CityLab: When Monuments Go Bad

The centennial monument and 40 others are now under the equally critical gaze of the Chicago Monuments Project, an advisory committee of civic leaders, artists, designers, academics, and culture workers (including X) tasked with re-evaluating how the city handles its stock of monuments (which Schneider says he supports). The city formed the committee in the wake of the uprisings against racist police violence in July 2020. During a demonstration at Grant Park against a monument to Christopher Columbus, police assaulted journalists and activists; within days, Mayor Lori Lightfoot had statues of Columbus in Grant Park and Little Italy removed “temporarily.” To come up with long-term policies for monumentalization, the advisory committee began meeting in September and tentatively hope to release a set of recommendations by late June. [...]

No other American city has opened up this sort of wide-ranging dialogue about how cities make monuments. Swept up in this inquiry are five statues of Abraham Lincoln, as well as monuments to George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Italian Fascist Italo Balbo. The 41 items under discussion are just a small percentage of the hundreds of monuments in the city, but committee co-chair Bonnie McDonald, president of Landmarks Illinois, says the work of the committee is just a start. She’s asking for public participation on how current memorials should be handled, as well an in the commissioning of new monuments. [...]

The Chicago Torture Justice Memorials (CTJM) Project arranged several exhibitions calling for public input, uniting survivors, activists and South Side residents through a radically democratic process. “That process of stepping back and inviting everyone to contribute their creativity, their imagination, the desire to work for justice really opened up a process,” says Joey Mogul, CTJM co-founder. “It invited different members of the public beyond lawyers, legal workers and organizers.” The task for CTJM is to communicate “the horror and the pain and the generational trauma that occurred, while also [making] sure we acknowledge people’s agency and resistance,” says Mogul.

read the article

PolyMatter: India's Privately Owned City

 

The Atlantic: India Is What Happens When Rich People Do Nothing

 Laying the blame for India’s coronavirus disaster—hundreds of thousands of new cases and thousands of deaths each day, both of which are certainly a huge underestimate—at Modi’s feet would be easy. Certainly, much can be attributed to his government: After the virus landed on India’s shores, he imposed a brutal shutdown—one that largely hurt the poorest and most vulnerable—without consulting the nation’s top scientists, yet did not use the time to build up the country’s health-care infrastructure; his administration offered little in the way of support for those who lost their job or income as a result of restrictions; and rather than taking advantage of low case counts in prior months, his government offered an air of triumphalism, allowing enormous Hindu religious festivals and crowded sporting competitions to go ahead. Modi’s ruling Hindu-nationalist party has been accused of hoarding lifesaving drugs, and has held mass election rallies cum super-spreader events that would make Donald Trump blush. (This is to say nothing of how the authorities have used the pandemic to invoke a draconian colonial-era law to restrict freedoms, while Modi’s government has at various points blamed minority groups for outbreaks, arrested questioning journalists, and, most recently, demanded that social-media platforms including Facebook and Twitter delete posts critical of the authorities, ostensibly as part of the fight against the virus.) [...]

India’s economic liberalization in the ’90s brought with it a rapid expansion of the private health-care industry, a shift that ultimately created a system of medical apartheid: World-class private hospitals catered to wealthy Indians and medical tourists from abroad; state-run facilities were for the poor. Those with money were able to purchase the best available care (or, in the case of the absolute richest, flee to safety in private jets), while elsewhere the country’s health-care infrastructure was held together with duct tape. The Indians who bought their way to a healthier life did not, or chose not to, see the widening gulf. Today, they are clutching their pearls as their loved ones fail to get ambulances, doctors, medicine, and oxygen. [...]

Many things went wrong then, and many people were responsible: Safety systems that could have slowed down or partially contained the leak were all out of operation at the time of the accident; gauges measuring temperature and pressure in various parts of the plant, including the crucial gas-storage tanks, were so notoriously unreliable that workers ignored early signs of trouble; the cooling unit—necessary to keep chemicals at low temperatures—had been shut off; the flare tower, designed to burn off methyl isocyanate escaping from the gas scrubber, required new piping.What has happened since is perhaps more instructive. Indians have by and large forgotten the tragedy. The people of Bhopal have been left to deal with its fallout. Richer Indians have never had to visit the city, so they have ignored it. Yet their apathy signals a choice, a decision to look the other way as their fellow Indians suffer.

read the article

Social Europe: Covid-19 in India—profits before people

 The incomprehensible decision to allow a major Hindu religious festival—the Mahakumbh Mela, held every 12 years—to be brought forward by a full year, on the advice of some astrologers, brought millions from across India to one small area along the Ganges River and contributed to ‘super-spreading’ the disease. Unbelievably, the last major ‘ritual bathing’ goes ahead today! [...]

