commented Reviez.

PAPB members use the Free Skool as a place to meet and organize the effort to acquit Jewu. The PAPB held one such meeting two weeks into Jewu’s trial late on a Thursday night.

There were six members in attendance along with Reviez, all of them New Haven residents. Many PAPB members are themselves victims of alleged New Haven police brutality, or know someone who is.

During the meeting, members discussed their perceptions of the trial.

They seemed cautiously optimistic, picking apart the officers’ testimonies.

One member noted that the police seemed rehearsed. Others were pleased to report that one of the assaulting officer’s past as a guard at Guantanamo Bay came out in witness testimony.

Someone expressed concern that the police would “rough-up” a citizen to come in and testify on their behalf.

The group then made plans for the rest of the trial, discussing the possibility of scheduling another press conference and other fundraising events. There was a sense that, though they have put in years of work into Jewu’s case, there isn’t a lot they can do now that the trial has finally begun. Indeed, there was an uneasy sentiment that Jewu’s fate was now largely out of their hands.

The group held a press conference on April 10, a day after closing arguments. For just over an hour, approximately fifteen people surrounded Jewu on the courtroom steps. The protesters, some of whom looked no older than 15, held signs with slogans such as, “Internal Affairs: Police Protecting Police,” or “Constitutional Rights Denied.” The atmosphere was tense, especially as two NHPD 7

officers in a police cruiser conspicuously watched the proceedings off to the side. The participants, undeterred, took turns stepping out in front of the crowd to give short speeches.

One accused officers of falsely imprisoning her because of her sexuality. Another woman provided an account of how officers invited themselves into her home without a warrant and arrested her husband. She noted that his trial could occur anytime from now until 2020, which is problematic mainly because her husband will have a harder time finding witnesses who will clearly remember something that happened back in 2011.

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The most moving speech came from Emma Jones, the mother of 21-year-old Malik Jones, who was killed

by NHPD officers in 1997. Jones, who plans to take her case to the Supreme Court on the grounds of “prejudicial police conduct,” emphasized the fact that police brutality affects even those with clean records. Jewu spoke as well, expressing his disappointment that “nobody ever stepped forward and took ownership for [their actions].” The rally eventually ended, trailing off as the speakers discovered they had nothing else to say. Protesters embraced each other and offered optimistic smiles.

They knew that within the next few

days, Jewu’s story would be one of triumph or defeat.

On April 12, after the jury failed to come to a consensus, the judge called a mistrial. According to the New Haven Independent, two jury members, one of them a Yale employee, held out because they said they could not in good conscious convict Jewu given the officers’ actions. For Jewu and his supporters, this was a rapturous triumph.

Chris Desir, one of the most active participants in the “Justice for Jewu” campaign, sees this as a momentous development, given Jewu’s race.

Supporters claim that police and the prosecution attack the defendant’s past

and character in a surreptitiously racist fashion, though the jury saw through their tactics. As Desir put it, “The new Jim Crow is a rationalized racial caste system using the label of a criminal or convicted felon, which isn’t an overtly racial label. But it’s a way to make race a key factor without making it seem like it’s a factor. And that’s the kind of thing that was brought to justice in this case. Everyone was able to see that race was a key factor, which created the mistrial.” ***

This brand of overtly political activism is only one of many things

that PAC does. The Collective spends most of its time running the classes offered in the Free Skool, where Bambi Sivaramakrishnan teaches.

Bambi was born in India, but grew up in New Haven and later moved to Seattle. It was there that she first encountered the teachings of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Sri Sri is a prominent spiritual leader from India and founder of the global NGO “The Art of Living Foundation.” In March, as a response to the Sandy Hook shooting and the 2012 gang rape crime in New Delhi, the organization launched the “Violence-Free Stress-Free” campaign to definitively end violence in the world through meditation. Recently, Sri Sri offered to share his meditation techniques for peace in the Korean Peninsula to calm the nuclear tensions.

Bambi was trained by a close associate of Sri Sri’s in his methods and certified to teach such techniques to others. She taught six “Meditate for Nonviolence” classes in the Free Skool.

After leading stress relief programs in New Haven high schools and learning about the violence that students face, Bambi sees meditating and releasing stress as especially important for the city. She points to wealth disparity, popular culture, and substance abuse as being the major sources of crime and an overall culture of violence in New Haven. Bambi told The Politic, “A lot of [New Haven residents] don’t know how to deal with stress, how to deal with anger, how to deal with sadness. […] [Meditation] gives them another tool to deal with this besides picking up a gun.”

For residents who often feel powerless to socioeconomic division, the prevalence of drugs, and the general culture of violence, meditation is a way to actively make the choice to be nonviolent. Bambi claims that for too long nonviolence has been viewed as a passive negation of power rather than an assertion of oneself. Instead of passively acting nonviolent by choosing not to commit a violent act, meditation offers people a way to “commit an act of nonviolence.” Meditation is an active way to be nonviolent and a way to express pride in the decision to do so.

When you see the group meditation, it seems like a peculiar solution to societal violence. Bambi, donning a

white headband with the term “NONVIO” sprawled across the front, gathers the group in a circle. On this particular day eight New Haven residents attend, including Ofosu and Reveiz. They start with a “warm-up,” which looks like a mix of yoga, stretching, and breakdancing. People laugh; some are more self-conscious than others. After ten minutes of this, Bambi has participants sit on the floor and asks them what violence means to them. Among other things, people mention violence in music, visual violence, and structural violence perpetrated by architecture.

Bambi nods in agreement, and adds, “Gentrification as well: that’s another form of violence with structures.”

The group then dives into the meditation, which involves a series of breathing exercises. These exercises build off the idea that when people experience different emotions, their breathing patterns change accordingly. According to Bambi and Sri Sri, the reverse is also true; if people consciously change their breathing patterns, then they can then change their emotional states. Thus, when people are on the brink of committing a violent act due to stress or anger from harassment, they can simply use this technique to prevent themselves from doing so. As Bambi puts it, “The mind can only resort to violence when it’s in a stressed out state. But when it’s calm, when it’s peaceful, when it’s happy, no violent thought can come.”

Challenging the status quo is a rhetorical commonplace these days.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle criticize the prevailing “business-asusual” mentality, but few actually demonstrate the bravery to embody this philosophy. PAC, of course, is not a political organization and this affords them certain luxuries. So while cynics protest, PAC continues to challenge the complacency.

P

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RISHABH BHANDARI

The Next Course THE YALE COLLEGE COUNCIL WORKS TO PROVE IT’S MORE THAN JUST A SALAD REPORT

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Just say the word “salad” to any member of the Yale College Council (YCC), and you are likely to elicit a groan or knee-jerk defense. For an institution self-admittedly struggling to engender student interest, the YCC received plenty of press for their sixpage report advocating standardization of salad bar options across the residential colleges. The blogs of the Yale Daily News (YDN) and The Yale Herald both covered the report with satirical solemnity. Rumpus quipped: “Our YCC actually wrote a report on salad ... if these are our future leaders, no wonder the government doesn’t do anything.”

Even The Harvard Crimson picked up the story, jesting, “Some schools just have bigger things to worry about.”

YCC President John Gonzalez ’14, who favored publicizing the salad report, admitted that it created a public relations mess. “It was sent more as a joke; we thought people would find it funny and so we played along, titling the report ‘State of the Salad.’” He added, regretfully, that it created the false impression that the YCC spent a disproportionate amount of time on such a small issue.

“The entire [YCC] didn’t drop everything else and pursue this,” he said, explaining that only three members of the YCC Dining Committee worked on the project. Gonzalez insisted that while the salad reform is an easy punching bag, it has prompted positive feedback from students: “Whenever I talk to a student in person, they’re grateful for improving salad options.” Small, simple improvements in students’ lives are an important component of the YCC’s mission.

This may be true, but “Saladgate,” as one YCC member dubbed it, is just the dressing on top of deeper problems for the YCC.

“When students criticize us, they say that we’re all about salad,” YCC Vice President-elect Kyle Tramonte ’15 told The Politic. He added that salad has become a metaphor for the YCC’s perceived incompetence or fecklessness. “[Some] students don’t think we can tackle big issues.”

“People think the changes we fight for are marginal and relatively insignificant,” Gonzalez acknowledged. This perception reinforces student apathy.

“If students can’t name some of

the YCC’s achievements this year, they won’t care,” said Harry Larson ’14, an opinion columnist for the YDN. Earlier this year, Larson penned an acerbic criticism of the YCC entitled “An Absent YCC.” ***

On April 11, the YCC held elections for next year’s executive board, but with three of the five positions uncontested — president, vice president, and events director — it hardly felt like campaign season. It was the first time in the institution’s history that more than one race went uncontested. How did this happen at a school filled with students hungry for leadership roles?

More importantly, how did some of the most ostensibly prestigious positions on campus go unchallenged?

The YCC members interviewed were not surprised that three elections were not contested, citing the experience and respect that each candidate — standing Vice President Danny Avraham ’15 for president, Tramonte for vice president, and Eli Rivkin ’15 for events director — have earned within student government.

Respondents to a survey conducted by The Politic, however, were not persuaded by this explanation.

Only 12 percent of the 522 respondents believed that some candidates ran unopposed because they were the best candidates for the position. Fifty-five percent of respondents thought that the lack of competition reflected that the YCC is less relevant today than it has been in years past.

Commenters on the YDN article announcing uncontested elections were equally skeptical. One poster, “Alonninos,” wrote: “I don’t think there’s much interest in leading the salad committee.” Another commented drolly, “Obviously, Yalies really care about the YCC.”

Avraham, when asked about the YDN’s coverage of the YCC elections, said that “while the YDN should be our greatest critics,” its journalism is at times misrepresentative and harmful to the YCC’s causes.

In an email acquired by The Politic, Avraham communicated the frustration of the Executive Board to the YDN news editors, claiming that the YDN misled its readers regarding

the YCC’s stance on gender-neutral housing. An April 19, 2013 article, “No mixed-gender housing for sophomores this fall,” implied that the YCC had requested that gender-neutral housing be extended to sophomores. The YCC has yet to make any official request for gender-neutral housing for sophomores since it is still in the process of compiling data and speaking with administrators. “Unfortunately, no policy on the scale of gender-neutral housing can be changed in a few months,” Avraham explains. “Gender-neutral housing for juniors took years to implement, so the title of this recent article set an unrealistic expectation that there would be gender-neutral housing this upcoming fall.” Avraham added that the topic is very sensitive and heavily scrutinized, and that any reporting without understanding the nuances of the situation could compromise YCC efforts.

Other YCC members also expressed frustration with YDN reporting. One member, who asked to remain anonymous, stated, “The YDN, instead of trying to empower the student government and let the student body feel like they are going to be there for them and give them legitimacy, constantly undermine [the YCC] and question its legitimacy.” The YCC member claimed that the YDN sought to turn the YCC into a joke, elaborating that the YDN was undermining Gonzalez’s leadership by ridiculing his initiatives.

“If you ridicule everything Gonzalez does on Cross Campus, people outside of the YCC will make fun of Gonzalez, and eventually people within the YCC will blame him too,” the YCC member said.

Undeterred, Gonzalez is hopeful for increased dialogue and engagement with the college newspaper. As someone who understands how the University functions and how policy is made, Gonzalez has often wondered why the YDN does not approach him to write op-ed pieces or multimedia reports on campus-specific issues. “The pushback I get when I offer to write an op-ed piece or [to] be involved in a multimedia report is that the YDN doesn’t want to be an outlet for promoting the YCC.”

He continued: “I legitimately have information about [student issues], that it’d be good for students to know about. ... It’s frustrating.

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“They say we’re not doing enough blah blah blah, but the problem is the way they portray us as an organization that’s irrelevant.”

— John Gonzalez They say we’re not doing enough blah blah blah, but the problem is the way they portray us as an organization that’s irrelevant...They hate us. I don’t know why. It’s self-perpetuating because students read that and say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m not going to take the YCC seriously.’ I’ll go into meetings with administrators, and they’ll see the reports we give them. They don’t necessarily see all of our emails. What they do see is the YDN’s [criticism of YCC]. ...

It’s frustrating.”

“The only way [the YCC] will be effective is if students believe we’re going to be effective,” Gonzalez asserted. “With the grading thing, the students really liked what we wrote, that we hosted a forum, and that a protest was staged [Editor’s note: The protest was organized independently of the YCC]. We’ve shown the capacity of student power and how effective the Yale College Council can be with biglevel issues. The YDN isn’t going to be critiquing that. It’s the first time I’ve had people send me emails and come up to me and say, ‘Good job.’”

Gonzalez hopes to take advantage of YTV, the new multimedia channel of the YDN, by asking if the YCC president can go on air every Sunday and be interviewed on recent developments in the YCC. “Students need to know what’s happening and what’s taking place, and face-to-face is [a] much more effective medium of communication than email.”

