Writers and Editors

The Harper's Letter on Cancel Culture
• A Letter on Justice and Open Debate (Harper's Magazine, 7-7-2020) This letter, signed by many authors, appeared in the Letters section of the magazine, and provoked a big response.

• A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate (The Objective, 7-10-2020) If you read the first letter, you should also read this response to it, which also has a long list of signatories. This letter was a group effort, started by journalists of color with contributions from the larger journalism, academic, and publishing community. "On Tuesday, 153 of the most prominent journalists, authors, and writers, including J. K. Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Brooks, published an open call for civility in Harper’s Magazine....The signatories, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, argue that they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, and that they fear for their jobs and free exchange of ideas, even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country." It addresses these examples from the Harper's letter.

1. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces?

2. Books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity?

3. Journalists are barred from writing on certain topics?

4. Professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class?

5. A researcher fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study?

6. The heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes?

 

Updated 10-28-2020

 

Open letter to Verizon:

 

I have begun to hate you, for several reasons, my biggest complaint being with your super-flawed billing system, although for months I have also had no messages on my cellphone, to the frustration of friends trying to reach me. My complaints: 

 

(1)  Your billing system is clearly flawed. When I tried using Virtual Agent Assistance to respond to your "overdue payment" notice, this is what I got

 

"Your chat with a virtual agent has connected.

     Hi! Welcome to Verizon. I am here to help with your billing needs!
     You currently don't have a bank account on file with us. In order to do the payment you will need to add a new bank account."

 

(2) I most certainly do have a bank account on file with you: I have paid my bills for several years via Presidential Bank's Billpayer system.  My Bank history shows regular monthly payments of $182 this year, and they do show up on my bank statement. I have a list of regular monthly payments of $182 (twice $186) showing as  paid to Verizon. (Miss Lisa, who I spoke with 10-27-2020, says that she is not showing a payment for July and August and it is clearly a problem with Presidential Bank, not them. But Presidential Bank is showing payments to Verizon for July and August. Miss Lisa says that it is the bank that initiates the payments, so the error has to be on their part, as my Verizon and Verizon Wireless accounts, both of which she could see, are entirely separate--and she also sees a large overpayment in Verizon Wireless.)  When this problem came up earlier, a Supervisor at Verizon transferred money from the Verizon Wireless account to the Verizon account. 

 

For several years there was no problem with the Billpayer system. The Verizon Wireless bill was roughly $35 and the Verizon bill was roughly $180. The number was so consistent that I put it on automatic payment initiated by Verizon.  At one point, there was a problem so I cancelled automatic payments initiated by Verizon and started paying each bill myself, online, within a day or two of getting it through Billpayer. My  record for both phones shows consistently right-on-time payment for both lines.  Mind you, the bills from both companies look exactly the same and say the same thing at the top:  Verizon (not Verizon Wireless). 

 

(3) Your billing is a mess.  Verizon and Verizon Wireless make a big show of being entirely separate companies, but their bills look exactly alike and their finances are clearly intermingled. The last time I had a bill overdue I got through to a Verizon supervisor who looked through both accounts and found that the payment I had sent to Verizon went to the Verizon Wireless account, so he moved it.  This has clearly happened other times because I have a $600+ balance in my Verizon Wireless account, the balance for which remains a big credit. (10-28-2020: I got this message by email: "On 10/28/2020 8:45:29 AM, we spoke to you about a payment transfer of $182.00, $186.00 for your account ending in xxxx. This request has been processed and the payment has been transferred. Your payment will post to the account within three business days and your transfer request will be closed."  In other words, the two "missing payments have been transferred over from the Verizon Wireless account. The Verizon person I spoke to  says the error has to be Presidential Bank's fault; I don't believe that to be true, as Verizon has got so many other things wrong and so far I am unaware of any problems with how Presidential processes Billpaper payments. Not to mention that Verizon and Verison Wireless are only very loosely two separate companies.

