Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 86

Was It a Mistake for Trump to Focus on the Economy?

Remember the 2012 election, that happy time when an optimistic America  loved both of the candidates for president?

OK, that’s not quite the way I remember it either. One of the more distinctive features of that election was the fetishization of Jobs Day—the annual release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment numbers for the previous month. The circus-like anticipation of that release, a dry statistical exercise that repeats without fail every month, was somewhat peculiar, drawing out heavy press coverage and even bizarre conspiracy theories.

Related Story

August's Perfectly Fine Jobs Report

Jobs Day became a major event because the U.S. economy was still recovering from a deep and prolonged recession; because there was a close, contested presidential election; and because the political press, focused as never before on the power of data, became semi-obsessed with the power of jobs reports and the unemployment rate to predict who would win the election. In general, a growing economy is a very strong predictor of whether the incumbent or—crucially—his party will win; jobs and the unemployment rate, in particular, are among the very best specific indicators.

But this year, Jobs Day has become a non-event, with bored political reporters mostly allowing their colleagues on the business desk handle jobs, while they focus on the latest Trump gaffe or Clinton scandal. (Thanks, Bourree!) For one thing, as bleak as the mood in the country may be over a Clinton-Trump election, there are greater signs of optimism on the economic front.

There have been rare exceptions to the lack of interest in a few months this year. A rotten May report startled the Democratic Party and set off questions about whether Hillary Clinton was in trouble. Then things stabilized with a few excellent reports. The August report was more underwhelming, but the country still added a decent 151,000 new jobs.

David Malpass, a Trump economic adviser, issued a statement bemoaning the results:

The August jobs report shows the stagnant Clinton-Obama economy fails to deliver the jobs Americans desperately need. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the economy added only 126,000 private sector jobs in August.

The unemployment rate is unchanged at 4.9% rate. The country’s labor force participation rate is 62.8%, near a historic low. The Clinton-Obama recovery is seven years of failure on virtually every significant metric—growth, income, trade and jobs. Donald Trump’s policies will put America First, Make America Work Again and Make America Great Again.

These sorts of warnings tend to ring a little bit false when the economy continues to grow, if more slowly than anyone would like. But this has a been a consistent theme for Trump. He has centered his campaign around doomsday predictions about the economy. He paints the country as cratering, with offshoring accelerating, jobs disappearing, and growth cratering. The problem is that there’s little to support the idea of accelerating offshoring; job creation is up; and the economy is growing.

Tom Edsall noted this week that Trump’s bleak message doesn’t make a great deal of sense in swing states like New Hampshire, “where the unemployment rate in July was 2.9 percent, well below the 4.9 percent national rate. Nor does it ring true in other battleground states where Trump is behind. In North Carolina, the unemployment rate is 4.7 percent; according to RealClearPolitics, Clinton has a 1.7 point lead. In Colorado, the unemployment rate is 3.8 percent; Clinton leads Trump by 11.8 points. In Virginia, unemployment is 3.7 percent; Clinton is ahead by 12.8 points.”

There have been darker currents to Trump’s approach to the economy. His immigration stance, which has frequently taken on a racist cast, is centered around the supposed threat that undocumented immigrants pose to the American economy. It has also led him to wild conspiracy theories. Arguing that the most commonly used top-line unemployment rate paints too rosy a picture, he has called it “one of the biggest hoaxes in American modern politics," while his son Donald Jr. has asserted without proof that the rate is manipulated for political purposes.

One can see why Trump would want to focus on the economy. As a businessman, he sees commerce as one of his major selling points (Mitt Romney also arguably fell into this trap, stung by bad timing), and besides, voters tell pollsters over and over that the economy is the most important issue to them in this election. But the fact is that the indicators that helped Barack Obama so much in 2012 appear to be helping his party and its nominee, Hillary Clinton, this year. As John Sides and Lynn Vavreck wrote in The Gamble, “Candidates disadvantaged by the economy … must find an issue on which their position is more popular than their opponent’s and on which the opponent is committed to an unpopular position.” Trump has not done that.