The YDN refused to comment on this piece. The YDN, however, asserted in a March 25 News’ View that the YCC’s problems stem from its reluctance to criticize the Yale administration. ***

Hoping to better gauge student attitudes towards Yale’s most local form of government, The Politic sent out a survey that yielded 522 responses

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from University undergraduates. The student body’s attitude towards the YCC ranged from expressed indifference to lukewarm support. Current or former YCC members were, on the whole, more critical of the organization than the general student body. Of the 22 self-identified current or former YCC members who completed this survey, 32 percent (7) approved of the job done by YCC this year, 50 percent disapproved (11), and 18 percent (4) responded “neither.” When asked to give a one-word description of the YCC, these past and present members of the YCC offered “industrious” and “solid” to “toothless,” “troubled,” and “A JOKE.” In comparison, over half of the regular student body believes that the YCC plays a useful role in students’ lives, and only 5 percent believe it is harmful. Forty percent of students, however, think that the YCC plays neither a useful nor harmful role.

The YCC’s approval ratings leave room for improvement. Only 32 percent of students approved of how the YCC does its job, 17 percent of students disapproved, and 51 percent of students had no strong feeling either way.

Why is this the case? It’s not that students don’t engage with the YCC; 62 percent of students have given feedback to the YCC on either University and/or alcohol policy, and two-thirds of those students believe that the YCC was receptive to their concerns. Most students desire the YCC to play a large role on campus. Nearly 70 percent of students think that the YCC should be “very involved” in planning student events, reviewing academic policies, and reforming nonacademic policies.

For any one of these fields, only 5 percent of students do not want the YCC to be involved.

YCC members were ready with explanations for the organization’s low approval ratings. “Students just won’t take the time out of their day to closely read every YCC email or announcement,” Tramonte said. He added that if students don’t care enough to track what the YCC is doing, it’s difficult for them to realize that a lot of their big initiatives move forward in incremental steps. Most students — 50.5 percent, in fact, as The Politic survey revealed — don’t know the name of either one of their college representatives to the YCC.

One of the difficulties is getting students engaged with the process, said both Tramonte and Gonzalez.

Gonzalez recounts experimenting with “widely-publicized office-hours where students could come in and voice their concerns,” but very few students ever showed up. “We tried reaching out to relevant student groups such as fraternities, athletics groups etc [for the Yale presidential search report] and we managed to get 680 responses…that’s not a lot at all,” he explained.

Andrea Villena ’15, the outgoing YCC secretary, agreed with this diagnosis of student apathy, and also cited students’ unrealistic expectations.

“Students see student government as not particularly effective because it ... takes too long to get things done. I think this comes from a lack of understanding of the difficulties we face in terms of process and administration.”

Whenever she reads a YDN op-ed piece in criticism of the YCC, “a couple of points are completely valid,” Villena said. “But most of the article is wrong.”

Rivkin agrees. “Alcohol policy and grading policy changes take years to come to fruition. We’re not going to publicize every meeting with the dean on these issues. It took years for gender-neutral housing to come in place for junior year. These things are cyclical, and they take time.”

Gonzalez recalls what one administrator told him: “John, your ideas are really good but you’re here for one year, and I’m here for much longer than that. If things get done three years later, I’m perfectly fine with that.” Although he found these words disheartening, Gonzalez understands that Yale, as a historic institution, must treat change with caution. As such, Gonzalez has focused his presidency on compiling reports on macro-level issues that are unlikely to be immediately passed. He hopes that by focusing on long-term issues, the YCC is making arguments that “we can keep on making for years down the line, until a big change does come.” Gonzalez believes that the YCC has lacked emphasis on long-term change, and should continue to embrace it “in order to legitimize [itself] as an organization of substance.”

Gonzalez sees his presidency as one focused on long-term change. In an email to The Politic, Gonzalez said that

some of the big achievements during his tenure included involvement in the presidential search process as well as the presidential transition. Under Gonzalez’s stewardship, the YCC also laid the groundwork for long-term advocacy on the College’s alcohol policy and the academic calendar, and helped to ensure that students will have input in any future grading reform.

YCC leaders also pointed to structural problems within their organization as another impediment to progress. “The YCC is an immensely dysfunctional organization. It has almost no institutional memory or protocols; it really reinvents itself each year,” Avraham said.

Before Avraham’s ascension to the vice presidency in the spring of 2012, YCC projects were handled on an case-by-case basis. In a phone interview with The Politic, Brandon Levin ’14 described the organization’s structure when he presided in 2011. The council “tailored each initiative with what would be most effective — would it be best placed to succeed by being an individual-led initiative or a committee-led one?” But both Avraham and Tramonte believed that committee-led initiatives tended to encourage “free riding.” Since assuming the duties of vice president, Avraham has worked to reorganize the YCC into smaller groups with more targeted missions.

“We’ve tripled the number of active projects by pairing each YCC member with one specific policy issue,”

said Avraham. Tramonte also broached the idea of pairing YCC members with students who are very passionate about one particular idea. “I know some students really would like to see the Education Studies major brought back, so if we could pair one YCC member with them, I think it’d be a great way to bring both accountability and recognition to YCC members,” Tramonte explained. Pairing YCC members with their passions, he believes, is an effective way to galvanize interest in student government.

Past and present Executive Board members all describe their relationships with the administration as the cornerstone of progress. Treasurer Joey Yagoda ’14 explained: “What I’ve learned is that the individual personalities of the people on the E-Board matter so much. Who the people are matters more than what their policy platform is.”

Brandon Levin agreed. “The way the YCC interacts with the Yale administration changes every year because of personal relations. That’s critical and can’t be understated,” he said. “The personal relations and the trust it develops made our lives so much easier.

I think some years the relationship is ideal, and the YCC can get the ear of the Yale administration.”

This is one reason why both Gonzalez and Avraham have considered changing the YCC electoral calendar.

As Gonzalez explained to The Politic, April is a difficult time for Executive

Board transitions. “You get elected in April, you have a couple of weeks before school ends, and with finals no one can really do anything. Then you go off for summer, arrive in August, and have to wait a month until you get YCC members.”

This cycle, Gonzalez explained, robs an Executive Board of six or seven months of effective work. “I feel like I’m now the best president I could be, but I only have a few more weeks left,” he said. If the calendar changed, he continued, so that elections were either in January or in the fall, the Executive Board could begin cultivating relations with the administration without being interrupted by finals and the summer.

One difficulty Avraham foresees with the proposal is deciding when to kickstart the new calendar. One Executive Board would have to sacrifice either half its tenure or assume responsibility for a year and a half.

John Meeske ’74, the associate dean for student organizations and physical resources, articulated the interactions between YCC and the administration from a long-term perspective. “There doesn’t necessarily need to to be a personal relationship between [the administration] and the YCC. So if a [given] proposal passes, it’s not because we like that YCC president.

It’s because we thought the proposal was a good idea.” In other words, ideas are judged exclusively on their merit.

According to Meeske, “We in the administration have great respect for 13

the YCC. We see [student government] as the legitimate voice of students and don’t question that.” Nonetheless, “there are some discussions that YCC doesn’t need to be consulted on.”

This position is manifest in University standing committees, where all policies are first formulated and grievances are addressed. Student representatives can only participate on such committees by signing a confidentiality agreement.

According to Meeske, “There are occasionally committees where we encourage students to talk to other students — but that is not the norm.” Students on the committees are expected to express only their own opinions, rather than those of fellow students. Because of the confidentiality agreements, the YCC did not find out about the proposed grade policy changes until only a month and a half before the faculty vote. Gonzalez, sitting on the standing committee that first conceived of the proposal, was powerless to react in his capacity as YCC president.

“As I had signed a confidentiality agreement, I couldn’t speak about this issue at YCC meetings or with other students until we were collectively notified,” Gonzalez rued.

Students apply to standing committees through the YCC, but most who serve on standing committees are not YCC representatives.

Tramonte said, “I want to send YCC members to the standing committees. ... The committees’ functioning is confidential and they stress that no student is beholden to any student organization, which is an understandable safeguard. But at the same time, the YCC isn’t just a normal student organization. We’re an elected body that has been affirmed by the administration as the legitimate representative of the student body.”

Integrating YCC members into the standing committees every year would institutionalize stronger communication between YCC and the administration, but it is unlikely to happen. According to Meeske, “While the president of the YCC meets regularly with the deans, we’ve never had a system where the YCC president is consulted on every major issue regarding students.” To ask that the YCC as 14

a whole be consulted on policy issues would be far-fetched. Meeske suggested that the YCC presidents should establish a relationship by talking with the deans about issues from the students’ perspective, and by asking if there is any way that the YCC, or just the president, can be consulted on big changes.

There will always be a glass ceiling for student representatives, one that will only be breached at the whim of the administration. Going forward, Gonzalez believes the YCC needs to have better and more institutionalized meetings with the administration.

“The people we’re meeting with aren’t the ones making the key decisions. I’m either meeting with people too low down or too high up,” he said, adding that it is his belief that administrators don’t think “the YCC needs [institutionalized meetings] because the YCC hasn’t done anything in the years past.” In contrast, student body presidents at other schools, according to Gonzalez, do have

What can the YCC do to change its perception in the administration’s eyes?

“The YCC’s role in postponing the grading vote shows we can produce good work, and we can try to advocate for students to administrators and have their trust,” Gonzalez said. But he wants students to realize that “we can’t force administrators to do anything.

All we can do is advocate and keep on advocating. So it might hurt us in the short term because if things don’t change, you kinda wasted all your time.” Only through such sustained work can the YCC gain credibility with the administration, and that’s something Gonzalez believes he has accomplished this year.

But Avraham and Gonzalez do not believe respect from the administration is sufficient for the YCC.

“Students need to become more active as well, show that they care, and voice their opinion,”said Avraham. He added that “without the student body standing behind us we won’t be able to achieve everything that we can.”

Unfortunately, apathy may be inevitable at a school where everyone is too busy juggling classes, extracurriculars, and their own lives. Even Gonzalez admitted to The Politic that keeping on top of the YCC has worn him down.

“I think I’ve sent a couple thousand emails as YCC president, I probably have one meeting with an administrator every day, and frankly it’s tough,” said Gonzalez. He added that the demands of the job are such that he took summer classes in preparation for this year, and took only three credits in the fall and four in the spring. “Even four has been a struggle,” he said.

Avraham compared the relationship between the YCC and students to a government’s relationship with its constituents. There will always be people who complain about government, he argued, just as there will always be people who don’t pay attention. Infuriatingly, there will always be people who don’t pay attention to what you do and still complain. “So when students criticize the YCC, I hope they also think about how much

expectations of the student body. Each YCC member interviewed identified personal relationships between the Executive Board and the administration as one intangible that varies from year to year, heightening or limiting the efficacy of that respective Executive Board.

The YCC has identified steps to amplify its voice in the decision-making process. Some situations, however, are beyond the powers of 20-year-olds.

“Please, hold us accountable,” Tramonte told The Politic. “But cut us a break every once in a while.”

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“So when students criticize the YCC, I hope they also think about how much they’ve contributed to the process of student impact.”

— Danny Avraham they’ve contributed to the process of student impact.”

Meeske cautions against “unrealistic expectations that [the YCC] are miracle workers.” When informed of The Politic’s survey results, Meeske stated that, “Students expect [the YCC] to be something it never has been or should be.”

True, members of the Yale College Council are not miracle workers.

They are students like the rest of us, who toil, often unappreciated, on behalf of their peers. Their job isn’t

“Students expect [the YCC] to be something it never has been or should be.”

— Dean John Meeske easy. There is little room to maneuver between an administration that approaches change conservatively and the small attention span and high 15

J.R. REED

Temporary Teachers COPY GOES HERE.

It’s Tuesday morning and Lauren Koster ’12 is awake well before the sun has risen. She tries to scarf down a breakfast substantial enough to carry her through her workday at a wellrespected magnet school in downtown New Haven. At the L.W. Beecher Museum School of Arts and Sciences, Koster teaches fourth graders subjects ranging from mathematics to English grammar. Her elementary school teaching responsibilities present far greater challenges than her late nights in Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library just a few months prior. When she began teaching seven months ago,

Koster struggled through what felt like longer days, unaccustomed to her new job’s substantial workload.

As she worked to gain the respect of her students in the classroom, calls of “Boola Boola” echoed long in the past.

Koster is a Fellow for Teach for America (TFA), a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that employs college graduates to teach high school and elementary school students in underprivileged or low-income areas. The conditions are not ideal and the hours are long. Like other TFA teachers who spoke with The Politic, Koster described her work as “one of the most difficult things I have done in my entire life.”

Although classes officially start at 9:30 a.m., Koster arrives at school at least two hours before the opening bell to prepare for the day ahead. Breaks in the school day are opportunities to refine afternoon lesson plans or lighten her evening workload by grading papers. By the time her students finish class at 3:40 p.m., Koster’s day is still far from over.

