Category: Activism

Rep. Ilhan Omar reminds us: “Stephen Miller is a White Nationalist”

Rep. Ilhan Omar said the obvious yesterday:

This should not come as a shock to anyone. His family also knows he’s a white nationalist, his uncle wrote an Op-Ed about how he saw Miller’s politics as a betrayal of everything their family was:

I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country.

I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants— been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America First” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family would likely have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him. — www.politico.com/…

We’ve also known for a long time that Stephen Miller was a little barrel of xenophobic hate. The moment Trump began running, it was clear that Miller and his boss then Senator Jeff Sessions would throw their lot in with him. Miller was also allied with white supremacist Steve Bannon in peddling extreme xenophobia as a political strategy. 

U.S. demographics have been changing rapidly — and undesirably in the eyes of top Trump aides, including his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and domestic policy advisor Stephen Miller. Inside the West Wing, the two men have pushed an ominous view of refugee and immigration flows, telling other policymakers that if large numbers of Muslims are allowed to enter the U.S., parts of American cities will begin to replicate marginalized immigrant neighborhoods in France, Germany and Belgium that have been home to plotters of terrorist attacks in recent years, according to a White House aide familiar with the discussions. — LA Times

We’ve always known he was the worst kind of entitled trash. Back in 2017, a former janitor, now professor at U. Chicago had this to say about Miller’s high school speech where he said “[I’m] sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us”:

He’s also a pedantic twat, of the special sort created on white supremacist web-sites. That is the character trait which led him to raise a fuss when Jim Acosta quoted “The Statue of Liberty says, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.’ It doesn’t say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer,”Acosta said. “Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country if you’re telling them that you have to speak English?” — www.cnn.com/…

Bannon and Sessions are gone, but Miller has outlasted them, and for the past 2+ years, he has been driving the cruel policies of the Trump administration, visibly reveling in inflicting agony on children and parents.

Of course, if the goal were simply to draw voters’ attention to the border, there are plenty of ways to do it that are less controversial (not to mention, less cruel) than ripping young children from the arms of asylum seekers and sticking them in dystopian-looking detention centers. But for Miller, the public outrage and anger elicited by policies like forced family separation are a feature, not a bug.  — www.theatlantic.com/…

Rep. Omar is saying something that has been obvious for years, to all who would see with open eyes and hearts.

— @subirgrewal

AOC is heckled, makes it a teaching moment on how funding cuts are designed to divide us.

AOC was hosting a town hall in her district and was talking about public schools. She talked about her dad getting into Brooklyn Tech (one of the selective NYC high schools). AOC then asks why every school can’t be like Brooklyn Tech, why NYC only has a handful of such selective high schools. She was heckled by some attendees who oppose changes to the testing program for these schools.

And this is the special moment, she points out that in many, many areas of public services, we have created an environment of scarcity. This ends up pitting communities against each other for resources. Instead, she suggests we should make the fight for more resources across the board, rather than fighting over scraps because funding has been slashed, and we’re letting plutocrats get away with rampant tax evasion aided by corrupt politicians. That’s not hyperbole, both the former NY Assembly Speaker and the NY Senate leader are in prison for corruption. 

It’s worth watching how AOC turns this conversation around, arguing that we bake a bigger and better public services pie rather than fight over small pieces of it.

As background, there is an enormous controversy around the schools at the moment. The chancellor and mayor wants to modify the way admissions are handled. Students currently take a standardized test (the SHSAT) to enter 8 of the 9 schools. The ninth school is Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Laguardia admits incoming high-school students based on an audition or a review of their work. 

To improve diversity among the student body at the eight other schools, various proposals have been floated for alternate arrangements. Here’s one pitched by the mayor which is being challenged by a conservative, anti-affirmative action group:

Currently, specialized schools enroll tiny percentages of black and Hispanic students, even though those students make up about 70 percent of the school system. This past year, only 10 black students were offered seats at Stuyvesant High School, the most competitive of the eight test-in specialized schools.

Discovery allows mostly low-income students who just miss the cutoff for entry to enroll in summer classes aimed at preparing them for the schools’ academic rigor.