India is home to the largest vaccine producer in the world and has several other companies capable of producing vaccines. Before the pandemic, 60 per cent of the vaccines used in the developing world for child immunisation were manufactured in India. [...]

Low uptake even among this vulnerable group could have resulted from concerns about the rapid regulatory approval granted to Covaxin, which had not completed Phase III trials. The Indian government also encouraged exports, partly to fulfil commitments by the Serum Institute of India to AstraZeneca and the global COVAX facility—partly to enhance its own standing among developing countries. [...]

The latest sign of this active encouragement of disaster capitalism by the Indian state is even more egregious. In the proposed opening up of vaccination to the 18-45 age group from May 1st, access is to be limited to private hospitals and clinics, and only on payment—with prices ranging from ₹1,200 to ₹2,400 (€13.25-€26.5) per dose! Obviously, the poor will be unable to afford the vaccines, and so the pandemic will rage on, the massive human suffering will continue and countless lives will be lost.

read the article

History Of Ideas — Talking Politics: Luxemburg on Revolution

 Rosa Luxemburg wrote ‘The Russian Revolution’ (1918) from a jail cell in Germany. In it she described how the Bolshevik revolution was going to change the world but also explained how and why it was already going badly wrong. David explores the origins of Luxemburg’s insights, from her experiences in Poland to her love/hate relationship with Lenin. Plus he tells the story of her terrible end.

listen to the podcast

The Red Line: Iraq: What Went Wrong?

 For a number of years Iraq has been spiraling, with worsening insurgencies, sectarian violence and numerous regional players all treating Iraq like a political battleground. How did we get here though? What was the decision made to bring Iraq to the point we stand at now, and will decisions coming up better or worsen the situation? On the panel this week. JAMES LEBOVIC (George Washington University) DIYAR AMEEN (Kurdistan Mission to the EU) JOSEPH VOTEL (Rtr 4-Star US General) For more info please visit - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod Follow Michael on @MikeHilliardAus

listen to the podcast

Social Europe: Fewer Italians than Swedes hold anti-feminist views

Of the eight European countries included in the survey, which had 12,000 respondents, people in Italy were the least likely to blame feminism for men’s feelings of marginalisation and demonisation.

Meanwhile, in Sweden—long seen as a bastion of progressive gender-equality politics—more people (41 per cent) than anywhere else surveyed said they at least somewhat agreed with the statement: ‘It is feminism’s fault that some men feel at the margins of society and demonised.’

After Sweden, about 30 per cent of participants in Poland expressed anti-feminist views, followed by the United Kingdom (28 per cent), France (26 per cent), Hungary (22 per cent), Germany (19 per cent) and the Netherlands (15 per cent). Only 13 per cent of Italian respondents, however, expressed such views and 65 per cent said they either strongly or somewhat disagreed with them. [...]

According to the survey, the majority of respondents in Hungary hold negative views towards immigrants (60 per cent) and Muslim people (54 per cent). These numbers are about twice as high as they are in the UK, where 30 per cent hold such views of immigrants and 26 per cent of Muslims.

read the article

History Of Ideas — Talking Politics: De Beauvoir on the Other

 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) is one of the founding texts of modern feminism and one of the most important books of the twentieth century. It covers everything from ancient myth to modern psychoanalysis to ask what the relations between men and women have in common with other kinds of oppression, from slavery to colonialism. It also offers some radical suggestions for how both women and men can be liberated from their condition.

listen to the podcast

Philosophy Tube: Jordan Peterson's Ideology

 

History Of Ideas — Talking Politics: Nietzsche on Morality | The Genealogy of Morality (1887)

 Friedrich Nietzsche’s masterpiece sets out to explain where ideas of good and evil come from and why they have left human beings worse off. He traces their origins in what he calls the slave revolt in morality. David examines the ways Nietzsche’s story unsettles almost everything about modern social conventions and leaves us with the troubling question: what can possibly come next?

listen to the podcast

The Guardian: How globalisation has transformed the fight for LGBTQ+ rights

 It was no coincidence that the notion of LGBTQ+ rights was spreading worldwide at the same time that old boundaries were collapsing in the era of globalisation. The collapse of these boundaries led to the rapid spread of ideas about sexual equality or gender transition – and also a dramatic reaction by conservative forces, by patriarchs and priests who feared the loss of control that this process threatened. These were the dynamics along the pink line, particularly in places where people came to be counted as gay or lesbian or MSM (men who have sex with men) or transgender for the first time. In most societies, they had always been there, albeit in ways that were sometimes circumscribed or submerged, but now they claimed new status as they took on new political identities. And they became enmeshed in a bigger geopolitical dynamic. [...]