Her evenings are often spent at 16

the gym, a routine she sees as essential for clearing her mind after the fever pitch of school. In the evenings, she grades her students’ assignments and tracks their results so that she can adjust her lesson plans accordingly.

After burning the midnight oil, Koster finally heads to bed to fit in some sleep before repeating the routine again the next morning. Preparation for her teaching certification and discussions with her TFA adviser will have to wait for the weekend. ***

In 2012, Koster and 5,800 other college graduates were selected from approximately 45,000 applicants nationwide to join the TFA corps for a two year tour. TFA recruiters have relied on Yalies and other talented college graduates to improve education services in under-resourced schools in poor neighborhoods. In 2012, Yale sent 35 graduates to public schools across the country and was ranked eleventh out of medium-sized colleges in the number of students sent to the TFA corps.

Lanch McCormick, Yale’s Associate Director for Counseling Programs at the Undergraduate Career Services, believes that TFA’s commitment to serving underprivileged communities helps explain the high volume of Yale applicants. According to the Dwight Hall Center for Public Service website, each year 3,500 students, or approximately two-thirds of Yale undergraduates, engage in some type of service or social justice activity through Dwight Hall.

“Yale students are incredibly civic-minded and seek to engage in opportunities where they can make

contributions and make a difference,” said McCormick. “With TFA, they have the opportunity to do that directly and effect change, and I believe the organization’s mission resonates greatly with Yale students.”

In the midst of an economic downturn, Yalies have increasingly gravitated towards TFA and other jobs in the education sector. With the promise of job security and professional flexibility, the two-year program attracts college graduates who can take solace in its significant, though far from career-determining, commitment.

As TFA attracts record-high interest, the application process is becoming as competitive as the hiring processes at top consulting firms and investment banks.

Shanaz Chowdhery ’13, who will teach high school level mathematics at a Washington, D.C. public school next fall, first considered TFA during the second semester of her freshman year.

She explained that her initial interest stemmed from her experience growing up in a low-income household.

“What better way to give back than teaching kids?” asked Chowdhery.

“I thought that if I could go to an underprivileged community and take the resources that were bestowed upon me and distribute those, then that would be a great opportunity for me.”

It is this type of mindset, Koster argued, that TFA representatives look for during the recruitment process.

“The work is challenging, so you have to internalize the mission – to understand what is behind Teach for America.”

Before teaching in underdeveloped and sometimes dangerous communities, Bulldogs must first bid farewell to the ivory tower.

17

After four years of toasting at Mory’s, chasing society taps, and focusing primarily on personal development, Yalies must quickly flip the switch.

As a part of TFA, these recent college graduates are responsible for at least 30 others and must recognize that each action they take and every word they say plays a crucial role in students’ development.

Victoria Perez ’11, who is currently finishing her second year teaching at a charter school in Bridgeport, CT, said things became easier after her first year. But she admits that nothing could have prepared her for this experience. Among the most trying challenges, Perez said, is teaching her young pupils “how to be people.”

“In first grade, they have to focus on how to read, but you also have to teach them how to have a conversation and how to share,” she explained.

Teaching in Bridgeport, where a majority of students come from troubled backgrounds with “very sad stories,” Perez has to focus on what she can control. “There’s nothing I can do as a teacher to change what has happened to these kids before the first grade, but I can change how someone has a great day at school. Their stories are very unfortunate, but [the stories] don’t have to have an effect on their learning.”

Koster believes her first year in the corps has given her an opportunity to build on the foundations she developed at Yale.“This experience very much matures you, gives you an incredible amount of focus and perspective and [allows you] to make a very positive impact on the lives of others.”

Despite the immense challenges she faces on a daily basis, Koster believes Yale students can thrive in the TFA environment because their years as undergraduates have forced them to learn quickly, think critically, and adapt to difficult situations with ease.

While Koster and many TFA corps members have embraced their time in the organization, others point out its flaws. One critique shared by several TFA fellows interviewed was that the organization does not devote enough attention to professional development. Each teacher has only one mentor, who is in charge of thirty different teacher-fellows. As a result, some corps members feel they receive 18

insufficient guidance.

“That first year is mostly about keeping your head above water,” says Perez. “I think, just like the first time you do anything, it’s figuring out your strengths and weaknesses. Going into the second year, you get a handle of teaching—the kids are easier to handle and kids are getting things quicker.”

Perez did say she wished TFA held its corps members to a higher standard of professionalism, noting that teachers are not always held accountable to the organization’s basic requirements such as meeting deadlines.

While many involved in the organization relish their time teaching, Perez explained that corps members have a wide range of experiences, making it difficult to pinpoint a “typical” teaching experience. Considering that corps members lead high-need classrooms in a diverse range of neighborhoods in 36 different states, some teachers ultimately do not have positive experiences.

One Yale graduate and current TFA corps member, who asked to remain anonymous, said she can’t wait to be done with her two-year stint with the organization. “These have been the most excruciating years of my life and no one really prepares you for that,” she said. “People talk your ear off about how meaningful the experience is and how adorable the kids are, but they tend to leave out the sleepless nights and the constant berating.”

While some corps members stay involved in teaching or education policy, others move on to different career fields after their two-year stint. This has raised crucial questions about TFA’s effectiveness and its role in education reform at large. In Perez’s class of Yale corps members, half plan to stay in the classroom, while the rest will pursue other career opportunities.

Perez also noted that students’ decisions to spend additional years teaching depends on the region in which they taught. A high percentage of those in the Mississippi Delta area stay on for a third year, while few California teachers continue teaching.

Right now, Perez is undecided, but leaning toward teaching another year. When TFA recruiters pitch the organization, they explain that after two years one can move on to graduate

school. Perez said that when she joined the organization she didn’t know what career path she wanted to pursue.

Although she has had a great core faculty group at her school, she “doesn’t see [herself] in the classroom forever.”

Carissa Youse ‘13, who did not apply to the TFA program but plans to become a full time teacher, said she felt that many corps members did not maintain strong commitments to teaching. This lack of commitment, Youse said, hurts the students with whom corps members work.

Although she believes TFA teachers are noble, Youse, who plans to pursue a higher degree in education, has ideological problems with the program. “TFA tries to identify people who can become leaders in teaching, but ultimately identifies people who aren’t going to continue teaching,” she explained. “They’re selecting idealistic people with very different backgrounds from the places they’re going into, and placing them in some of the most difficult teaching situations with little support.”

Conflicting attitudes towards the organization notwithstanding, it seems many Yalies will continue to apply to the organization -- whether to launch their teaching careers, heed the call to public service, bridge the gap to graduate school, build future career opportunities, or simply to pad their resumes. Many Yale students not interested in teaching careers often look to the TFA experience as a leadership challenge to embrace.

TFA is not the silver bullet to solving the nation’s education problems or improving teacher quality. Perhaps the program’s most substantial impact is providing future leaders in diverse professions with firsthand experience in low-income schools. “The experience that one has in the classroom carries into so many other fields, because these fields touch on the same issues one faces in the classroom,” Koster said.

“The thousands of alumni who have been a part of TFA who have then gone into different fields serve as a testament to these experiences being ones that you carry with you no matter what.”

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19

SIBJEET MAHAPATRA

Bringing FM 3-24 to Fallujah PERSPECTIVES ON COUNTERINSURGENCY FROM THE GROUND AND FOR THE FUTURE

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Seated across from me, bent over the polished mahogany table that separates us, the Marine is sketching a series of smooth, curved lines with his finger. His movements are precise and powerful, achieving startling clarity of form for a diagram that does not actually exist. He could be a quarterback drafting a play on the back of a football (and is certainly athletic enough to do justice to the role). I do not ask if the Marine played football before he was deployed, but it is safe to assume that the football stadium is not the arena in which he perfected this particular kind of cartography.

“This town, Karabilah in Al Anbar — not Karbala, don’t mix them up — is shaped like a bird, wings stretched out, beak over here, down to the belly and tail over here.” He traces.

I nod. We’ve been speaking for nearly half an hour now, and the Marine is eager to drive this point home. He jabs at two points on the table.

“But talking to the sheik at the beak is completely, totally different than talking to the guy at the belly — and we’re only talking about a difference of 2 kilometers. So all this cultural BS, the rituals of respect — completely unnecessary beyond the basics.”

The Marine pauses for a moment, staring intently at the table. “Granting undue attention to the teaching of cultural platitudes oversimplifies the problem of counterinsurgency,” he says with finality. “It’s a mindset. That’s what matters.”

I nod, though this is just the opposite of what I will be told a day later by another Marine, who swears by the importance of detailed knowledge of culture and customs in the Corps’ campaign to connect with the people of Anbar Province.

This is a connection the Marines sought to forge, of course, in hopes that those indigenous to the region would put their knowledge, tribal affiliations, and guns to work for America — rather than against them. A link with the Iraqi people is the key component of a new strategy, a revised master plan handed down from the highest levels of civilian and military leadership. For the American soldiers, it is part of a final effort to regain the upper hand

in a conflict that started as a “cakewalk” and turned, year by year, into an oppressive and lethal slog. ***

It has been six years since these two men and thousands of other American soldiers began a wholesale shift away from conventional kinetic operations in favor of a counterinsurgency (often shortened to COIN) strategy in Iraq. Since then, more than a thousand Americans have been killed in the Iraqi conflict. Our troops have now departed, withdrawn by President Barack Obama under the terms of the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement. In their wake, according to then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, remains “an independent, free and sovereign Iraq.”

Incidents of terror and sustained violence continue to plague Baghdad, however, and other parts of the nation, as do the commingled problems of political, economic, and institutional instability.

To a large extent, the American role in Iraq has run its course. President Obama’s eagerness to extricate the United States from any and all entanglements in the country have rendered the U.S. comparatively powerless, unable to do much more than whisper into Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ear in hopes that he will listen. And, of course, he has watched it all play out — the aftermath of an intervention that cost a king’s ransom and hundreds of thousands of lives.

Although the game is over, the questions still remain, and the disagreement between these two Marines illustrates a debate central to the ability of our military to succeed in future conflicts: What does matter in training the nation’s Marines and soldiers to effectively execute counterinsurgency operations? Does a greater focus on COIN tactics result in a trade-off in our ability to wage conventional war? What lessons, in the end, have we taken from the nation’s time implementing counterinsurgency in Iraq?

These questions have been the subject of endless discussion during the extended public hangover from the war, and are still debated at the government’s highest levels. However, the soldiers and Marines on the ground,

who have experienced firsthand the friction of executing counterinsurgency, can teach us the most about the conflict’s realities. ***

It’s a cold, grey day in mid-April, and I’m watching a Marine belly-crawl faster than I could have ever thought possible, zigzagging on elbows and knees through a series of orange cones set on a field of wilted grass. He leaps upright at the end of the course, effortlessly slings a waiting fellow into a fireman’s carry, and jogs back to the start line with the man on his back – all before setting him down again, grabbing two 30-pound ammo cans and sprinting back towards us.

We’re at Fort Nathan Hale Naval Reserve Station, located at the south end of New Haven. The Marines before us are demonstrating the Combat Fitness Test, an innovation that was introduced in 2008 to supplement the 3-mile jog, pull-ups, and sit-ups of the traditional Personal Fitness Test used for decades as the primary marker of physical condition. They are walking us through the main components of basic training, as a part of a program to familiarize students and civilians with what it’s like to be in the military.

“You see, the PFT’s great at measuring your fitness, but not combat fitness,” says the first sergeant in charge of the demonstration. “We figured out soon enough that it didn’t reflect reality.”

The afternoon’s other demos include hand-to-hand combat, equipment maintenance, weapons safety, and marksmanship in the combat simulator. These constitute the foundation of a Marine’s instruction, the bread and butter of his ability to wage war, drilled in constantly since boot camp. ***

The standard text for American counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq is the Army Field Manual 3-24. First released in 2006 and written by Gen. David Petraeus, then a rising star who would assume command of the American military presence in Iraq during the 2007 “surge,” FM 3-24 describes counterinsurgency as “a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations conducted along multiple lines of 21

operations ... requir[ing] Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies.” The strategy has been popularly summarized as “winning hearts and minds,” thereby curbing the recruitment of new combatants and starving existing insurgents of the popular base of support that sustains them numerically and operationally — all with the goal of setting a stage for a secure and stable domestic authority.

But the magnitude of COIN’s departure from the tenor of the conventional kinetic warfare practiced in the early years of the war might be better conveyed by the section in the manual entitled, “Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations.” It contains such Zen-like admonitions as “The More You Protect Your Force, The Less Secure You May Be” and “Sometimes Doing Nothing is The Best Reaction.”

For individual soldiers and Marines who fought their way into Baghdad through deserts and minefields — this is not a trivial adaptation.

“It’s incredibly difficult to transition from a kinetic mentality to a COIN mentality,” says Lt. Col. Craig Wonson, a military fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and two-tour veteran of the Iraq War. Wonson served on the ground during the worst of the conventional fighting in 2003 and as a lead planner for counterinsurgency operations in Anbar Province — a center of insurgent activity — around the time of the surge.