The current version of Discovery sets aside 6 percent of seats at specialized high schools for students who come from low-income families. Mr. de Blasio’s plan would expand that to 20 percent of seats at each specialized school, and require schools to reserve seats for more vulnerable students who not only come from low-income families but also attend high-poverty schools. — www.nytimes.com/…

The parents of some kids at these schools have opposed such moves. The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a conservative outfit founded by former Reagan staffers has filed a challenge to the plans. PLF has previously challenged affirmative action and de-segregation policies in other states. 

Some aren’t pleased with the idea. Their view is that it would kill off a straightforward assessment of merit that applies across schools—the test is an objective measure, they say, and can’t be gamed the way interviews or grades can be, which can reward kids who are richer and/or white.

More specifically, de Blasio’s proposal has upset many Asian parents in particular and a great number of (though certainly not all) alumni and current students. Asian parents’ opposition to scrapping the test probably has something to do with the fact that, as data provided to us by the city’s Department of Education shows, 30 percent of Asian applicants in 2018 received offers to a specialized school, accounting for more than half of all offers. (And Asians are the minority group with the highest poverty rate in the city.) And there are plenty of elite public high schools across the country, but none are test-only, and none have the reputation nationally or internationally that New York’s specialized high schools do; many of the opponents of getting rid of the test believe—probably not incorrectly—that these schools’ reputation is in part a function of the formidable test. — www.theatlantic.com/…


— @subirgrewal

Activists who confronted Chelsea Clinton at vigil give their story

Full disclosure, I was an undergraduate student at NYU, where I very occasionally wrote for the student newspaper. In so many ways, this particular kerfuffle is happening in my backyard.

On Friday, a vigil for the Christchurch victims was held at New York University.

Rose Asaf is a senior at NYU. She is an Israeli-American Jewish woman, and she co-founded the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter at NYU.

Rose’s best friend is Leen Dweik, also a senior at NYU. She is a Muslim Palestinian woman whose main organizing centers on Palestine solidarity efforts.

When Chelsea Clinton arrived, Rose tweeted the video below, which shows Leen confronting Chelsea Clinton for her remarks about Ilhan Omar earlier this month. Leen said Clinton’s remarks had stoked Islamophobia. She went on to say the vigil was being held for “a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you… put out into the world”.

My best friend @vivafalastin told @ChelseaClintonthat itâÂ?Â?s a disgrace that she came to the vigil, calling out ChelseaâÂ?Â?s Islamophobia and hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/8sdWH86BhB

— Esor (@itme_esor) March 15, 2019

That video went viral and quickly led to intemperate responses from other celebrities rushing to Chelsea Clinton’s defense. 

Donald Trump Jr. jumped in, coming to Chelsea Clinton’s virtual aid. Several people then pointed out Cheslea Clinton’s long friendship with Ivanka Trump. Neera Tanden offered a competing explanation, suggesting Jr. might be trying to stoke division among Democrats (as if!). 

Mayor Bill DeBlasio came to Chelsea Clinton’s defense as well. 

Other celebrities and people with platforms decided to take it further. Kathy Griffin called Leen a “fucking pussy”. Robert Palmer, a political analyst called Leen a “fanatic”. 

A Hill journalist mocked Rose for her pro-Palestinian, pro-gay activism and later deleted that tweet after people highlighted its implicit racism and Islamophobia. 

The same journalist did leave up a tweet about other aspects of Rose’s pro-Palestinian activism. That bothered the acclaimed Jewish illustrator and comic book creator Eli Valley enough that he felt he had to jump in to defend the two young activists.

The executive editor of the Washington Examiner claimed Leen was advocating genocide. Within the space of a few hours, it felt as if most of “blue check twitter” seemed intent on putting the two young activists in their place.

And there was the usual Twitter mob who decided to dig up tweets from when they were 15 years old. To which Leen had this to say:

Finally, to add yet more flavor to the pot, a whole host of people noted that Leen was wearing a Bernie 2020 t-shirt. 