Many members of the anti-Trump coalition—whether progressives or those conservatives appalled by Trump—may like to believe that it is Trump’s personality or his appeals to racism, xenophobia, and bigotry that account for his struggles in recent weeks. But the decision to focus on the economy may actually be Trump’s original sin. He’s choosing to harp on an issue that is a structural strength for the Democratic candidate, while his alternative issues are crafted to appeal mostly to white voters, a too-small demographic. It isn’t personal. It’s just business.

An Explosion in the Philippines President's Hometown

Updated on September 2 at 3:35 p.m. ET

NEWS BRIEF An explosion rocked the hometown of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday night, killing 12 people and injuring 60.

There’s no confirmation of what caused the blast, but the explosion happened just after 11 p.m. local time in a crowded market in front of the upscale Marco Polo hotel, a place where Duterte is often seen. Duterte travels from the country’s capital, Manila, to Davao City in the southern Philippines on most weekends. He was there when the explosion occurred, and had given a press conference earlier in the day. Reuters reports he was safe at a police station. Shortly after the blast, police set up a series of checkpoints around the city.

The area near the explosion is full of ukay-ukay, which are outdoor thrift shops, and many food vendors. It’s often packed on weekend nights. This is the aftermath of the explosion:

Davao Police Spokes says they're locking down Davao City with checkpoints after an explosion at Roxas night market. pic.twitter.com/sk2FinAqHN

— Mariz Umali (@marizumali) September 2, 2016

During his campaign for office, and since he’s assumed control of the country, Duterte has often praised the peace and low crime of Davao, where he served seven terms totaling 22 years.

While the city does have relatively low crime, it is in a region Islamic terrorist groups have long used as a jungle hideout. Most notably, last year terrorists kidnapped a Canadian tourist from Davao. In April the militants dropped his severed head in a nearby island’s busy town center.

Since Duterte won the presidential election and assumed office in June, he has carried out a war on the country’s drug dealers, traffickers, and addicts. This has given rise to hundreds of extrajudicial murders. Combined with those people killed by police, nearly 2,000 people have died in Duterte’s war on drugs since he took office.

Samsung's Recall

Samsung issued a global recall Friday for its Galaxy Note 7, a large-screen smartphone, after dozens of consumers reported that the device exploded or caught fire.

The company released a statement on Samsung’s U.S. website, saying the problem is with the phone’s battery. It said that 35 “cases” have been reported globally and that the company is halting all sales of the device.

According to the Associated Press, Samsung is pulling the phones in 10 countries, including South Korea and the U.S.

“Customers who already bought Note 7s will be able to swap them for new smartphones in about two weeks,” the AP reported. Samsung said it “has not found a way to tell exactly which phones may endanger users out of the 2.5 million Note 7s already sold globally,” but estimates “about 1 in 42,000 units may have a faulty battery,” according to the AP.

The recall comes just two weeks after the 5.7-inch waterproof smartphone was launched.

N.K. Jemisin and the Politics of Prose

Last week, the World Science Fiction society named N.K. Jemisin the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, perhaps the highest honor for science-fiction and fantasy novels. Her winning work, The Fifth Season, has also been nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award, and it joins Jemisin’s collection of feted novels in the speculative fiction super-genre. Even among the titans of black science-fiction and fantasy writers, including the greats Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, Jemisin’s achievement is singular in the 60-plus years of the Hugos.

The Fifth Season is a stunning piece of speculative-fiction work, and it accomplishes the one thing that is so difficult in a field dominated by tropes: innovation, in spades. A rich tale of earth-moving superhumans set in a dystopian world of regular disasters, The Fifth Season manages to incorporate the deep internal cosmologies, mythologies, and complex magic systems that genre readers have come to expect, in a framework that also asks thoroughly modern questions about oppression, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Its characters are a slate of people of different colors and motivations who don’t often appear in a field still dominated by white men and their protagonist avatars. The Fifth Season’s sequel, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate, continues its dive into magic, science, and the depths of humanity.