“You can’t just flip an on-off switch in the heads of these Marines.

The rules of engagement are completely different — as are the goals, short and long term,” says Wonson. “In executing COIN, if everyone doesn’t understand the bigger picture, you’re not going to succeed. You need to increase the knowledge base, from the bottom up.”

All of which begs the question: What do soldiers need to know?

Sitting at the table, the Marine tells the story of the training he received before he deployed to Iraq — and what he didn’t need to know.

“After Basic Training and the Officer Corps, before an infantry battalion deploys, you go through a five-week training package. Half the time is spent 22

on traditional Marine training. We spent the other half in fake Iraqi villages out in the California desert, filled with role-players from Dearborn, Mich.

They’re your ‘villagers.’”

He shakes his head, half-amused but noticeably frustrated. “But going out and doing that sort of training with role-players — you can’t train for those things. The goal should not be to train for the skill of making casual conversation, or learning the etiquette of not accepting water with your left hand, but to engender an attitude in your Marines whereby they’re going to listen to others. A mindset where the people have a say.”

Wonson disagrees with the Marine’s characterization of the value of immersion training. “The mindset is essential, but when you take the time to learn the language, when you make the effort to understand their traditions, you really build the trust. Going out of the way to respect their culture — well, in theory, you can get by without it, but I’m looking for every tool available to convey to the local populace that we are here for them.”

I ask if mandating that sort of in-depth cultural immersion in future conflicts would impact the time Marines spend perfecting the skill they’ve traditionally excelled at — leveraging the superior tactical and strategic arsenal of the United States to kill our enemies and get out intact, under any conceivable circumstance and despite any hardship.

“Shoot, move, communicate — these are the basics,” he says. “Marines are going to learn that whether they’re learning COIN or otherwise. Where you might lose proficiency is in the high-intensity combined arms training.

In some of the firefights I was involved in during [Operation] Iraqi Freedom, you were fighting an enemy force on the ground, you had aircraft coming in to drop bombs, more aircraft arriving to strafe with their guns, a helicopter coming in to evac the wounded, and mortars and artillery firing, all at the same time. Coordinating your movements to not hit or get hit by your own people — it’s a science, and it’s very effective when the pieces come together. But it takes practice.”

The Marine is less concerned in this regard. “Should we train as a COIN

military or a conventional military? I think it’s a false distinction. Counterinsurgency doesn’t just involve hugging babies and passing out candy. A better way to characterize COIN is that it’s not about hearts and minds, but drivers of conflict. If the reason that a particular village is conflict-ridden is because they need a school, then build them a school.

If the reason is because of extremists, then you need to co-opt or kill those extremists. Reaching out is crucial, but you have to be proficiently trained in how to apply violence. Precision is the key differentiator.”

He continues on a philosophical note. “COIN empowers Marines to feel like they can individually effect change.

They rise to the challenge when you challenge them. You need to be the best

killers in the world, but you also need to have the deepest understanding in the world — and it’s hard, but if we tell them they can do it, they will.” ***

After observing the Marines at Fort Nathan Hale Naval Reserve Station going through their paces, one begins to wonder whether some form of cultural or diplomatic training should be part of the fundamental repertoire — not just for specialists, but for every soldier and Marine. Wouldn’t that best reflect a reality in which the Gulf War has given way to the Bosnias and Afghanistans and Libyas and Syrias, in which high-intensity combat remains a necessary condition to the defense of our national interests, but only nation-

building is sufficient?

How else to inculcate a mindset — the point on which the Marine and Wonson both agree — than to start at the very beginning?

At the gear station, the first sergeant and I resume our conversation, and he shares his own experiences with COIN in Iraq, admitting to a difficult transition but speaking to his appreciation for the strategy, now that he understands its purpose. As he talks, he helps me struggle into a flak jacket, day pack, and helmet, so I can get a taste for the weight a Marine must carry every day.

“What do you think?” he asks, stepping back.

I fiddle with the straps — too snug. My vision is obscured by the

helmet. “It’s more complicated than it looks.”

He hands me an M-4. “Welcome to being a Marine.”

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This article is adapted from a longer work; the full-length original can be found online at thepolitic.org.

23

JACOB WOLF-SOROKIN

Master of the City HOW MAYOR JOHN DESTEFANO, JR. RULED NEW HAVEN

John DeStefano Jr. took over as mayor of New Haven in January 1994, assuming the helm of a city overwhelmed by economic woes and soaring crime rates. Blighted properties dotted the city like pox on skin.

Escalating violence had spilled over from the dilapidated buildings on the edge of town into the downtown district. The Yale campus was hardly immune. In the late 1980s, more than 1,000 major crimes were committed annually at Yale. Major crimes, including cases of larceny, rape, and theft, peaked in 1990 with 1,439 such reports.

Few expected DeStefano, the 49th mayor of New Haven, to last so long in this atmosphere of chaos. In New York City, where crime rates and economic despair were more pronounced than in New Haven, voters dispensed with Mayor David Dinkins after one term. Dinkins, who failed to suppress the Crown Heights riots in August 1991, was seen as weak and ineffectual. “Dave, Do Something!” screamed a New York Post headline.

On the very day of DeStefano’s victory, Dinkins was defeated in 1993 by a swaggering Republican prosecutor, Rudolph Giuliani.

As DeStefano, the longest serving mayor of New Haven, prepares to pack up his corner office on the second floor of City Hall, parallels to Giuliani are apparent. Just as the tough-love practitioner transformed New York City, especially its well-heeled districts, so too DeStefano improved the Elm City. The city is undeniably a safer place in which to live, work, and study.

24

In 2012 alone, the city welcomed 53 new businesses, a jump from 38 the previous year.

Yet, the contenders to replace DeStefano in this year’s mayoral race will not be short of ammunition with which to attack the outgoing mayor.

New Haven remains one of the most dangerous cities in America. In 1995, DeStefano launched the 15-year, $1.5 billion School Construction Program, which aimed to replace or renovate every New Haven public school. The project endures, but for all the ribboncutting ceremonies, school performance remains lackluster. Thirty percent of students do not graduate high school.

Economic development, meanwhile, has delivered uneven returns. The resurgence of downtown has brought few gains to Dixwell and Newhallville, neighborhoods with large minority populations beset by high unemployment. Up to 25 percent of residents in these neighborhoods are unemployed — three times the national average.

As the debate over John DeStefano’s record as mayor drags on in the months leading up to the November elections, supporters and detractors agree on at least one point: DeStefano is a gifted politician. How else could this man have remained in power for as long as he has? ***

Successful politicians win elections by appealing to their base. President Barack Obama’s base of women, minorities, and young voters propelled him to victory in both 2008 and 2012.

For the Obama campaign, which faced a still-miserable economy, demographics was destiny. The strategy was designed to take advantage of the Republican Party’s aging and narrowing voting base.

Electoral bases need not be as diverse as Obama’s coalition. Often, political support falls neatly into ethnic categories. In John F. Kennedy’s first run for Congress in 1946, the young war hero faced off against Joseph Russo, Michael Neville, and several others in a Democratic primary campaign in Charleston, Boston. In the predominantly working-class district, Irish Americans and Italian Americans voted for kin. Joseph Kennedy, the father of the 28-year-old Kennedy, allegedly paid a local janitor — also named Joseph Russo — to enter the race and siphon off votes from the “other” Russo. This confused voters and split the Italian-American vote, helping to secure the Democratic primary for Jack, who went on to win the general election by a landslide. Even the aunt of the politician Russo voted for his janitor doppelganger.

The Italian-American community has enjoyed preeminence in New Haven politics for decades. According to the 2000 census, Italian Americans comprised New Haven County’s largest ethnic group. Of the five mayors since Richard Lee’s long tenure ended in 1970, three have been Italian American.

U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro has represented the New Haven area since 1991. The colorful Joel Schiavone emerged in the 1990s as one of the largest developers in 25

N AT I O N A L

the city, largely responsible for rehabilitating the buildings on Chapel Street.

Angelo Bartlett “Bart” Giamatti served as president of Yale from 1978 to 1986.

DeStefano’s father, a police officer, walked the beat with Biaogi “Ben” DiLieto, former mayor of the city in the 1980s, when the two were on the force together. DeStefano served as a high-level aide for DiLieto. The city helped two private developers, the Fusco Corporation and Schiavone, renovate and reopen Shubert Theater and other nearby buildings to jumpstart the area downtown.

DeStefano’s close relationship with the Fusco family reflects the closeknit Italian-American connections that have defined New Haven politics for so long. In 2000, DeStefano appointed a committee to select a contractor to develop Long Wharf, the city’s waterfront district. The committee unanimously picked New England Development Corp., a nationally known Massachusetts firm that specializes in mall development. But according to the Hartford Courant, before the committee announced its decision publicly, DeStefano offered his own suggestion: Fusco Corporation.

The Fuscos’ qualifications for the job were dubious. The family business had never landed such a lucrative and ambitious gig. A string of recent fumbles, including a $118 million unpaid mortgage owed to the state and a lawsuit pending over management of another property, raised concerns.

The company also said it would need a hefty public subsidy to complete the project. Nevertheless, the selection committee sided with DeStefano, sparking allegations of favoritism.

“No question, [the Fuscos] bought that deal,” Anthony Dawson, a longtime New Haven alderman who later ran against DeStefano for mayor in 2011, told the Courant staff writer, Janice D’Arcy.

A network of politicians, officials, university administrators, and powerful developers, largely from the ItalianAmerican community, was the foundation for DeStefano’s rise to power. But the preeminence of Italian Americans in New Haven politics is waning. Much of the population has migrated to the suburbs; the city is now only 10.5 percent Italian American. New ethnic 26

groups, especially those from Puerto Rico and Latin America, have grown steadily in numbers; of New Haven’s 130,000 residents, 27.4 percent are of Hispanic or Latino origin. Add an additional 35.4 percent representing the African-American population, and the ethnic electoral map crystallizes.

As these groups have grown in numbers and political influence, DeStefano’s own community and source of strength has diminished.

In 2005, DeStefano supported a challenger’s bid to unseat Jorge Perez, a Latino alderman, as president of the Board of Aldermen. DeStefano’s camp won the battle (although Perez was later reelected), delivering the board presidency to Carl Goldfield. A number of Latino politicians campaigned the next year against DeStefano as he sought the governor’s mansion. DeStefano’s defeat was due, in part, to his lack of Latino support.

Ever the master politician, DeStefano reinvented himself, combining progressive policies with smart politics to court leaders and woo voters from this key demographic. He scored big political points by introducing the Elm City Resident Card, designed to protect the 10,000 to 15,000 undocumented immigrants in the city. Left-leaning proponents of immigration reform from around the country heralded the program. When DeStefano ran for reelection in 2011, Latino leaders like Tomás Reyes, former president of the Board of Aldermen, state Rep. Juan Candelaria, Fair Haven Alderman Migdalia Castro, and Fair Haven Alderman Ernest Santiago stood by his side. Candelaria, who campaigned against the mayor during his gubernatorial bid, cited the mayor’s more proactive approach to school reform in explaining his change of heart. Castro applauded the Elm City ID card and the mayor’s support of the statewide DREAM Act to give the children of illegal immigrants access to in-state tuition rates.

The mayor and his economic development team have also funneled millions of dollars into Fair Haven, a Hispanic neighborhood traditionally plagued by persistent crime, poverty, and drug problems. Fair Haven has benefited from the redevelopment of vacant land and buildings, the devel-

opment of a waterfront park, and the improvement of the public infrastructure. These developments have helped make the DeStefano-Latino relationship “exemplary,” Westville Alderman Sergio Rodriguez told The Politic.

DeStefano has also allied himself with powerful players within the black community, notably with the controversial pastor Boise Kimber. The alliance began back in 1989 when DeStefano first ran for mayor. Most of the black community was united against him. Voters in usually low-turnout wards waited for hours to cast a vote in order to elect John Daniels, who was hoping to become New Haven’s first black mayor. Rev. Kimber manned a lonely campaign outpost for DeStefano in Newhallville. It was based at his spiritual home, the First Cavalry Baptist Church.

Kimber helped round up votes again for DeStefano in 1993, this time with greater success. And in 2001, when DeStefano faced a tough challenge from state Sen. Martin Looney, Kimber worked hard to pull the crucial black vote and keep him in office.

DeStefano has returned the favor many times over. The mayor testified on Kimber’s behalf in court after the latter was convicted of stealing an elderly woman’s funeral money. According to a Dec. 18, 2009, article from the New Haven Independent, DeStefano gave a Kimber-run group federal money to build homes in Newhallville. The money included open-ended $30,000 annual payments to Kimber for unspecified “consultant” services; no detailed supporting paperwork was submitted.