Let us all take a big step back.

Of course, the New Zealand incident was bound to touch the Israel-Palestine fault-line in American politics, if only for this: 

Then there is the fact that Leen Dweik is Palestinian, her best friend Rose Asaf is Israeli-American and they both advocate for Palestinian rights. Back in December, NYU’s student government voted for a resolution asking NYU to divest from Israeli companies. That effort was led, in part, by Rose Asaf and Leen Dweik as reported by the NYU student newspaper:

The students came to see the result of the “Resolution on the Human Rights of Palestinians,” presented by Senators at-Large Rose Asaf and Bayan Abubakr and Alternate Senator at-Large Leen Dweik. […]

“This resolution is for the human rights of all.” Dweik said. “We want to know that our tuition money is not being spent to kill brown people across the world.” […]

Political Action Chair for the Black Student Union Dylan Brown spoke second for the resolution. Brown mentioned that the struggles of black people in the United States cannot be separated from those of the Palestinian people.

“This body has a duty to all marginalized students on this campus to not be invested in systems of oppression,” Brown said. — nyunews.com/…

Given the nature of their political activism, it’s safe to assume that both young women are earnest in their concern for Rep. Omar. Campus activists for Palestinian causes often face charges of anti-semitism. Major pro-Israel organizations have funded an effort to create a blacklist of pro-Palestinian college activists:

For three years, a website called Canary Mission has spread fear among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights. The dossiers are meant to harm students’ job prospects, and have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials. — forward.com/…

So they can be forgiven to seeing the bad-faith attacks on Rep. Omar as a higher profile example of the kind of things they have likely faced.

A number of people on the left believe Rep. Ilhan Omar was unfairly attacked by those with large platforms who have a pro-Israel view. Many also believe these attacks put Rep. Omar at great risk of physical harm, and that legitimizing such bad-faith attacks leads to a vicious cycle, which can trigger violence. This is the context within which we have to understand the video and Leen’s remarks. 

Leen and Rose were interview by the Washington Post and had this to say about that dynamic:

“She [Chelsea Clinton] was the one who made this a story,” Asaf said, especially by using “as an American,” which Asaf saw as an “anti-immigrant trope.” “To me, when speaking of someone who is a refugee, it’s a dog whistle, it’s signaling this is a patriotic issue and that nationalism excludes people like Ilhan Omar,” she said.

“I wanted to convey my grief,” Dweik added. “It wasn’t this planned attack. I very specifically waited until after the vigil. I wanted this person to know they’ve caused harm. You’ve done things that have hurt this community, and the grief people feel today you’re not separate from.” […]

Asaf said if she could do anything differently, it would be to frame the encounter to focus more on the grieving Muslim community and not on Clinton.
“I think one of the most important things we can do going forward is to listen to the people being targeted, to respect and center their narratives,” Dweik said. “When all of these people are grieving and when we’re thinking about how this person is feeling … we’re not centering the right voices.”

— www.washingtonpost.com/…

The Chelsea Clinton tweet Rose referred to was this:

Leen and Rose have also written an article at Buzzfeed, providing their perspective on the encounter they had with Chelsea Clinton, it is worth a read.

We did a double take when we first noticed Chelsea Clinton was at the vigil. Just weeks before this tragedy, we bore witness to a bigoted, anti-Muslim mob coming after Rep. Ilhan Omar for speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby in this country. As people in unwavering solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and human rights, we were profoundly disappointed when Chelsea Clinton used her platform to fan those flames. We believe that Ilhan Omar did nothing wrong except challenge the status quo, but the way many people chose to criticize Omar made her vulnerable to anti-Muslim hatred and death threats. […]

The reality is that many people aren’t doing enough to fight anti-Muslim bigotry. We need people to understand that you cannot be racist against Palestinians, and vilify people who promote their cause, while also being in solidarity with Muslims. You cannot contribute to the anti-Muslim, anti-Black, and misogynistic abuse of Rep. Omar while also being in solidarity with Muslims.