 

As for who was responsible for the $ going to Verizon Wireless instead of Verizon, even if it were because of my error, this is an error that is inevitable,  because the bills from both places look identical.  It seems pretty clear from my Presidential bank statements that the payments are  going to Verizon (which, if true, gives me a considerable overpayment).

 

4) Moreover, and far more serious a problem, for several months now anybody who tries to leave a message on my cellphone  gets a "message box  full" response.  Yet I have ZERO messages and have not had for months now. When I try to leave a message for myself I cannot do so—though I see no (zero) messages on my cellphone. I have blocked some of the most annoying spam callers, and friend suggested that "blocking" might count as a message, but SURELY that should have no connection to the mailbox. I have asked to be on the Do Not Call Registry on both phones; why do so many spam calls come through? I have had no luck getting this problem resolved through Verizon. This is the main reason I am looking for another telephone company.  Luckily, I saw AT&T installing phone lines on my block last month.

 

5)  For some reason when I call my cell phone from my landline, the phone doesn't ring but vibrates, though it rings when others call me. One day recently my phone table overturned and my cellphone disappeared.  I tried calling my cellphone from my landline several times so I could locate the cellphone, but got no ringtone to help me locate the phone—only vibration (which I feel only when the phone is physically on me).  Hours later, I found the cell phone because someone else called me on it and on their call there was a ringtone.  Why on earth would you have a system where I couldn't hear a ringtone for my calls to myself, since this is a primary way for people to find their misplaced cellphones. (As it happened, the cellphone had landed behind a book, and was more or less where I thought it should be, but not visible.)  I NEVER intentionally silenced my phone myself. I have a LONG apartment and I often need to hear it ring to find it.  As an elder I consider this a major safety issue.

 

6)  Another day I tried to call my landline from my cellphone to leave a message, at which point a "Verizon assistant" came on the line and asked if it could be of help. "I want to call my other phone!" I shouted. The Assistant said Okay it would put the call through and it did.  Why on earth would the Assistant intervene in a call from my cell phone to my landline? The Assistant showed up for a couple other phone calls, too. It has NEVER assisted me when I needed  assisting. Mind you, the Verizon Assistant and the Google Assistant look virtually alike, so for all I know this is a Google Assistant.  I do have a Google pixel.

 

7) I have both a landline and a cell phone because I wanted, when there is a power outage, to be able to use my landline to make emergency calls. I was alarmed to learn during our last outage that our landlines are no longer hard-wired; for an outage that lasts longer than a day I lose both telephones. I don't think Verizon is upfront with this information.

 

I have been getting calls from Verizon to bring my payments up to date, or my service may be turned off. I can assure you, if it does get turned off I will take you to court.

 

                       -- With great frustration,

                              Pat McNees

 

P.S. Have others had similar problems with Verizon?   Is it true, as one friend advised, that I should never have both my landline and my cell phone with the same company? I see that AT&T has been installing lines in our neighborhood, and their ratings for service quality are similar to Verizon's.

What cell phone company do you recommend for DC's Maryland suburbs--specifically Bethesda?

 

by Pat McNees

 

Memoirs are no longer the province of the rich and celebrated. Noncelebrities are getting into the act, they often need help, and writing or editing their personal histories can be a deeply satisfying new source of potential income for journalists.

 

      I stumbled across life story writing in 1990, when Kitty Kelley recommended that Jim Dicke II, president of a lift truck firm in Ohio (Crown Equipment), use ASJA's Dial-a-Writer service to find someone to help tell his 90-year-old grandfather's story. At the time I supported my journalism habit by editing reports and writing summaries for the World Bank. Soon after a friend from Texas said I had "too much steak and not enough sizzle," Dorothy Beach, who ran DAW, sent several of us to Ohio for an interview. I landed the gig, interviewed Warren Webster, wrote his life story, and upped my sizzle factor.