A year after DeStefano’s 2001 reelection, the mayor appointed Kimber the chairman of the city’s Board of Fire Commissioners. Within a year, Kimber had to step down after he angered firefighters by telling them that people with “too many vowels” in their names might not be hired by the department – an obvious reference to the Italian-American community. No longer the board’s chairman, he stayed on as one of the commissioners, and in that capacity, received wide media attention in connection with the 2009 Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano. That suit involved 20 New Haven firefighters, 19 of them white and two

of them Hispanic, who had passed the test for promotions to management. New Haven officials invalidated the test results because none of the black firefighters who passed the exam scored high enough to be considered for the positions. The complainants — the white and Hispanic firefighters — claimed they had been denied the promotions because of their race. The court found in their favor.

Of Kimber’s involvement in the Ricci suit, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a conservative, wrote: “In the backroom dealing ... the original decision to deny promotions to white firefighters was heavily influenced by a local African-American ‘kingmaker’ with a direct line to New Haven’s mayor.”

Yet despite Kimber’s obvious influence, his support was certainly not enough to secure the entire African-American community. Indeed, black New Havenites are too politically fragmented to operate successfully as a predictable bloc of voters, a reality that has benefited DeStefano.

“The black community fights too much amongst itself,” a member of

the Democratic Town Committee, the executive body of New Haven’s Democratic Party, told The Politic. The DTC member asked to remain unnamed to avoid any political repercussions.

“Take, for example, Varrick Church and Beulah Church on Dixwell Avenue,” the member said. “Both are politically active. Varrick is establishing a charter school to serve the Dixwell and Newhallville communities. But the churches just don’t get along.”

The DTC member continued: “There are two black candidates running or considering to run for mayor this year: Gary Holder-Winfield and Kermit Carolina. Many folks within the black community believe that this mirrors the divisions within our community that undermine our strength.”

The New Haven African-American community’s inability to unite and attack has saved DeStefano more than once, most recently during the 2011 mayoral race. In a four-way Democratic primary that included two AfricanAmericans, the incumbent finished with a plurality of just 43 percent of the vote. With an opposition divided, DeStefano triumphed.

***

The biggest news story from the 2011 elections, however, wasn’t DeStefano’s tenth mayoral victory. According to many city insiders, the real winners were the Yale University employees’ unions. Local 34, Yale’s pink-collar union, and Local 35, its blue-collar union, had accused the DeStefano administration of stifling democracy and paying too little attention to average taxpayers and workers. They pushed for new voices in city government.

On Sept. 13, the night of the Democratic primary, the unions captured 14 out of 15 races in which their aldermanic candidates faced City Hallbacked contenders. A few months later, in March 2012, the unions delivered once again, winning races for ward cochairs in Dwight, Fair Haven Heights, Dixwell, Newhallville, and East Rock.

DeStefano, the master politician, didn’t skip a beat. Rather than fight the evident shift in his city’s political sentiments, he incorporated the union platform into his own. In his State of the City address in early 2012, DeStefano announced his support for a “jobs pipeline,” an idea first proposed by 27

may think that the weaver’s life is easy, because he works at home, sheltered, close to his loom; but in reality the task is very hard. He labors with his arms, but see his feet working the pedals while his eyes remain glued to the cloth lest it become tangled. His attention is divided among the many threads, some going here and others there, keeping his eye open lest any break.”

DeStefano has been at his loom for 20 years, trying to keep each of the threads in New Haven’s elaborate fabric from tearing. This has meant keeping the various constituencies happy, with appointments, policies, and economic investment. Each time one of the threads threatens to snap, DeStefano has acted just in time.

DeStefano’s successor will inherit both his triumphs and his failures. His political instinct and agility, however, is not transferrable with the simple swearing of the oath. Such a gift is possessed by only the rare politician. It’s one thing to win a city’s election. It’s quite another to become its master.

the Board of Aldermen only a month earlier. The pipeline, which has not yet fully formed, will comprise a set of coordinated programs that train and link job-seekers with employers.

Moreover, DeStefano didn’t wait until after his inauguration to make his first move. The unions had campaigned to bring back “community beat” policing, the practice famously caricatured by Officer Krupke in “West Side Story” musical, whereby police get out of their cars and walk the streets. DeStefano got there first. A mere month after the union’s electoral victories, the mayor appointed Dean Esserman — former chief of police for Providence, R.I., Stamford, Conn., and the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Metro-North Police Department — as the New Haven Police Department’s new chief. One of the changes Esserman implemented within the Police Department was to resuscitate this abandoned practice. In the face of new and harsher political realities, only three years after denouncing the old-style community policing approach, DeStefano reversed course.

Rob Smuts ’01, the city’s chief administrative officer, is confident of 28

the strength of the relationship forged between the union-backed aldermen and the mayor. “We have to have a good working relationship with the Board of Aldermen,” he told The Politic.

But it hasn’t been easy. “There are 30 part-time alderman, each of whom has a day job. We have to do a lot of work to make sure they all feel included.”

Bruce Alexander, Yale’s vice president for New Haven and state affairs, echoed Smuts’ sentiments to The Politic. The city has seen progress in many areas, he said, from downtown development to policing to school renovations. And all of this has been a result of the consensus DeStefano has been able to build.

“He held the city together in important ways,” said Alexander. “I give the mayor a lot of credit for his ability to manage the politics of the various groups in the city.” ***

Lyndon B. Johnson, brilliantly brought to life in Robert Caro’s Master of the Senate, was the consummate politician. He knew whose back to pat, whose hand to shake, which buttons to push, which levers to pull. The

Rob Smuts ’01, the city’s Chief Administrative Officer, told The Politic that one of DeStefano’s greatest assets is his understanding of the different interests in the city.

Francis Underwood, the conniving House Majority Whip played

by Kevin Spacey in Netflix’s recently released House of Cards, is Johnson’s fictional reincarnate. The symmetry is hardly subliminal. On the wall of Underwood’s office hangs a large photograph of Johnson, six feet four inches, leaning into the face of the shorter Senator Richard Russell. The famous “Johnson Treatment” cries out intimidation and near physical coercion.

Caro has a penchant for powerful political players. His first biography, Power Broker, another monstrosity of a book clocking it at 1,165 pages, chronicles the rise and fall of Robert Moses.

Readers are less likely to have heard of Moses than the 36th President of the United States. The son of German-Jewish immigrants, Moses was more than any unelected civil servant; he was the

“Master Builder” of New York City. Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, Jones Beach, the United Nations headquarters in New York, the 1964 World’s Fair, Jones Beach, Central Park Zoo, Bryant Park, and the Triborough Bridge were all his construction projects. Picasso had Guernica; Mozart had his 40th; Moses had the Henry Hudson Parkway. Like the “Master of the Senate,” the “Master Builder,” had brains and drive. But he also possessed a dark side. In his signature sensationalized tone, Caro writes:

“For once Moses came into possession of power, it began to perform its harsh alchemy on his character, altering its contours, eating away at some traits, allowing others to enlarge.

The potential had always been there, like a darker shadow on the edge of the bright gold of his idealism. With each small increase in the amount of power he possessed, the dark element in his nature loomed larger.”

P

Texan said of himself: “I do understand power, whatever else may be said about me. I know where to look for it, and how to use it.”

Johnson saw steps ahead of his Senate colleagues. He had the vision and ruthlessness to wrestle autonomy away from the powerful Senate committee chairmen and appropriate that influence for himself as majority leader.

As Caro writes:

“This would be difficult, for deceiving the southern senators meant deceiving men who were expert parliamentarians, expert legislators, masters of their craft. Masters. But not geniuses.”

DeStefano is not unlike Caro’s Johnson. He knows where to look for power, and he knows how to use it. He is not an idealist. He is a technician of power – tough, slippery, effective, a politician in the mold of Giuliani, the Daleys of Chicago, and Johnson.

Perhaps the best word to explain DeStefano’s long reign is “inclusivity,” but not in a kumbaya, feel-good way.

Consider this rather elaborate simile, preached at a funeral for the Spanish King Philip II, in an 1598 sermon:

“The life of a king resembles that of a hand-loom weaver. ... You 29

MATTHEW NUSSBAUM

The Changing of the Guard ELITE MILITARY SCHOOLS IN THE EVOLVING WORLD

On a cold Saturday evening in early February, West Point — a place of ritual and traditions — hosted its annual Yearling Winter Weekend, a banquet and formal dance for second-year students. Cadets donned plain, grey dress uniforms and white gloves. Civilian dates, who came in from around the country, wore either evening dresses or suits and ties. The dinner was a lengthy affair, marked by a number of toasts and prayers. The evening had palpable religious overtones. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, wearing a tuxedo, delivered the keynote address. The growing political conservatism of America’s military elite was on full display.

This year, however, was different.

This year, with no more fanfare than the occasional murmur among cadets, a gay couple attended the banquet for the first time. Just a few years ago, this incident would have resulted in expulsions and explosive controversy.

Only months earlier, Scalia, the keynote speaker, had asked, “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder?”

From its policy toward homosexuality, to the role of women in the military, to the general place of force in U.S. foreign policy, the American military is rapidly moving into uncharted territory. The world’s foremost military power is experiencing its greatest period of flux and change since the retreat from Vietnam and the end of the draft in early 1970s.

Nowhere are these changes felt in quite the way as they are at the nation’s three premiere military academies — located in West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs — where the future leaders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, respectively, are spending their bright college years.

‘DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL’

On Dec. 22, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 (DADT).

After 17 years, the policy — under which some 13,000 service members were discharged for “homosexual conduct” — finally ended. During the transition period, all of the academies prepared for the change by conducting 30

numerous studies for possible impacts.

The potential for backlash was obvious.

“The academy was quite professional in looking at possible repercussions,” Eugenia Kiesling ’78, in her 18th year as a history professor at West Point, told The Politic. “When it happened, it was a bit of a fizzle.”

The attitude among students at the academies, while mixed, was mostly welcoming and open.

“I can say there is a sort of ‘so what?’ attitude now when it comes to whether or not someone is gay,” commented a member of the class of 2017 at the Naval Academy, who served in the Navy before coming to Annapolis. Due to the academies’ press policies, he and the other cadets and midshipmen interviewed for this piece spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to allow them to express themselves freely and without fear of repercussion.

“The overall reaction at West Point has been nothing but positive,” said a second-year cadet at West Point majoring in mechanical engineering.

“It’s a nonissue.”

Beyond tacit acceptance, there has been active movement at West Point on behalf of the LGBTQ community. Students recently founded a new club called “Spectrum,” similar to the gay-straight alliances found at most colleges throughout the country.

In Colorado Springs, life at the Air Force Academy “didn’t skip a beat” when the law was repealed, recounted a second-year systems engineering major. “I don’t know anyone personally that is gay here, but if I did, I wouldn’t think anything of it. I think people are generally accepting about those kinds of things.”

The reaction among the students at the academies makes it easy to forget the controversy raised when the repeal made its way through the legislative process. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, spoke for many of his fellow Republicans in late December 2010, when he said: “It is a disgrace that this latest item from the liberal legislative wishlist is being jammed through at the expense of military readiness.”

“Today’s a very sad day,” bemoaned Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on the day of the definitive vote in the Senate. “The commandant of the United States Marine Corps says when

your life hangs on the line, you don’t want anything distracting.”

But for the most part, the young men and women at the academies feel no such distraction. They spend every day preparing for that day when their lives — and the lives of the soldiers they will lead — could hang in the balance, whether in the deserts of the Middle East, the jungles of Latin America, or the mountains of the Korean peninsula.

“Before ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ was repealed, there were definitely cadets who everyone knew were gay, but it really wasn’t a huge deal for most people,” said a third-year cadet at West Point. “The general opinion of most officers and NCOs [noncommissioned officers] I have spoken with, as well as my own opinion, is that as long as a soldier is able to get the job done, his or her personal lifestyle should not be evaluated in a professional setting.”

WOMEN IN COMBAT

Women have made similar strides in obtaining equal treatment in the military. In late January 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta moved forward to lift the ban on women in combat roles. While the repeal of DADT brought hardly a flicker from the academies, this January decision lit a match.

“The attitude of many of us,” stated a third-year male cadet at West Point, “is that the move was purely political and that its consequences were not really considered. During our military training here, I have seen some extraordinary women who I have nothing but the utmost respect for, but physically and psychologically, men are stronger than women in extremely stressful situations — aka combat.” The cadet did acknowledge that exceptions exist, but insisted these are “few and far between, and not enough to justify the problems that arise from having integrated combat units.”

Another junior at West Point spoke of basic logistics: “When the Navy had women getting pregnant onboard ships during deployments, many had to be sent home for proper medical care. That simply won’t be feasible for combat roles.”

A second-year midshipman at Annapolis, with prior service experience, felt differently: “The majority seems to 31

view this as the natural next step in an ever-changing military.” Indeed, the higher military brass do not appear to share the feelings of many of the cadets. According to many reports, the Joint Chiefs pushed the decision in the first place.