Particularly in Europe, these new-look nationalist movements sometimes bolstered their agendas by claiming they were protecting not just jobs and citizens but values, too. By the time Le Pen was running for office in 2017, these values included the rights of LGBTQ+ people. The man who wrote this script had been the crusading Dutch anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated in 2002. Fortuyn, who was gay, attracted mass support when he claimed that Muslim intolerance of homosexuality posed an existential threat to European civilisation. His far-right successor, Geert Wilders, drove the agenda hard. When a troubled Muslim man killed 49 people at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June 2016, Trump – then on the campaign trail – slammed “radical Islamic terrorism”. Wilders, fighting his own election campaign back home, capitalised on this: “The freedom that gay people should have – to kiss each other, to marry, to have children – is exactly what Islam is fighting against.” [...]

In western Europe, the issue of LGBTQ+ rights was being staked as a pink line against the influx of new migrants. At the same time, in eastern Europe, it was being staked as a pink line against decadent western liberalism. In both instances, queer people themselves came to be instrumentalised politically as never before. They acquired political meaning far beyond their own claims to equality and dignity. They became embodiments of progress and worldliness to some, but signs of moral and social decay to others.

read the article or listen to the podcast

The Guardian Longreads: Penthouses and poor doors: how Europe's 'biggest regeneration project' fell flat

It has been billed as the world’s first swimming-pool bridge, a dazzling feat of acrylic engineering that will span the 14-metre gap between the two buildings and give residents the feeling of “floating through the air in central London”. But, although he lives in Embassy Gardens, Iqbal and his neighbours will never enjoy the thrill of going for an aerial dip. “We have a front-row seat of the Sky Pool,” he told me. “But the sad thing for us, living in the shared-ownership building, is that we will never have access to it. It’s only there for us to look at, just like the nice lobby, and all of the other facilities for the residents of the private blocks. Nobody expects these amenities for free, but we’re not even given the choice to pay for them.” [...]

The capital is well used to high-rise, high-end totems by now, but VNEB takes the iniquities of the real estate-industrial complex to extremes. It is a place where penthouses with private chapels and running tracks loom above crumbling council estates across the railway line, where scores of flats lie empty, held by secretive shell companies in off-shore tax havens, and where the division between absentee investors and owner-occupiers confined to poor doors could not be more stark. Dogged by allegations of cronyism and gerrymandering, it is the product of politicians in thrall to property developers, driven by a blind faith in the market – even when investors started to realise that they might have bought into a mirage. [...]

In one snapshot, looking at an agency that listed 35 new-build properties for sale during an eight-month period, the constant relisting made it look as if there were in fact 368 properties for sale. Rather than roughly £50m in market value of apartments advertised, the distortion would have made it appear as more than £500m. In another example, a £3.6m flat was re-listed 15 times in six months, making it seem like the average asking price in the area was skyrocketing. The manufactured flurry also gave the impression to potential buyers that flats were “flying off the shelves”, she said, when in fact the developers were struggling to offload them. The reality was that they were selling off homes in bulk at steep discounts to corporate landlords and institutional investors, with prices slashed by up to 38%.

read the article or listen to the podcast

History Of Ideas — Talking Politics: Rousseau on Inequality

 Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (also known as the Second Discourse) tells the story of all human history to answer one simple question: how did we end up in such an unequal world? David explores the steps Rousseau traces in the fall of humankind and asks whether this is a radical alternative to the vision offered by Hobbes or just a variant on it. Is Rousseau really such a nice philosopher?

listen to the podcast

History Of Ideas — Talking Politics: Douglass on Slavery

 My Bondage and My Freedom’ by the former slave Frederick Douglass was the second of his three autobiographies and the one that contained his most radical ideas. In this episode David explores how Douglass used his life story not only to expose the horror of slavery but to champion a new approach to abolishing it. The name for this approach: politics.

listen to the podcast

WorldAffairs: How White Supremacy Fueled the Attack on the Capitol

 For months, the domestic terrorist attack on the US Capitol was planned in plain sight on social media. So why weren’t we ready for it? This week, former FBI special agent Michael German explains why the bureau deprioritized the threat posed by white supremacists… and why the Department of Homeland Security says they pose “the most persistent and lethal threat to the homeland.” Then, historian Nell Irvin Painter breaks down how a legacy of racism in the United States brought us to this moment. Can we change our trajectory? She argues that the Black Lives Matter Movement of 2020 could bring lasting, positive change to this country.

listen to the podcast

Vox: India's huge farmer protests, explained

In November 2020, thousands of farmers marched from the northern states of India to Delhi to protest farming reforms passed by Prime Minister Modi’s government. Those protests have continued throughout the month of December and show little sign of letting up. The farmers have set up camp in and around the capital city to pressure the government to repeal the laws, but the government won’t budge.