 

      Projects like these are often part therapy, so I took a few years to write An American Biography: An Industrialist Remembers the Twentieth Century, the life and times of Warren Webster, an unknown industrialist. With a guaranteed sale of 5,000 copies, a DC publisher issued the biography in 2004, printing 10,000 copies altogether. Many copies were given away, but the book was also picked up by a couple of book clubs. Social and business history wrapped around a Horatio Alger story (and with a foreword by Rob Kanigel), the book paid me well enough to take out a mortgage on a three-bedroom condo, which I paid off with what I made writing personal and corporate histories:

 

     More important, and I can't overstate this, I had a sample. This got me many more projects, including the memoirs of a pediatrician (a friend's father) and a nuclear engineer (a friend's husband), and several histories of organizations (similar genre, but more complex). 

 

      Once I started doing personal and organizational histories, my income soared and became steadier.

 

A wide-open field

 

There are many ways to do personal histories. There's the plain old oral history, edited for narrative flow, often with photos. This involves interviews, transcribing (which I farm out), editing, and packaging (sometimes simple, and sometimes fancy -- for example, a fancy cloth binding with a photo insert on the cover to make it special, or with the family tree in endcovers). It's the least time-consuming of the print products.

 

     Then there's the as-told-to-memoir, in Uncle Vern's own voice, ghostwritten by you, based on interviews, journals, letters, the memoirist's own drafts—whatever it takes. There's the biography or history, written in third person, by the hired writer about the person, couple, family, or organization. I tend to interview everyone in the family or, for an organizational history, a range of participants, from the janitor to the CEO.

 

     Technologies have changed, making it easier to "self-publish" a printed book or mount a story on a website. On one end of the personal history spectrum are scrapbooking and quilting; on the other, many organizations and communities are commissioning personal and group oral histories (both recorded and in edited transcripts) or professionally written histories (my specialty), often with a shorter history via video.

 

     I love the video tribute or history—a Ken-Burns-like narration illustrated with photos and sounds, including recordings of people telling stories, sometimes captured in video, often as a montage of stills with narration and reminiscence in one or more voices.  Music is tricky because of copyright issues, but there are sources for commissioned, inexpensive, or royalty-free music. And music makes a difference.

 

Finding the market

 

Creating a personal history may be easier than finding clients willing to spend the amount you want to be paid. Many beginners spin their wheels marketing to senior citizens and old people's homes. I suspect residents of most senior homes are pinching pennies and don't think their stories are worth telling—not in a form that costs money. Market instead to their children, grandchildren, spouses, or well-to-do fans who have heard the stories so many times that they don't necessarily want to sit through them again, but want them preserved—or want the subject engaged in a project. (The "client" is often not the narrator, or storyteller, in other words.)

 

      Even a modest personal or family story can seem a huge, undoable task to most people, yet fairly easy to a writer-editor. What pleases my clients is that I come in from outside, establish rapport, and get a different (fuller, often franker) story than the family might get, though I get the story they know, too. What I do—what you can probably do, too—is help people find the patterns in their lives, the obstacles overcome, the lessons learned. This plus storytelling can make writing a personal history a transformative experience, helping people see that their life meant something.

 

How to get started

 

For a sample, do the life story of someone in your family, and package it handsomely enough that simply seeing it shows potential clients the possibilities for their own family or company. Start with something as simple as a photo tribute (with well-written captions) to a person, a place, an animal, a period in your life, or a period in someone else's or an organization's history.

 

      My brother and I, for example, began doing a photohistory of our family's migration from Kansas to hot Western deserts in Arizona and California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Aunts, uncles, and cousins have turned out their photo collections and this is one story even my non-reading cousins are going to love.

 

     And that's the point. To the people for whom these personal histories are created, the story is fascinating, because it memorializes their roots. And for a major occasion—a 70th birthday, a 50th anniversary, retirement, or any hint that a person you love or admire is not going to live forever—some people will part with a fair sum if they think you can collect and organize all the information, stories, and photos they don't have time to deal with and create a product important as family legacy. If nothing else, this is a good way to share and thereby preserve those important family photos that might otherwise be lost to house fire or other disasters.