Kiesling, the West Point professor, believes that the military should permit women to serve in combat roles and knows a number of officers who share this view. Nonetheless, she saw the decision as creating “a lot of anger” at the academy. She explained, “Many men join the armed forces to show their masculinity. It’s important to these men that war remain a male preserve. It would no longer be as meaningful if women could do it.”

Life among a student body that is about 85 percent male can certainly be difficult for female cadets. One firstyear cadet said that while she had never felt discriminated against by either 32

faculty or Army personnel, the same could not be said for her classmates.

“Some of my male classmates make it painfully obvious that they do not respect the role of a female in combat or even in the combat training we do here,” she noted. “It can be very frustrating to work with a peer who does not respect or trust you because of your gender.”

The regimented uniformity of life at the academies can help temper this distrust and disrespect. “We all wear the same clothes all the time, follow the same rules, we’re all on the same schedule and have to think about similar futures. Where other schools might divide,” she explained, “the Academy comes together.”

Uniformity may not be enough for some cadets who remain uncomfortable with the decision to expand the female role in combat. Echoing many at West Point, one second-year

cadet voiced a basic concern: “It’s not worth putting American lives at risk to have complete equality — at the end of the day, there’s a biological difference.” He was not, however, completely opposed to the idea. “If there’s a woman who can lift a 200-pound soldier who has been shot in the hip and can’t walk,” he said, “then sure, she can join the infantry.”

THE SEQUESTER

The military’s changes go beyond social policy and into the realm of budgetary matters. In March 2013, after a great deal of political theater, congressional leaders failed to reach a deal on the automatic spending cuts that the government had put in place months before. The result was sequestration — including $85 billion in automatic spending cuts over the next seven months. About $43 billion of the cuts

apply to defense programs in the short term. The cuts are slated to total $500 billion over the next 10 years. Like all other Department of Defense agencies, the academies face an 8 percent acrossthe-board spending cut.

As April fades into May, many college students around the United States prepare for summers abroad.

This is no longer an option for cadets at military academies, where funding for summer trips has been scrapped. In the past, cadets were routinely sent on outreach trips to foreign academies in places like Europe or India. Due to the sequester, these trips are being severely scaled back. Meanwhile, the American academies continue furloughing civilian professors, and their libraries and computer labs often lack supplies as basic as printer paper.

“We are definitely feeling it hard at the academy,” wrote a thirdyear cadet in an email. “There are many quality-of-living issues that are brushed aside or flat-out ignored because of the lack of funding or misappropriated funding. For example, Congress has mandated that the size of the Corps of Cadets be reduced, yet construction on a new, multimilliondollar barracks building is slated to begin next year.”

“It’s hard not to be pissed at legislators for allowing this to happen to the military,” said the second-year engineering major. “It’s like they don’t even care.” This same cadet, however, noted that it seemed as though some in the academies’ leadership were trying to make the cuts appear worse than they actually were. In this way, when budget hearings in Congress begin, the leaders can point to all sorts of draconian effects in a call for more funding.

Many pundits believe the cadet has a point. With the cuts to summer programs and the furloughing of civilian employees — not to mention the deferment of certain types of maintenance and research — some academy programs have remained oddly untouched. As Joe Nocera recently pointed out in The New York Times, athletic teams have faced no cuts, and neither have the prep schools where many recruited athletes spend a year improving their grades.

“Of course not,” wrote Nocera. “After all, Navy is joining the Big East in 2015.”

CIVILIAN-MILITARY RELATIONS Civilian control of the military has always been one of the brightest features of American democracy. It is a principle almost universally revered by politicians and military leaders alike.

As social and strategic policies change, reshaping America’s armed forces, it is understood that the political branches of government and not the military itself should spearhead these changes.

But a chasm is widening between the civilian populace and the military.

The absence of a draft, as well as the lack of new taxes to fund current wars, contributes to the feeling that the U.S. is not at war, the Army is at war.

Increasing concern among the civilians leading the military worsens this gap. Robert Gates, the highly regarded secretary of defense who served under Presidents Bush and Obama, made a point of addressing the incongruity as his tenure at the Pentagon wound down. In a speech at Duke University in 2010, Gates acknowledged that “for most Americans, the wars remain an abstraction — a distant and unpleasant series of news items that do not affect them personally.” He continued, “In the absence of a draft, for a growing number of Americans, service in the military, no matter how laudable, has become something for other people to do.” Indeed, less than 1 percent of the American population served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well over 10 percent served in World War II, a conflict that lasted less than half as long.

“If you don’t want to defend the rights and freedoms of this country, you don’t have to,” pointed out the second-year mechanical engineering major at West Point. “You can be totally disconnected from this country’s foreign policy. You don’t have to care about the soldier who was wounded defending this country if you don’t want to.” And yet, the cadet went on, “I don’t think cadets have a warrant to be bitter.”

Peter Feaver and Richard Kohn, professors who have dedicated their careers to studying the civil-military

gap, came to the following conclusion in 2001: “Military officers express great pessimism about the moral health of civilian society and strongly believe that the military could help society become more moral, and that civilian society would be better off if it adopted more of the military’s values and behaviors.”

According to Kiesling, there exists “a very negative attitude about civilians as morally inferior.” She elaborated, “Cadets are inclined to believe that civilians have an easier life, that civilians are fat, they’re lazy, they’re out of shape. That when they go to university they don’t have to go to class.”

This disconnect, claimed Kiesling, “is troubling. It might be dangerous.”

There is hope that the return of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) to elite universities like Harvard and Yale, in the wake of DADT’s repeal, will help to restore some of the mutual respect between civilian and military leaders. In spite of all the talk of national security issues today, the increasingly relevant civil-military gap continues to be neglected.

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RACHEL O’CONNELL

The Ascenders THE ALIYAH OF ETHIOPIAN JEWRY

A dusky hut occupies the gated yard next to a building in Mevasseret, Israel. The dark, round structure – featuring sloped sides, a thatched roof, and a dirt floor – stands apart from its bright, concrete neighbor, which boasts glass windows and functioning electricity. In Ethiopia, families conduct all of their daily activities in these huts – cooking, weaving, eating, and sleeping.

In Israel, however, the building serves a purely educational purpose: showing the children of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants how their parents and grandparents lived in their home country.

The town of Mevasseret hosts an 34

absorption center for recent immigrants from Ethiopia. Supported by the Jewish Agency, a nonprofit organization that has brought Jews from around the world to Israel for over 80 years, the center includes hundreds of one-story homes, classrooms, a computer room, a library, two health clinics, clubs, and sports fields. Such well-equipped buildings are standard in Israel, but the majority of the Ethiopian olim (or immigrants) lived in mud huts in their homeland, explains Susan Handler of the Aliyah, Absorption and Special Operations Unit of the Jewish Agency.

“Most of them have never seen a toilet, a stove, a refrigerator,” she writes in an email to The Politic. “One of the first things they are taught even before their Aliyah is what these items are and how to use them.”

Aliyah, Hebrew for “ascent,” refers to the Jewish diaspora’s journey to their Holy Land, Israel. According to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, no one has confirmed the origins of the Beta Israel (or “House of Israel”) Jews living in some 500 villages in Ethiopia’s northern province of Gondar. They may come from a lost Israelite tribe or descended from one of

three groups: converted Christians and pagans, Jews who fled Egypt after the destruction of the First Temple in the 6th century BCE, or King Solomon and Queen Sheba. Until the Middle Ages, the Beta Israel community lived relatively unimpeded by the state and other religions. And despite little connection to Jews in the rest of the world, the Beta Israel Jews remained fiercely pious.

By the 17th century, however, the Jews lost their autonomy to the Ethiopian empire (aided by Portugal).

In their final battle in 1624, some Jews so adamantly resisted their enemies that they jumped to their deaths from

the walls of their fortress rather than be taken captive or slaughtered. Prisoners of war were enslaved and converted.

Since then, Ethiopian Jews have faced discrimination and persecution within their own country.

From the latter half of the 20th century onward, Ethiopians have taken advantage of Israel’s Law of Return, which proclaims that Jews have the right to settle within its borders and gain citizenship. Then in 1977, Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam proceeded to carry out a coup d’etat in Ethiopia, imposing a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship and pursuing policies against the

Beta Israel Jews that left some 2,500 Ethiopian Jews dead and 7,000 homeless. Additionally, Mengistu forced the survivors to forfeit their land to the state and share it with non-Jews. In the early 1980s, the government banned the expression or teaching of Judaism and Hebrew. A civil war, famine, poverty, and forced conscription drove the Beta Israel Jews out of Ethiopia.

Liat Damoza’s family fled the oppressive nation in 1982. Damoza, the petite woman who now acts as the donor missions coordinator in the Jewish Agency’s Resource Development and Public Affairs Unit, has big brown eyes that draw in the visitors with whom she speaks. When giving presentations on the Jewish Agency’s work at absorption centers, she scoffs the warm weather and dresses in a pastel buttondown shirt over khaki pants. Damoza’s family spent two years in a Sudanese refugee camp and was smuggled into Europe before making its way to Israel. “I was only a small girl when I made Aliyah,” she explains. Damoza felt much more comfortable celebrating her faith once she arrived in the country, and she enjoyed “the freedom to celebrate the Jewish festivals openly and to help one another without being afraid of being Jewish.”

Damoza’s family members were among the earliest group of olim. The major waves of immigration from Ethiopia to Israel occurred in two parts, and the current and final wave of immigration constitutes a third.

Operation Moses, the first covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews, lasted for six weeks between 1984 and 1985, according to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. After Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sold arms to Mengitsu and the dictator realized that he needed foreign assistance, he agreed to release thousands of Jews from his country. Seven thousand left successfully, but 15,000 remained when the project came to a premature close.

After a newspaper article exposed the evacuation, Arab states pressured Sudan to stop facilitating Ethiopian Jews’ departure.

The second wave of immigration was an extraordinary feat relative to the first. Operation Solomon took place in 1991. Over three days, Israel airlifted 14,324 Ethiopian Jews into its 35

borders. The operation occurred right after Mengitsu’s regime fell to rebels. If Israel had hesitated, the new Ethiopian rulers could have abused the Jews as bargaining chips when seeking concessions from other nations.

The current and final wave of mass immigration for the Falash Mura Ethiopians, who are tied to the Beta Israel community, will finish at the end of 2013. After this date, Jews from Ethiopia will be able to immigrate to Israel, but they will have to apply through their embassy, like Jews in other countries making Aliyah. Between 2011 and 2012, the Israeli government increased the admission rate from 110 to 250 Ethiopian olim per month in light of high demand.

From the very first wave of immigration, Ethiopian olim have tested the patience and acceptance of Israelis already living in the Jewish state. Amir Sagron, an employee of the Jewish Agency and the Israel fellow at Yale University’s Joseph Slifka Center, recalls growing up in Israel in the 1990s. This time period encompassed a massive influx of Ethiopians as well as the immigration of over 1 million Jews from the former Soviet Union.

“Suddenly, in elementary school, you have many new immigrants all over Israel,” says Sagron, who was born in 1986. “Suddenly, you have classes with both African Jews and European, ‘whitish’ Jews.” He attended classes with children from around the globe – Canada, Ethiopia, Poland, Russia, and Yemen, among other nations. He posed the questions: “How do you get those kids to like each other, talk, converse, engage? How can I engage with a kid that doesn’t know a word of Hebrew?”

In the minds of native Israeli children, Ethiopian immigrants speak a strange language, bear an peculiar skin color, and observe unfamiliar customs. Sagron notes, “Children can be mean, making fun of other children who don’t know Hebrew or are different.” Hence, the Jewish state and community make an effort to teach children to tolerate, if not embrace, one another’s characteristics. Sagron remembers how a popular children’s broadcasting station aired music videos encouraging children to refrain from acting violently or cruelly toward one another. “It’s not a coincidence you 36

could see [these videos] like 50 times a day,” he says matter-of-factly.

Just as Ethiopian-born children struggle to communicate with their peers, so do some adults, points out Yeshambel Kafale, a social counselor and translator at the Mevasseret absorption center. “Most immigrants are nervous about visiting government offices or attending their children’s PTA meetings or visiting the doctor, due to the fear that they won’t understand what they’re being told,” he laments. “They are afraid they will complicate the situation or won’t know how to respond to questions and will be humiliated.”

The absorption center helps olim to break down the language barrier by offering ulpan, Hebrew language classes, in which students also learn about their rights as Israeli citizens.

Kafale gives his phone number to nervous immigrants, although he says that they eventually “realize that they are able to cope on their own.”

Coping has become even easier for the most recent immigrants, thanks to preparatory classes that take place in Gondar before the olim depart from Ethiopia. In the spring of 2011, the Jewish Agency began operations for its project, “Completing the Journey.”

Programs range from classes for children, teens, and parents; to nutrition assistance; to health care; and to Jewish cultural and religious activities. The adult education program is split into 100 hours for “Conversational Hebrew,” 200 hours for “Return to Judaism,” and 20 hours for “Essentials of Life in Modern Society.” Upon finishing their lessons, the olim depart for Israel, where they stay at an absorption center for 24-30 months.