To Chelsea Clinton: We hope that our intentions in confronting you are now clear. We believe that you still owe an apology: not only to Rep. Omar, but also to Palestinians for using your platform to defame their cause. As an Israeli national and a Palestinian, we want you to know that it is dangerous to label valid criticisms of Israel and its lobby as anti-semitic. We know that this is a tactic to silence us and deny us our free speech.

— www.buzzfeednews.com/…

— @subirgrewal

Speaker relating beauty of naturalization ceremonies is loudly booed at CPAC

There’s more detail about this session at TPM:

The only panel dedicated to immigration at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference quickly went off the rails Thursday, with audience members drowning out panelists’ presentation of data about the benefits of immigration with boos, laughter, and stories of “obvious illegal immigrants defecating in the woods, fornicating in the woods.” […]

When he noted that the U.S. proportionally takes in very fewimmigrants and refugees compared to other nations, a man interjected, “You’re a dreamer!” and much of the crowd broke out in applause and jeers. […]

— talkingpointsmemo.com/..

And in case you think this nativist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic position is somehow new to the Republican Party,

But having attended CPAC for the last six years, Bier conceded that the Republican base’s attitude toward immigrants has not significantly shifted.

“I don’t think it’s that different [from past years],” he said. “There’s always a very large contingent most passionate about immigration—about opposing it. It certainly seems like the passion is always with the side that wants to restrict it and not with the side that wants it to be more open.” — talkingpointsmemo.com/…

A speaker talking about the beauty of naturalization ceremonies at CPAC was loudly booed by the audience.

Now, CPAC is the premier Conservative/Republican conference of the year. Trump, Pence, several cabinet members and governors spoke there. It’s attended by legislative aides, activists, aspiring politicians, the core of the Republican party.

For anyone who has attended a naturalization ceremony, you know there is rarely a dry eye in the room. I was naturalized (became a citizen) 5 years ago, and I remember the ceremony I attended. I was among 170 odd people who became US citizens that day, at that place. They were old and young and from all across the world.

I had lived in the US 18 years, as a student and a worker, before I was eligible. Many in that courtroom had walked a far harder road than I had to come to that place.

I remember the judge who administered the oath/affirmation spoke about his parents who had been first-generation immigrants. He said perhaps one of our children too would become a Federal judge.

There were a lot of people in that room, some poor, for whom the process had meant an expenditure of thousands of dollars. For whom the very idea that their child might one day become a federal judge had been almost unimaginable. Except it was now a little more imaginable, because they were Americans.

And when we were done he reminded us we were all Americans now, and we had the same rights as every other American. That this was a bedrock principle of the nation which welcomed us.

In my mind, and that of all immigrants, that principle is what the Republicans at CPAC were booing. When they are booing, they are pissing on the promise and possibility that judge, standing in place for the nation and our government, shared with us in that courtroom.

And these people booing, along with the president and many, many members of his party are very, very clear that they are booing all immigrants, including those who have never been undocumented.

The thing is, the judge who spoke to us that day was right about one thing, we do have those rights.

And we will be exercising them. I’d vote for a doormat before I vote for a Republican.

 

— @subirgrewal

Car insurers are charging more in minority neighborhoods as per Pro Publica investigation.

ProPublica has a major investigative analysis where they conclude that Minority Neighborhoods Pay Higher Car Insurance Premiums Than White Areas With the Same Risk

ProPublica bought data on average damage claims in white and non-white neighborhoods and compared them with the rates insurance companies are charging in these neighborhoods. They consistently find that auto insurers charge more in non-white neighborhoods even when average loss rates per vehicle are lower. To remove variations based on driving records, age etc. They focused on a mythical 30 year old woman with a good driving record and one four states, California, Illinois, Texas and Missouri.

The analysis is quite thorough, though they are working with industry wide data since insurance companies won’t release their own loss rates broken down by neighborhood. The report is quite damning. Insurance companies are bound by various state regulations that prohibit discrimination and require pricing to reflect risk.