 

     Showing the right package to a receptive person—just showing what a personal history might look like—can land a client, sometimes instantly, sometimes months or years later.

 

      For the more lucrative and difficult task of landing an organizational history, again—a sample is your best calling card. I watched a businesswoman decide to commission a project based totally on looking through a photo history a personal historian casually handed her.

 

How do I become a personal historian?

 

In a sense a "personal historian" is anyone who helps others record the stories of their lives, families, or organizations. Few of the personal historians I've met were freelance writers making a living as writers. Those who belonged to the Association of Personal Historians (APH, of which I was president for two years, and which dissolved after a productive 20 years, in 2017) typically had earlier careers as teachers, counselors, hospice workers, social workers, journalists, oral historians, historians, news broadcasters, gerontologists, businessmen or women, videographers, photographers, transcribers, archivists, nurses.

 

      Journalists and book authors have a leg up in terms of skills, knowledge of publishing, and natural nosiness, but one of my favorite firms (My Special Book) was launched during a building slump by two architects in Buenos Aires, Eduardo Zemborain and Vicky Randle, who see PH work as a design and management process. Check out their website (www.myspecialbook.com) and those of other personal history firms.

 

     APH (in the twenty years it existed) embraced print, audio- and videobiographers at varying levels of skill and experience. Many members were 50 and older. (It helped to have been around a while – or to have read widely enough to know what questions to ask when a woman says her family migrated from Lithuania in 1945.) I joined APH out of curiosity and to get my name listed on their website, but valued their annual conference, where I could see the kinds of work I don't do myself. I have helped with two video tributes for print clients—and it helps to know what's involved and who's good at putting them together. It's also interesting to learn what people charge: from a few hundred dollars (many projects are $10,000 and under) to $30,000, generally, and much more for longer stories or more complex projects, including organizational histories, which go to six figures. (That doesn't include production costs.)

 

       The most popular event at the APH conference (before it folded) and my favorite was the Media Share, where people showed their audio-visual products and gave a little of the backstory. One of my favorites was the Breakstones' video tribute to a dog, with narration clipped from interviews with the dog's elderly owner. Video captured the affection, joy, and nostalgia on the man's face and in his voice, which, combined with shots of the man and his dog over the years made for a three-hankie experience.  It was a priceless form of personal history. If your friends are as nuts about their animals as my friends are, I think you could make a living just doing animal tributes.

 

This piece was originally published in December 2008, in ASJA Confidential, the Members Only section of the American Society of Journalists & Authors monthly publication.   Copyright (c) 2008 by Pat McNees.

 

You can find local personal historian groups here:
---Life Story Professionals of the Greater Washington Area (DC, Maryland, and Virginia).
---Personal Historians (a Facebook group)
---Personal Historians Northeast Network (in the Boston area)
---Personal Historians NW (in the Pacific Northwest)
---Life Stories Australia (personal historians, biographers, editors, etc.)
---NYC Personal Historians (a Meetup group).

 

 

P.S. Teaching Life Story Writing

 

I teach a class I call “My Life, One Story at a Time”at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD. It’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done. My pitch is that participants are writing not for publication but for their friends and heirs; the students tell me “not writing for publication” both draws and liberates them. You’d think with that title I would get only senior citizens but I have had students in their 20s and 30s, as well as 60 and above, including several lively, loveable 80-year-olds. Every week I give students a thematically oriented writing prompt/page from James Birren's Guided Autobiograpny, and students write something that takes 5 minutes or so to read aloud. Listening to each other, they learn what good storytelling is and are inspired to keep writing. I provide little instruction except to praise a good story or vivid scene, make occasional minor suggestions, and help them find their voice, but in the process they do often become better writers. We don’t worry about grammar and spelling. “Get the story,” I say. “Go deep. Get it down. You can go back later and rewrite and edit.”