Kafale personally benefited from learning more about modern society before traveling to Israel. He has “experience in ‘changing worlds’ in Ethiopia” because he moved from his village to the capital city of Addis Adaba. He affirms, “This experience made it easier to get used to my new life in Israel, and I quickly learned to adapt to the Israeli culture and mentality.” In light of his own process of acculturation, Kafale felt inspired to work at the Mevasseret absorption center as a “bridge between the world where they came from, as an Amharic speaker, to

the new world where they had just arrived, modern Israel.”

Despite the classes and support system offered in Gondar, many immigrants rely on help from people like Kafale to ease their transition into Israeli society. He recalls working with a family of olim who had no experience with technology. “With patience I taught them everything they needed to know, and I accompanied them to the different government offices that they needed,” he describes. “After I spent a month closely accompanying them, and held many conversations where I encouraged them, all of a sudden they gained their self-confidence. The mother began to use the modern electrical appliances in their apartment, and no longer feared learning new skills. … They no longer need my close support when they leave the apartment to do chores.”

But the world beyond the apartment walls can be more frightening.

Poverty and a lack of education abound, creating a bleak outlook for Ethiopian immigrants seeking jobs. Even among Ethiopian olim who have graduated from a college or university, fewer than 15 percent find jobs that are compatible with their educational degrees.

To alleviate the unemployment issue, Israeli nonprofit organizations have extended their educational offerings beyond language lessons to vocational training. (“Giving them not only the language but also the tools to succeed: That’s a huge challenge,” insists Sagron.) For instance, Olim Beyahad, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007, matches Ethiopian job candidates with employers, provides training for the workplace, and teaches leadership skills through workshops and tutoring.

Ethiopians do not just leave the confines of their new Israeli homes to seek employment; they also enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Sagron believes that the IDF informally fosters tolerance because the government places Israelis of diverse backgrounds in “a small unit” in which “everyone is friends.” He remembers gathering with his comrades on Friday evenings for dinner. This meal marks the beginning of the weekly rest that is customary in the Jewish faith — Shabbat. The soldiers have the chance to take their minds off of their duties and appreci-

ate their time with one another over a relaxing meal.

“If I’m having a Shabbat with all my unit, we have time to explore,” Sagron reflects. “We have time to engage, we have time to talk, we have time to tell each other stories.”

The IDF supplements this casual, natural bonding with substantial programs intended to integrate soldiers from Ethiopia into the armed forces. There are “platforms for the IDF commanders and officers to teach their soldiers tolerance, to teach their soldiers about each other’s cultures and challenges,” Sagron explains. The IDF also has its own ulpan program to teach soldiers Hebrew.

Even with support from the government and nonprofits, Ethiopian immigrants encounter a steep learning curve. Unfamiliar dwellings, advanced technology, a strange language, a lack of education, poverty, unemployment, discrimination – all of these issues await the olim. Yet the stories of success offer hope to the immigrants.

Damoza and Kafale, for example, are Ethiopian Jews who came to Israel and went on to pursue careers supporting resettlement programs.

Then there is the single mother

of five whose husband passed away in Gondar five years before she and her children moved to Israel. The six surviving family members, burdened with emotional and financial tumult, benefited from remittances sent by relatives in Israel. Despite the father’s absence, the family made its way to Israel, where they stayed in an absorption center run by the Jewish Agency.

The mother studied Hebrew and Judaism; her children enrolled in classes.

They received baskets of basic supplies, and their new home featured all necessary furniture and appliances. The kids made friends with their neighbors at the center.

There is also the young Ethiopian man who traveled to Israel with his parents, two brothers, and grandmother. Just three months later, the family welcomed their first Israeli child, a baby girl. The young man had studied Hebrew so arduously back in Ethiopia that he went straight to a regular class without undergoing intensive language training in an ulpan. He learned about his religion through classes at his absorption center in preparation for his bar mitzvah, which he celebrated at Jerusalem’s famed Western Wall.

And there is the boy, less than 10 years old, who arrived in Israel after undergoing years of taunting for his shyness. He joined the soccer team at his absorption center and quickly became the top player in his group.

The formerly withdrawn child relaxed and opened up to his peers, having found a creative outlet in his newly beloved sport.

Kafale notes that Ethiopian olim “know that the staff at the absorption center is there to support them, provide them with love and prepare them for real life in Israel.” Ultimately, staff members hope that immigrants will thrive on their own. The single mother, the young man who celebrated his bar mitzvah, and the little soccer player are well on their way to living without the assistance of the Jewish Agency, just like Damoza and Kafale.

“When I see the independence that they have achieved,” asserts Kafale, “I know that I did my part, because they no longer fear ‘the new,’ but try and face it directly.”

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LARRISSA LIBURD

Revisiting Haiti THE ISLAND’S PRODIGAL DAUGHTER ON HER RETURN HOME

“Welcome back,” my uncle says, struggling to fit my luggage into the back of his car. “Is it anything like you remember it?”

I am in Haiti for the first time in nine years. The heat is unbearable, the city too noisy, the people acutely aware that I — sweating profusely, hiding behind too-big shades, conversing in rapid English — am a foreigner. I mistake my anxiety for excitement and smile too widely, beaming as the trunk closes and my uncle emerges from the back of the car to let me in.

“It’s the same air,” I tell him.

“How could I forget it?” ***

After the January 2010 earthquake that killed over 300,000 Haitians and left more than a million homeless, foreign aid poured into Haiti like water newly freed from a broken dam.

Celebrities flitted across my TV screen promising personal video messages to anyone that donated over a set amount.

Sean Penn arrived in Haiti quickly enough to claim that he’d smelled death wafting up from the provinces and into the devastated cities.

Buoyed by the widespread support Haiti received and the progress it was sure to have inspired, I arrived excited to see the mango groves of my great-grandmother’s house in the mountains, the horses that chewed relentlessly at my hair in the round houses of La Plaine, and even the sturdy black Haitian pigs that ran enthusiastically into my legs if I turned my back for too long. “It’s so differ38

ent!” I told my father over the phone while still at the airport, waiting for my uncle to arrive. I’d only seen the enthusiasm of the men eager to help me carry my things, and the crowded airport tarmac. I was a prodigal child, and the land looked far better than when I’d left it.

Haiti is different.

The already alarming disparity between the rich and the poor has widened to a monstrous distance in the aftermath of the earthquake. News outlets covering the devastation on the island missed the small number of private planes that ferried entire families to Norway, France, Germany, Miami, New York, and Brazil. No one spoke of the composed group of people that gathered in armed compounds, ate pizza, and kept up with the rebuilding efforts on the Internet. No one interviewed this same group as they hired larger private security forces, afraid that kidnappings would increase as citizens grew more desperate.

There is no middle class in Haiti, and no Creole-speaking Upton Sinclair to expose the repressive conditions suffocating the poor. Most families save what money they make for basic day-to-day concerns: food, water, and shelter. A drive through the streets between 6:00 in the morning and 8:00 at night easily becomes a perilous journey. Throngs of people walk alongside unpaved roads, choking on the dust churned up by imported Range Rovers and Jeeps.

In Haiti, the houses that escaped the earthquake’s heavy hand are the

homes of diplomats, former politicians, U.N. envoys, and the President. These residences have names like Shangri-La and are cloistered deep into the mountainside, divided into districts. My family has four houses here — one for each of the aunts and uncles still around — spread out along the single winding road that passes through each district. I memorize their names: Thomassin, Pelerinage, Vivy Mitchell, Route de Frères, and, in the very middle, Laboule, my temporary home. After the sun sets, the mountain air gets so cold that I sleep in two sweaters and a pair of borrowed sweatpants. In the morning, everything is covered in dew. My suitcase is filled with shorts, tank tops, skirts, and thin sundresses. My aunt laughs and calls me a paysan — a peasant — as I must be, for bringing clothes needed only at the bottom of the mountains, where the suffering wait. ***

My mother scoffs when she sees Sean Penn speak about his experience in Haiti. “He must not be there often, or else he must not go far beyond the coast.”

I ask her to explain; she shakes her head and moves back into the kitchen.

Both of my parents grew up in Haiti. My mother struggled to survive in the countryside with five other siblings and schoolteacher parents. She — as well as my aunts and uncles — avoids talking about her childhood. Once, during an argument over how I was spending the money I had earned at a summer job, she slammed her hand down on the table and spoke angrily.

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This aunt is a caterer. Since 4:00 in the morning, she and eight of her employees have been cooking enough food for sixty people. She tells me this is a family tradition that I helped her with every year when I lived here.

Les pauvres come dressed in their finest Sunday clothes. They are toddlers and pre-teens, and three or four are teenagers. The youngest ones come with their mothers. I take pictures of them with my iPhone, having left my camera at home, which greatly excite the kids. One of them announces to everyone that I am going to be on the news tonight, and that I will show their faces on television. I realize that most of them have never had their photos taken before. I am suddenly acutely aware of the list of facts I have recited to the volunteers who will join me this summer: In Haiti, only 56 percent of adults can read or write. 90 percent of primary schools are privately run, despite the fact that they are unaffordable for the vast majority of children.

Barely 20 percent of secondary schoolaged children attend school. The rest of them don uniforms anyway and walk up and down the streets in groups, holding hands and cutting their eyes sideways at the cars that honk them by.

“You don’t know what it’s like to sew together pages of notebooks your classmates leave behind at the end of the year,” she told me. “To fall asleep knowing that you will wake up later in the night with something small and disgusting curling up in the shadow of your body heat. To memorize the pages of borrowed textbooks because you can’t afford your own. To — ”

She cut herself off abruptly, but in my stomach I already felt the slow unfurling of a guilt that would grow to shadow me more closely than my own skin. My mother doesn’t mention this incident — ever.

My father grew up fairly welloff in the middle of Port-au-Prince proper, the gregarious and handsome middle son in a family of seven. When my parents married, they lived in a white stucco house on the corner of a street called Rue Vaillan; the house was always referred to as “la Ruelle Vaillant” — the maiden ward of the street itself. A balcony adjacent to the house overlooked rows upon rows of 40

tin-roofed shacks. When I was younger, a friend of the family would come over and wake us all up at 5:00 a.m. sharp, bring us out to the balcony, and play the sound of a running stream while we sleepily practiced yoga.

Sometimes, after parties or at the end of the Carnaval season, the teenagers would let me and the other children join them as they put the leftover food into containers and lowered them into the entreating hands reaching up to us from the raucous community below.

But my mother hated when I took part.

She encouraged me to read instead.

My parents may be different in upbringing, but when I told both of them that I wanted to spend my summer in Haiti working with high school students, and that I would be flying out over spring break to do ground work, it was only my father who forbade me from going. My mother just looked on in silence.

“We brought you out of the fire, not for you to dive back into it,” my father said. “You’re not going.”

I bought the ticket with my own money. And when I told them, they sighed, spoke briefly to each other, and told me to be a good girl for my aunt and uncle. ***

During week one, at first, I blunder through through every day. I forget to stand up when an elder enters the room and to kiss them on both cheeks.

I address a street vendor in French instead of in Creole. I wake up around 7:30 a.m. and realize that the house has already been alive for hours. My aunt glances impatiently at me as I rush to eat breakfast and get dressed to leave with her.

“Café, madame?” the housekeeper asks me, pouring it into my cup. I shake my head as I stand up and mumble that I don’t drink coffee. My aunt arches an eyebrow. The housekeeper sucks in her cheeks.

On my third day, another aunt invites me to her home for une fete pour les pauvres — a party for the poor.

One girl, around two years old, is shy.

She refuses to look at me when I coax her toward the camera. I turn to ask her mother for her help, and hesitate.

The woman who came with her looks like she is in her 50s. Her feet are propped up on her bag and she fans herself, though she surely knows no movement will be swift enough to chase away the heat. She smiles tiredly at me and motions to the girl to smile too. She isn’t happy to be here, neither working nor resting, and we both know it. I can pull a narrative out of her gaze: a dead daughter leaving behind children; the father gone too; and a return to scraping a living for herself and this child through work she thought she’d escaped years ago. I watch her long enough to see her regrets fade away as her granddaughter is given a plate of food piled higher than her head.

I watch. ***

A little over a week into my stay, my cousin is driving us through the

district of Delmas when a motorcycle rams into the side of my uncle’s Range Rover. My cousin, furious, leaves the car to harangue the motorcycle driver.

I am the first one to notice the female passenger struggling to stand up and move away from the motorcycle, and the first to notice that a growing crowd of male onlookers has gathered around the car.

“You owe him money,” one of the men in the crowd shouts to my cousin.

Others shake their heads in disagreement. The motorcycle driver thrusts his hands in my cousin’s face and yells something about the police. The crowd rumbles its disapproval and the man who’d spoken earlier mediates: “Just give him some money, man!”