OTIS NASH WORKS SIX DAYS A WEEK AT TWO JOBS, as a security guard and a pest control technician, but still struggles to make the $190.69 monthly Geico car insurance payment for his 2012 Honda Civic LX.

“I’m on the edge of homelessness,” said Nash, a 26-year-old Chicagoan who supports his wife and 7-year-old daughter. But “without a car, I can’t get to work, and then I can’t pay my rent.”

Across town, Ryan Hedges has a similar insurance policy with Geico. Both drivers receive a good driver discount from the company.

Yet Hedges, who is a 34-year-old advertising executive, pays only $54.67 a month to insure his 2015 Audi Q5 Quattro sports utility vehicle. Nash pays almost four times as much as Hedges even though his run-down neighborhood, East Garfield Park, with its vacant lots and high crime rate, is actually safer from an auto insurance perspective than Hedges’ fancier Lake View neighborhood near Wrigley Field.

— Pro Publica

Most insurance companies refused to respond to their requests. Some have responded with “we don’t discriminate based on race” boilerplate that does not address the specific issues around rating setting algorithms that the article raises. Some of the state insurance regulators and insurers pushed back on ProPublica’s methodology claiming ProPublica’s dataset is incomplete and doesn’t accurately reflect loss rates. Of course, insurers also refuse to release more complete data, or make it available for analysis, so there is no way to validate their claims.

They could release the data to independent researchers to exonerate themselves, but haven’t offered to do so as yet. The industry has a long history of covering up redlining practices. My own take is that Pro Publica’s methodology is reasonable, and they’ve identified a very strong pattern that requires further investigation.

ACTION: So what should you do if your concerned about this? There are three actions you can take.

  1. Call your insurance company, ask to speak with a supervisor and ask to provide ProPublica with a specific response to this article that provides details on their pricing algorithm. Tell them you will not be satisfied with boiler-plate, non-quantitative legalese that states “we don’t discriminate”.
  2. Call the state insurance commissioner. If you live in one of the states ProPublica investigated, their websites/numbers are below. All of them have consumer feedback hotlines and e-mails:
    1. California Department of Insurance: 1-800-927-4357 (@CDINews)
    2. Texas Department of Insurance: 1-800-252-3439 (@TexasTDI)
    3. Illinois Department of Insurance: 1-866-445-5364
    4. Missouri Department of Insurance: 1-573-751-4126 (@MissouriDIFP)
  3. Write to your representative in Congress and ask that they investigate this, especially if they are on the Housing and Insurance committee.

And please go read the entire article which also covers the history of redlining in the insurance industry, and the extensive efforts insurance companies and banks went through to cover up redlining and withhold data from investigators. ProPublica interviewed black insurance agents who related older practices that included denying coverage entirely in minority neighborhoods (redlining), to dissuading agents from working in black neighborhoods. They also descrieb the various excuses insurers have used to mask redlining practices. Thurgood Marshall was denied car insurance by Travellers because they said he lived in a “congested” area (Harlem). What are they odds they issued insurance at competitive rates on the Upper East Side, which is as “congested”? The NAACP and others advocated for the passage of anti-discrimination laws through the 40s and 50s:

most states passed laws stating “rates should not be inadequate, excessive or unfairly discriminatory.” The legislation defines discrimination as “price differentials” that “fail to reflect equitably the differences in expected losses and expenses.”

Of course, the laws didn’t immediately stop discrimination. In a thorough examination of MetLife’s history released in 2002, New York state insurance regulators catalogued all of the ways that the company discriminated against black applicants for life insurance — dating back to the 1880s when it refused to insure them at all, to the first half of the 20th century when it required minorities to submit to additional medical exams and sold them substandard plans.

In the 1960s, as insurers stopped asking applicants to declare their race, MetLife began dividing cities into areas. In minority areas, applicants were subject to more stringent criteria, according to the report. In 2002, MetLife agreed to pay as much as $160 million to compensate minorities who were sold substandard policies.

One plausible explanation for higher prices is “price optimization” algorithms which seek to maximize profits by predicting which consumers are less apt to shop around and quote them higher rates.

— @subirgrewal