     “It’s really a therapy group,” I heard one student tell another. I don’t present it that way, but it’s clearly therapeutic, for all of us. And it has me writing, too.

      And during the pandemic the workshop made an easy transition to Zoom.

 

Pandemic is a wake-up call for me to jot down keepsake ‘letters’ for my kids (Bob Brody, Washington Post, 8-16-2020) And I quote:  "Back in January 2008, when our two children were young adults, I started to keep a handwritten journal, one for our son, Michael, and the other for our daughter, Caroline. Every weekend, I jotted down a few hundred words based on a specific memory about our lives together and mine before they were born." And so it began. "I took these actions, mind you, even though in perfect health. I had asked myself the questions so many parents might now be asking themselves amid the coronavirus outbreak. What should I tell my children about the lives we’ve all lived? What do they need to know about me and themselves and our wider family? The journals would ultimately serve as a keepsake, an inheritance that could be read in decades to come."

 

      For years I've (Pat) given a workshop at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland (and in local libraries), called My Life, One Story at a Time. It's a fairly popular workshop, one that some people repeat -- probably because it motivates them to write the stories for their kids and family and friends that somehow they just can't bring themselves to do on their own. Partly it's because they're writing and sharing their stories in a small group (which they tend almost instantly to bond with, however briefly, sometimes forming long-term relationships). More than once participants have said they are sharing stories with this group that they haven't told their friends.

 

     I don't know what the secret is, but one thing has disappointed me: I have a heck of a time getting any of my students (all adults, mind you) to write stories about their children!  "When you die," I tell them, "and you have written all these stories about your life, don't you think your kids are going to wonder why there aren't any stories about them?"  And they agree, but they still have trouble taking the bait (with a few exceptions--lately, especially--is the pandemic a sign that all could be over without even a chance to say goodbye?). I suspect they are afraid they will seem to favor one child over another. Maybe, like me, you've wondered if it isn't up to our children to write their own stories--why would they want us to write stories about them?  Or maybe you've thought, as I have, that would be invading their space. But what if they would love it? What if they would love it especially long after we are gone--but maybe even now?

 

       I hope this gets you all writing about your kids (or your nieces and nephews, or your grandkids, your friends --whatever, whoever):  Memories and stories about your kids that you can write now now and they can enjoy forever.  As inspiration, here are links to a series of wonderful posts from and about Bob Brody's letters-to-his-kids project.

• Letters to My Kids (Bob Brody's blog, with links to all the posts)
• To Michael: Labor Trouble (Bob Brody, 6-24-10) "You took your time coming out. I think Mom was in labor for 36 hours."
• To Caroline: Your Opening Act (Bob Brody, 6-24-10) "You I worried about from the start, even before you were born. The doctor told us you were in there in an unusual position. Transverse breach, she called it."
• Archives: Letters to My Kids by Bob Brody
• Letters to My Kids 101: Invest In Your Past Bob Brody, on the process.
• Letters to My Kids (Lisa Belkin, Motherlode column, NY Times, 6-23-2010) On Father’s Day, he took the journals virtual. He is transferring all 60,000 words onto a Web site, Letters to My Kids, one entry per week. That wasn’t his plan when he started the journals of letters, he says.
• Spending Thanksgiving thanking our kids (Janice D'Arcy, WaPo, 11-23-11) The man behind the Letters to My Kids Web site is urging parents and grandparents to use Thanksgiving as an excuse to write a letter — long or short, simple or complex — to our children.
• You can find photos, etc., on Bob's Facebook page. Thanks, Bob. I'll let you know if this inspires my writing groups!

Feel free to post reactions here (or go to Bob's site and post them there!).

Police, federal agents, protests, and racial justice

 

After a short section on clashes between police, federal agents, and protesters in Portland and other cities, you will find more general links about police, protests, and racial justice. This post has been moved over from my comfortdying.com site as more appropriate here.