The government says these new laws will modernize farming by liberalizing the industry, but India’s farmers say it will be their downfall. Under these new policies, farmers will have fewer government protections and will likely lose the government-regulated markets and prices they have relied on for decades.

To make matters even more difficult, all this is happening as India’s farmers grapple with a shrinking share of the economy that has contributed to a suicide crisis around the country.

To understand the three farming reforms and why they have driven so many farmers into the streets, as well as the history behind the problems farmers have been facing for decades, watch the video above.

Wisecrack: That Time Disney Built a Creepy Government

Disney World is beloved all over the globe for the pure escapism it offers. But the story behind this fantasy world is a lot weirder, and a whole lot less magical than it might seem. We'll explain in this Wisecrack Edition: That Time Disney Built a Creepy Government.

CityLab: How Fear Took Over the American Suburbs

 In his book, “Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001,” Kyle Riismandel, a senior university lecturer in the Federated Department of History at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers-Newark, argues that suburbanites of this era engaged in “productive victimization,” using their imagined and real fears as a means to hoard power and exert local control. It’s a phenomenon he observed growing up in the suburbs of Wanaque, New Jersey — 30 miles away from New York City, 12 miles away from Newark, “but in many ways a world away” — later, at graduate school in D.C., and now, from his home back in the New Jersey suburb of Montclair.

Over those three decades, cultural and political phenomena served to make suburbanites feel less like they were living in a bucolic paradise, and more like in a land constantly under assault — with threats ranging from toxic waste and cancerous household products; to burglaries and kidnappings; to satanic cults and explicit music. Riismandel traces the reaction to these perceived threats, through the weaponization of the environmental movement as a means to offload hazards to poorer communities, the rise of NIMBYs who feared overdevelopment in their backyards, and the advent of vigilantism as a response to crime and disorder. The book captures what Riismandel identifies as a growing anxiety that undergirded white suburban life. “Things aren’t necessarily happening” to suburbanites of the time, he says, “but there’s always a sense they they will.” [...]

This continued production of threat — even without the materiality or the reality of the threat being so big — is in part because it allows people to do things. It’s facilitated by the broader political culture of the rightward turn of the Reagan era and the New Right, saying, you should be scared; that we need more cops on the street. But also in response, you can exert more control as a homeowner, or as a parent, and you can police streets more effectively, or more privately. You can do all these things that allow you to work with, or even replace, the police or the state. [...]

Part of the privilege of living in the suburbs is controlling local space, not being victimized by an actual crime. That you might be victimized by the threat of crime, and the idea of crime, but that you should be able to live free from that fear. This is why I call it the suburban crisis, because it's really just a crisis of privilege. It is not the “urban crisis,” which is, you know, deeply-rooted and systemic and structural, that we see elucidated by a number of scholars, most famously, Thomas Sugrue’s book. They're quite different. One is one of systemic racism and disinvestment. Another is one of privilege and expectation.

read the article

Vox: Why government agencies should move from DC to the Midwest

Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other former industrial powerhouses in the Midwest are struggling. The industries that have supported those cities have gone away, leaving them overbuilt and underpopulated. Meanwhile, coastal cities like New York and Washington, DC are overcrowded and absurdly expensive. So, why not relocate some well-paying federal jobs from the capitol area to the Midwest? Vox's Matt Yglesias explains how such a plan might work.

Social Europe: Not part of Europe anyway?

 The comparative study of welfare states has long stressed British distinctiveness. While the continued collective provision of goods, especially health (the NHS), certainly differentiates the United Kingdom from the United States, the UK (sometimes with the addition of Ireland) stands alone within Europe as representing a liberal world of welfare, distinct from both social-democratic and conservative worlds. Today, in terms of the extent of income inequality and poverty, the UK is mostly an outlier within western Europe, while the movement from passive to active labour-market policies has taken a particularly punitive form. [...]

While the self-image of the US is that it is classless compared to Europe, in fact no country of old Europe matches its class divide—not even Britain. Yet in many ways the British social structure is now less European than before. This is not only a question of poverty and inequality. The degradation (and denigration) of its traditional working class has gone furthest and its management has become the most Americanised.

In the past Italy, with its north-south divide, was the European country with the greatest regional differences. Now the growing gap between London and the south on the one hand and the northern cities on the other means that Britain resembles a US slash-and-burn pattern of economic growth. [...]

As some social historians have noticed, the origins of this divergence lie in the de-industrialisation of the 1980s. While deindustrialisation was a common process across the democratic welfare states of western Europe, in the UK it was interwoven with the Thatcherite political onslaught on the trade union movement. Far more so than elsewhere, in the UK deindustrialisation constituted an explicit undermining of social citizenship.

read the article