I tear a crumpled twenty dollar bill out of my wallet and hand it to my cousin through the window. While he negotiates a lower price, I motion to the female passenger over and into the back of the car. Her wrist is cut open from palm to elbow and the wads of napkins I press firmly against the wound don’t stop the bleeding. I yell at my cousin to hurry up, that we need a hospital, and concentrate on telling the young woman about how new all of this is to me and how I hope she can forgive me if I squeeze too hard. She tells me she is twenty and a nursing student. She says it is easier to blame someone she doesn’t know.

In the hospital waiting room, I feel hopeless for the first time. The entire building is open-air, and on gurneys lining the walls people moan and cry. It smells and I feel sick. My cousin’s face is hard. He pays for the woman’s medicine and for her to receive stitches, then wanders back to inspect the car.

Alone, I struggle to decide whether or not the country I was born in has steadily changed for the worse, or if this has all just been a series of incredibly unfortunate events. There is so much good to be had in Haiti: the unbreakable bond of family, the swell of sound that nearly lifts the roof of every church on Sunday, the sweet and unfettered smiles of children and adults alike everywhere, any day. But the government is a tangled mess of patronage that knows only how to pander to foreign dignitaries. The downtown area of the district of Petionville

has seven five-star hotels within a ten minute walk of each other. On every side of the road vendors sell ornate and expertly crafted furniture, brilliant paintings, and food so delicious the mouth literally waters at the scent. Not one of these businesses will be patronized by their own countrymen — not a single one.

Haiti is a nation continually divided by its contradictions. With a 77 percent poverty rate, it is the poorest country in the world. Through USAID, however, the island has received over $712 million from the U.S. alone. The remittance inflow to Haiti numbers in the billions, but those receiving the remittances are not the ones living along the mountainside. It is fair to ask why I didn’t simply write an article called “Where Has All the Money Gone?” but I honestly couldn’t explain such a massive disappearing act.

In the oppressive heat of the hospital waiting room, I concentrate instead on all of the things that have made this trip worthwhile. I push away numbers and statistics and instead stand to shake the hand of the young woman’s father, who has arrived to take his daughter home. I move aside as he and my cousin exchange words, pat one another on the back, and joke loudly about how the woman held herself so well throughout the ordeal that she should earn her nursing degree right there.

As the parents of prodigal children are wont to do, the island had embraced me and my too-late return without question. All I could do was hold it back.

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ERIC STERN

WHY DID YOU REGISTER AS A DEMOCRAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

About Face INTERVIEWS WITH A FORMER DEMOCRATIC MEMBER OF CONGRESS AND A FORMER REPUBLICAN MEMBER OF CONGRESS

“In governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of the party,” George Washington once said. “But in those of popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged … A fire not to be quenched; it demands uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warming it should consume.”

George Washington was certainly not the only early American leader to distrust political parties, however.

John Adams greatly feared the “division of the republic into two great parties,

each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other.” Nonetheless, the Democratic and Republican Parties are undoubtedly at the centerpiece of the American experiment. And as old as the political parties is the phenomenon of party switching, where a person in one party renounces his membership — often joining his former adversaries on the other side of the aisle.

According to former Congressman Buddy Darden, a conservative Georgia Democrat, “The decision to switch parties is a highly risky one.

[Legislators] value stability, and chang-

ing party affiliation in the middle of a congressional career can have profound effects for the member … [T]he act of switching parties involves more than simply changing a label. In short, switching parties is not a decision to be taken lightly.”

In order to further examine the phenomenon of party switching in America, The Politic sat down with and former Democratic Congressman Artur Davis — who became a Republican in 2012 — and former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey — who became a Democrat in 2007.

ARTUR DAVIS

PETE MCCLOSKEY

Artur Genestre Davis represented Alabama’s 7th congressional district in Congress from 2003 to 2011 as a Democrat. A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Davis graduated from Harvard College and Law School before working as a civil rights lawyer and assistant U.S. Attorney. Despite serving as one of the national co-chairs for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Davis changed his affiliation to the Republican Party in 2012 and spoke at the 2012 Republican National Convention in support of Mitt Romney.

In 2010, Davis ran as a Democrat to become Alabama’s first African American governor, but lost in the primary by a large margin. Now a resident of Virginia, Davis has reportedly weighed future bids for Congress as a Republican. In 2012, Davis became a visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics and began writing a column for the National Review.

Paul “Pete” McCloskey, Jr. represented California in Congress from 1967 to 1983 as a Republican. A native of Loma Linda, California, McCloskey worked as an attorney until he was elected to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House of Representatives. Notwithstanding numerous awards for his service in the Korean War, McCloskey became the most prominent pacifist in the Republican caucus. He co-authored the 1973 Endangered Species Act, co-chaired of the first Earth Day and was the first Congressman to publicly call for President Richard Nixon’s impeachment. McCloskey also unsuccessfully ran against President Nixon for the Republican nomination for President in 1972 on an anti-war platform.

Following a failed Senate bid in 1982, McCloskey cofounded the Council for the National Interest, wrote four books and once again began practicing law in California. He ran for another term in Congress as a Republican in 2006, before switching his affiliation to the Democratic Party in April 2007. Today, McCloskey is a principal at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy and prominent public speaker.

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AD When I entered politics as a Democrat in the late nineties, the Democratic Party was a much broader tent politically, both nationally and within my home state of Alabama.

In addition, the ranks of black Republicans in a state like Alabama were extremely marginal: all of my associations and influences would have been Democrats, and I would have had every reason to think that the Democratic Party would continue to be a party with a broad, ideologically diverse wingspan.

PM I registered Republican in the late ‘40s (I was born in 1927) because I believed in less rather than more government, balanced budgets, and the policies that had been followed by [former Republican Governor] Earl Warren. My family had been Republicans in California since 1859, the year before Lincoln was elected.

I READ THAT YOU WERE THE CONGRESSMAN FROM THE MOST-HEAVILY DEMOCRATIC-LEANING DISTRICT TO VOTE AGAINST PRESIDENT OBAMA’S HEALTHCARE BILL. WHAT WAS THE REACTION TO THAT LIKE FROM YOUR COLLEAGUES IN THE HOUSE? AD I did not spend time focusing on the reaction of my colleagues in the Democratic Caucus, who had a patronizing habit of believing that any vote “out of character” for a black member of Congress from a safe interest was insincere. I believed then and now that the Affordable Care Act was too bureaucratic and too cumbersome an approach to a very specific problem: the gaps in Medicaid that existed for individuals who had no dependents and the challenges smaller business have in affording coverage for their employees. I fear that comprehensive reform will not only complicate the delivery of healthcare but likely trigger a spike in premiums as the insurance market adjusts to the government’s mandates. Lastly, I believe that the approach of mandating businesses to provide coverage will constrain the growth of a job market that has been tepid for four years.

PM My colleagues thought I was crazy. Most of them refused to believe in Nixon’s guilt until he resigned, although four Republican members of the Judiciary Committee a year later had the courage to vote for impeachment on the ground of obstruction of justice — which I had argued on the floor he had admitted when he fired [counsel to the President John] Ehrlichman and [Chief of Staff H. R.] Haldeman and ordered the FBI to stop investigating the CIA’s investigation… John Ehrlichman had been my moot debate partner in the finals at Stanford Law School in 1950.

IN YOUR OPINION, HOW HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHANGED IN RECENT YEARS? AD I think that the Democratic Party has resolved its traditional ideological tensions in favor of a decidedly liberal approach — one that prioritizes large scale bureaucracies as the solution to economic gaps in our society; that puts its head in the sand regarding the un-sustainability of our entitlements; that is too status quo oriented on education policy and much too dependent on approval from the teachers unions. I have also seen liberalism develop an intolerance and a condescension toward cultural conservatism that only deepens the polarization in our politics.

PM The Republican Party has come under the leadership of Christian evangelists, most of whom don’t believe in evolution or global warming and are consumed with the desire to privatize whatever government programs they can.

It has also turned its back on the UN, World Court and the Geneva Conventions against torture, as well as family planning, women’s rights and now even birth control.

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WHY DID YOU SWITCH YOUR REGISTRATION TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN 2012?

DO YOU THINK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WOULD BE BETTER SERVED IF THERE WERE A STRONG THIRD PARTY IN NATIONAL POLITICS?

AD There is no actual party registration in any state I have lived in. But I chose to declare as a Republican and to campaign for Republicans for two reasons: first, on the topics of debate in the last several years, I found my views lining up with Republicans rather than Democrats. It would have made no sense to remain in a party where my viewpoints are so decidedly out of the party’s mainstream.

Second, I recognize that the reform wing of the GOP, which wants to modernize and streamline government, and make conservatism more relevant to the working class and struggling middle class, is growing but needs allies. I wanted to join that conservative reform effort because it speaks so well to the challenges that I see in the next decade.

AD I have concluded that a third party is not viable and not even necessarily desirable. Too many of the third party efforts in this country have been driven more by elites than grassroots populism and reflect not so much an authentic political center as an Wall Street/K Street blessed sensibility that wants to move Republicans to the left on social issues and Democrats to the right on economic issues but lacks a deep commitment to fundamental political or economic reform. I was struck at how little a group like Americans Elect had to say about education, or alternatives to the Affordable Care act, or cap and trade, or over-regulation or even small business development.

PM I changed in 2007, disgusted with what George W. [Bush] was doing, although his father and I were and remain good friends.

WHY DID YOU RUN FOR CONGRESS IN 2006 AFTER NEARLY TWO AND HALF DECADES OUT OF ELECTED OFFICE? PM At 79, mostly retired as a lawyer, I was enraged when a local congressman, Richard Pombo, Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, took more money than anyone from the corrupt Jack Abramoff and tried to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Act, of which I had been a co-author in 1973-74. He was a disgrace and although I got only 32 percent in the primary, it was enough to knock him out in the General. He was really one of the biggest assholes to get into politics in all history. Also, I had an incredible wife some 26 years my junior who may have been the only women in America willing to move 90 miles to Lodi, California for four months.

SINCE YOU SWITCHED PARTIES, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN RECEIVED BY REPUBLICANS? HOW HAVE DEMOCRATS REACTED TO THE SWITCH? AD I have been very enthusiastically received by Republicans in every section of the country. I have appeared in every sector of my adopted state of Virginia campaigning for Republicans, and visited ten states on behalf of either conservative reform efforts or the party’s candidates. Among Democrats and their allies in the media, there has been a conscious effort to minimize or ignore the work I have done, which I recognize as a deliberate and predictable strategy.

PM The Democrats have accepted me with open arms; my old Republican friends think I’m crazy, although most of the good ones have also switched or are “Decline to State.”

WHY DO YOU BELIEVE YOU LOST YOUR 2012 GUBERNATORIAL RUN IN THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY?

HAD YOU WON THE PRIMARY THAT YEAR, DO YOU BELIEVE YOU WOULD HAVE ULTIMATELY BEEN ELECTED GOVERNOR?

AD I lost the 2010 Democratic primary for an old fashioned set of reasons: my opponents defined me and my campaign was incapable of defining my virtues as a candidate.

The race became consumed by two questions: whether a black could win in Alabama, and whether I was overlooking black voters to win white support. In that context, it was impossible to win a Democratic primary.

AD Given the toxic unpopularity of Obama in Alabama, and the headwinds against Democratic candidates in Alabama that year (the party lost two congressional seats, both houses of the Legislature, and every single statewide office) it turned that it would have been impossible for any Democrat to win the governorship of Alabama that year. Of course, this is hindsight and did at all reflect the state of polling when I entered the race. I am very confident that had I won the nomination, I would have had a stronger appeal to suburban independents than did the eventual Democratic nominee, and that I would have been a better fit for the general election dynamic. In 2010, that appeal would not have ended up resulting in better than a high single digit defeat.

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PM Third parties have generally been ineffective. It would help if young people would insist on one, however.

WHY DO YOU BELIEVE YOU LOST YOUR 2006 CONGRESSIONAL RUN IN THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARY? PM There was no way a Republican could beat an incumbent Congressman in the primary, as bad as he was. Also, I was a carpetbagger.

YOU LEFT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN 2007, CITING THE DOMINANCE OF THE ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE WING OF THE PARTY. IN THE SIX YEARS SINCE THEN, DO YOU THINK THAT PHENOMENON HAS BEEN LESSENED OR EXACERBATED? PM I estimate that there is no way the Republican Party can return to the moderate rationality it enjoyed under Gerry Ford and George H.W. Bush. It grows worse, and unless they change to a reasonable position on Hispanic immigration and women’s rights, they will be lucky to retain the House in 2014.

YOU SURPRISED MANY WITH YOUR CONGRESSIONAL BID IN 2006. DO YOU PLAN ON RUNNING FOR ELECTED OFFICE IN THE FUTURE? PM There’s no way I will ever run for office again. At 85, I can barely remember where I left my car keys, and getting both legs into my underpants is a difficult daily chore.

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The MacMillan Report is made possible through funding from the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.