• Feds Ordered Not to Assault, Arrest Journalists in Portland (Karina Brown, Courthouse News Service, 7-23-2020) PORTLAND, Ore. (CN) "Federal police are now under a court order not to arrest or assault journalists and legal observers for doing their jobs, after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Thursday that the government said it would appeal.
      “An open government has been a hallmark of our democracy since our nation’s founding,” U.S. District Judge Michael Simon wrote Thursday, citing precedent from the Ninth Circuit case Leigh v. Salazar. “When wrongdoing is under way, officials have great incentive to blindfold the watchful eyes of the fourth estate. The free press is the guardian of the public’s interests and the independent judiciary is the guardian of the free press.”
     To that hallmark, he added:“This lawsuit tests whether these principles are merely hollow words.” '
• Police Are Cutting Ties With Domestic Violence Programs That Support Black Lives Matter (Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost, 10-16-2020) "Eight days after Embrace’s statement was posted online, Barron County voted to strip the organization of $25,000 in funding for 2021. The county’s director of health and human services resigned from Embrace’s board of directors. Since then, a majority of the 17 law enforcement agencies that work with Embrace have indicated that they will no longer partner with the domestic violence organization, including all law enforcement in Washburn County. That means women who call the police for help, for instance, may not be referred to Embrace for help with safety planning, counseling and support." Law enforcement groups in multiple states have put pressure on domestic violence organizations for standing against racism.
• “Defendant Shall Not Attend Protests”: In Portland, Getting Out of Jail Requires Relinquishing Constitutional Rights (Dara Lind, ProPublica, 7-28-2020) A dozen protesters facing federal charges are barred from going to “public gatherings” as a condition of release from jail — a tactic one expert described as “sort of hilariously unconstitutional.”
• Trump's Portland crackdown is controversial. The man spearheading it might be doing so illegally. (Aaron Blake, Washington Post, 7-22-2020) Experts say acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf can't legally serve in that role, compounding issues raised by the crackdown.
• Trump’s Effort to Provoke Violence Is Working (David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 7-28-2020) The president sent federal agents into Portland with the apparent aim of inciting a confrontation.
• Federal Officers Deployed in Portland Didn’t Have Proper Training, D.H.S. Memo Said (New York Times, 7-18-2020) The tactical agents deployed by homeland security include officials from a group known as BORTAC, the Border Patrol’s equivalent of a SWAT team, a highly trained group that normally is tasked with investigating drug smuggling organizations, as opposed to protesters in cities. The agents lacked sufficient training in riot control or mass demonstrations. Rather than tamping down persistent protests in Portland, Ore., a militarized presence from federal officers seems to have re-energized them.
• What to Know About Portland's Crackdown on Protesters and How You Can Help (Chelsea Sanchez, Harpers Bazaar, 7-21-2020) The Trump administration is trying to make an example out of Portland. But protesters and supporters are refusing to let him. 'Trump has since defended his decision to deploy armed units to confront Portland protesters, tweeting on Sunday, "We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it. Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!" '
• Federal Officers Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab People In Portland, DHS Confirms (Jonathan Levinson, Conrad Wilson, James Doubek, and Suzanne Nuyen, NPR, 7-17-2020) NPR reported that the federal officers deployed come from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Border Patrol Tactical Unit, and are intended to protect federal property. They have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least Tuesday. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation about why they are being arrested, and driving off. The New York Times additionally found that the units deployed are not specialized in nor have they been trained in riot control or mass demonstrations.
• Cities in Bind as Turmoil Spreads Far Beyond Portland (Mike Baker, Thomas Fuller and Shane Goldmacher, NY Times, 7-26-2020) Galvanized in part by the deployment of federal agents in Portland, Ore., protesters have returned to the streets in Oakland, Seattle and elsewhere.
• Police and protesters clash in violent weekend across the US (Jeff Martin, AP, 6-27-2020) Protests took a violent turn in several U.S. cities over the weekend with demonstrators squaring off against federal agents outside a courthouse in Portland, Oregon, forcing police in Seattle to retreat into a station house and setting fire to vehicles in California and Virginia.
• N.Y.P.D. Says It Used Restraint During Protests. Here’s What the Videos Show. (video, NY Times, 7-14-2020) The New York Times found more than 60 videos that show the police using force on protesters during the first 10 days of demonstrations in the city after the death of George Floyd. A review of the videos, shot by protesters and journalists, suggests that many of the police attacks, often led by high-ranking officers, were not warranted
• Trump Has Brought America's Dirty Wars Home (Stuart Schrader, New Republic, 7-21-1010) The authoritarian tactics we've exported around the world in the name of national security are now being deployed in Portland.
• 'Wall of Moms' joins Portland's anti-racism protests (BBC, 7-22-2020) Anti-racism protests have been taking place in Portland, Oregon, for almost two months - but in recent days they have been joined by a growing number of "moms." The "Wall of Moms" - as they have been dubbed - have been acting as a human shield between the protesters and the federal officers sent in to disperse them.
• Conservative media helps Trump perform 'law and order' in Portland, with risks for November (Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post, 7-22-2020) The strategy, resembling the focus on the migrant caravans in 2018, left some Republicans in bellwether counties uneasy.
• Elected leaders need to take action to stop the rioting (Jeff Barker, Opinion, Oregon Live, 7-8-2020) "Oregon supports free speech. Go through the normal channels, obtain a permit and then follow the rules in the permit. You can march, you can gather to listen to speeches, you can hold up any sign you'd like even if it makes the rest of the world uncomfortable. But what you can't do is break the law." Barker was a law enforcement officer for 31 years and has represented House District 28 in the Oregon Legislature since 2003.