Just a year ago, the idea of a novel as deliberately outside the science-fiction norm as The Fifth Season winning the Hugo Award seemed unlikely. In 2013, a small group of science-fiction writers and commentators launched the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies” campaigns to exploit the Hugo nomination system and place dozens of books and stories of their own choosing up for awards. Those campaigns arose as a reaction to perceived “politicization” of the genre—often code for it becoming more diverse and exploring more themes of social justice, race, and gender—and became a space for some science-fiction and fantasy communities to rail against “heavy handed message fic.” Led by people like the “alt-right” commentator Vox Day, the movements reached fever pitch in the 2015 Hugo Award cycle, and Jemisin herself was often caught up in the intense arguments about the future of the genre.

I spoke to Jemisin about her works, politics, the sad puppies controversy, and about race and gender representation in science-fiction and fantasy the day before The Fifth Season won the Hugo Award. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Vann R. Newkirk II: Tell me more about the creative process that goes into this trilogy. This seems like a huge undertaking.

N.K. Jemisin: It is, and this is the first time that I’ve ever done one continuous story all the way through three books. Trilogies are relatively easy when each story is a self-contained piece, which I’ve done for all of my previous books. I have a lot of new respect for authors who do like giant unending trilogies just because this is hard. It’s a lot harder than I thought it was. But I’m enjoying it so far. It’s a solid challenge. I like solid challenges. I had some moments when I was writing the first book where I was just sort of, “I don’t know if I can do this.” Fortunately I have friends who are like, “What’s wrong with you? Snap out of it!” And I moved on and I got it done and I’m very glad with the reception. I’m shocked by the reception, but I’m glad for it.

Newkirk: You’re shocked by the reception? This seems like something that is tailor-made to be a hit right now.

Jemisin: Ehh. You may have seen some of the stuff that’s been happening in the genre in terms of pushback, reactionary movements and so forth. Basically, the science-fiction microcosmic version of what’s been happening on the large-scale political level and what’s been happening in other fields like with Gamergate in gaming. It’s the same sort of reactionary pushback that is generally by a relatively small number of very loud people. They’re loud enough that they’re able to convince you that the world really isn’t as progressive as you think it is, and that the world really does just want old-school 1950s golden-age-era stalwart white guys in space suits traveling in very phallic-looking spaceships to planets with green women and … they kind of convince you that that’s really all that will sell. Told in the most plain didactic language you can imagine and with no literary tricks whatever because the readership just doesn’t want that.

I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.

Newkirk: For you, are those people something that bothers you as you build a profile? Are people louder now that The Fifth Season is getting so much love?

Jemisin: They may be, but I’m not hearing them as much. I seem to have passed some kind of threshold, and maybe it’s something as simple as I now have so many positive messages coming at me that the negatives are sort of drowned out. As a side note, the so-called boogeyman of science-fiction, the white supremacist asshat who started the Rabid Puppies, Vox Day, apparently posted something about me a few days ago and I just didn’t care. There was a whole to-do between me and him a few years back where he ended up getting booted out of SWFA [Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America] because of some stuff he said about me, and I just didn’t care. It was a watershed moment at that point but now it’s just sort of, “Oh, it’s him again. He must be needing to get some new readers or trying to raise his profile again. Or something.” I didn’t look at it. No one bothered to read it and dissect it and send me anything about it. No one cared.

I think that’s sort of indicative of what’s happening. To some degree, as I move outside of the exclusive genre audience, the exclusive genre issues don’t bother me as much. Maybe that’s just speculation. I’m reaching a point where I’m still hearing some of it, but it’s just not as loud, or maybe it’s just focusing on different points. I don’t know. It’s still there. It’ll be there. I think that the Hugo ceremony at this upcoming WorldCon is going to be another not-as-seminal moment as last year when the Puppies tried a takeover that was somewhat more successful at the nominating stage and where they got smacked down roundly at the actual voting stage with no award after no award. I don’t think that’s going to happen this year, and I don’t think it matters as much. But who knows? I’ll guess we’ll see. If I win I’ll be happy. If I don’t win, I’ll be happy. I’ll continue to write.