[Back to Top]

 

Problems with policing generally

• The Rape Kit’s Secret History (Pagan Kennedy, New York Times, 6-17-2020) This is the story of Marty Goddard, the woman who forced the police to start treating sexual assault like a crime. “She began to formulate questions that almost no one was asking back in the early ‘70s: Why were so many predators getting away with it? And what would it take to stop them?”
• Criminal justice reform in the United States (Wikipedia)
• What should be done about America's policing problem? (The Stream, Al Jazeera, 6-15-2020) Driven by nationwide protests, calls are growing to boost accountability and oversight of US law enforcement.
• Terror Lynching in America (Equal Justice Initiative, video, 10-11-16)
• Trump Sidesteps Mentions of Systemic Racism as He Signs Police-Friendly Executive Order (KHN Morning Briefing, 6-17-2020) Advocates and Democrats say President Donald Trump's executive order on police violence falls far short of what's needed to make actual changes to the system. The White House focused on police-backed ideas, such as a national misconduct database, and continued to insist the problems lie with a few officers rather than deeper issues. Congress is also taking steps to address reform, but the parties are on a collision course with their bills.
• In wake of protests, New York lawmakers repeal law used to keep police misconduct records secret (Anjali Berdia, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 6-10-2020) In the wake of widespread protests against police violence and racial injustice, New York lawmakers voted on Tuesday to repeal Section 50-a of the state’s Civil Rights Law, a provision used to keep police disciplinary records secret.
• Why Policing Is Broken (Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, 6-17-2020) Years of research on brutality cases shows that bad incentives in politics and city bureaucracies are major drivers of police violence. In wake of protests, New York lawmakers repeal law used to keep police misconduct records secret.
• How Police Unions Fight Reform (William Finnegan, New Yorker, 8-3-2020) Police unions enjoy a political paradox. Conservatives traditionally abhor labor unions but support the police. The left is critical of aggressive policing, yet has often muted its criticism of police unions—which are, after all, public-sector unions, an endangered and mostly progressive species. Police unions have spent decades amassing influence. They have often used it to combat what Patrick Lynch, the head of New York City's P.B.A., calls "pro-criminal advocates."
• The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (David Robson, BBC, 5-13-19) Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.
• The Defunding Debate ((Jack Herrera, Columbia Journalism Review, Summer 2020) Suddenly, defunding the police had exploded as a central campaign plot point. Look at the issue in historical context.
• 'Defund the police' calls grow amid protests. Reallocations could fund minority entrepreneurship instead (Steve Strauss, USA Today, 6-10-2020) Defunding the police certainly does not mean not having any police. But it does mean that some of the money used to fund police forces can likely be better spent if the goal is long-term safety, and to begin to eradicate the poverty gap and racial disparity between white and black America that fosters crime.
• Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence (Teaching Tolerance)
• Leo Tolstoy vs. the Police (Jennifer Wilson, NY Times, 6-25-2020) Why the great Russian novelist's critique of state-sponsored violence bears thinking about now. Tolstoy's views, particularly his strong invective against state-sponsored violence, riled authorities who consequently placed the writer under near-constant police surveillance.
• Screening police officers before they kill (Jack El-Hai, Medium, 1-4-16) Psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley found that one-third to one-half of America's police officers during the 1950s were psychologically unqualified to protect citizens or enforce laws. Kelley was uniquely qualified to investigate the psychological traits of people in positions of authority. During the months immediately after World War II, Kelley, then a U.S. Army captain, was sent to the jail in Nuremberg, Germany, to evaluate the sanity of the top 22 captured Nazi leaders awaiting trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• The History of Policing in the United States, Part 1 of 6 parts. (Gary Potter, Eastern Kentucky University Police Studies Online) The development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the "Watch," or private-for-profit policing, which is called "The Big Stick" (Spitzer, 1979).
• Violence Interrupter The Interrupters is a 2011 documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films, that tells the story of three violence interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. ... The film features the work of CeaseFire, an initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention.
• He used to sell drugs on D.C. streets. Now he's paid to make them safer. (Peter Hermann, Washington Post, 12-13-18) Duane Cunningham is a member of the District's Violence Interrupters, a group that works in troubled neighborhoods to try to stop violence before it happens.
• Defund police? Some cities have already started by investing in mental health instead (Lindsay Schnell, MSN, USA Today, 6-20-2020) As calls to "defund the police" echo around the country at Black Lives Matter protests, a handful of communities already know what that looks like as they invest millions of dollars into mental health resources and response teams instead of just traditional policing. These crisis intervention teams typically do not include an armed, uniformed officer but do feature counselors, social workers and paramedics. And Eugene's 30-year-old program CAHOOTS, or Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, is the model other cities are looking to as they form their own programs. (Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick, Oregon Register/Guard, 10-20-19)
• These Cities Are Stopping Police From Responding to Homelessness, Drug Use, and Mental Health Issues (Emma Ockerman, Vice, 6-17-2020) Los Angeles proposed the change Tuesday. San Francisco and Albuquerque have already made it.
• What does 'defund the police' mean and why some say 'reform' is not enough (Ryan W. Miller, USA Today, 6-8-2020)
• Most Americans do not want to “defund” the police (The Economist, 6-18-2020) But they support other reforms.
• Defunding Everything But the Police Short, effective video with a message
• How ‘Defund the Police’ went from moonshot to mainstream (Maya King, Politico, 6-17-2020) To many watching the historic protests against racism and police brutality unfold across the country, it was a call that came out of nowhere: Defund the Police. Yet hours after the first videos of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer went viral online, those three words became the rallying cry of a movement that had suddenly won America’s undivided attention. See more stories on the topic here: The Deep Roots Behind Seemingly Sudden Rise of 'Defund the Police' (KHN Morning Briefing, 6-17-2020)
• Protests focus on over-policing. But under-policing is also deadly. (Rod K. Brunson, WaPo, 6-12-2020) People in high-crime neighborhoods already don’t trust law enforcement to protect them.
• Violence Interrupter (The Marshall Project) The best criminal justice reporting tagged with "Violence Interrupter," curated by The Marshall Project. The Interrupters is a 2011 documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films, that tells the story of three violence interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. ... The film features the work of CeaseFire, an initiative of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention.

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