Newkirk: I talked a lot with Ken Liu last year a lot when it happened [his translation of Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem won the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Novel], and he said all that stuff sort of loses its power over time, because it’s reactionary. It’s something where the facts and your audience numbers don’t really lie.

Jemisin: Reactionary movements can’t sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on. And when they keep using the same tactics over and over again, I don’t know that that’s sustainable. Or they’ll burn themselves out when they reach the point of, I guess, Donald Trumpism, for lack of a better description. They reach some point where it’s no longer a reactionary movement, some demagogue tries to take the lead and make it all about them. And at that point it becomes clear that it’s just some kind of petty narcissistic thing, and I think that’s what kills it. But we’ll see, both at the Hugos level and in the polls in November.

In a lot of cases, the people who were writing these stories were people who didn’t have a good understanding of their own power.

Newkirk: There are some very strong allegories in both books and they also play alongside an actual effort to build in racial critiques in a fantasy world. It’s weird to me how uncommon that is in a lot of people’s perspectives about science-fiction and fantasy. How do you pull that off?

Jemisin: I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history. And I’m not drawing solely upon my own racial experiences. There’s some stuff that’s going to happen in the third book that’s sort of hinting at the Holocaust. You can see hints of stuff that happened with the Khmer Rouge at varying points in the story. You see the ways in which oppression perpetuates itself, one group of people teaches every other group of people how to do truly horrible things. I was drawing in that case on King Leopold of Belgium’s horrible treatment of people in the Congo—chopping off hands for example—and how in the Rwandan Civil War they chopped off lots of hands. Well, they learned it from the Europeans.

I read a lot of history for fun. I spent my high school years just like pretty other kid in America. Sort of half-asleep through history, memorizing facts so that I could spit them back and take the AP exam, and that was not fun. But then later on, as I got older and I actually started reading this stuff from different perspectives and started considering different research methods, and as I started to realize just how much I’d learned in school was just bullshit, then it became a lot more interesting to me. So as I read about the different sets of people who have been oppressed and the different systemic oppressions that have existed throughout history, you start to see the patterns in them. Obviously I’m drawing on my own African American experience, but I’m drawing on a lot of other stuff too.

Newkirk: The point you make about the cycle of oppression is really driven home in The Fifth Season.

Jemisin: Well, again I just tried to do what seemed realistic to me within the boundaries of science-fiction and fantasy. They really are supposed to be about people. It’s fiction. It’s not a textbook, yet for decades, for reasons that I don’t fully understand, there was this weird aversion to good sociology and focusing on good characterization and people acting like real people. It was all supposed to be about the science. And so you would go into forums, and you would see dozens of people nitpicking the hell out of the physics. “The equipment doesn’t work this way!” Just engineering discussions out the wazoo, but no one pointing out, “You know, your characters are completely unrealistic. People don’t act this way. People don’t talk this way. What is this?” I just feel like that doesn’t make sense. Social sciences are sciences too, and that aversion to respecting the fiction part of science-fiction; to exploring the people as well as the gadgets and the science never made sense to me. And that aversion is why it isn’t common to see these kinds of explorations of what people are really like and how people really dominate each other, and how power works.

Because, among other things in a lot of cases, the people who were writing these stories were people who didn’t have a good understanding of their own power: their own privilege within a system, and a kyriarchical system, and not understanding that as mostly straight white men with a smattering of other groups who are writing this genre for years. A lot of them bought into the American ideal of rugged individualism of, “Go forth intrepid person with their gun,” and they would go forth and do brave things and that would bring them power. No recognition of the power they already had. And I think it does take an outsider to a degree to come in and look around and read the stuff that’s key in the genre and be like, whoa something is really missing here.

But I don’t think that I was the first outsider to do so by any stretch. Most of the writers of color who have come into the genre have come and looked around and had that moment. Of course, Octavia Butler being the first and foremost who came in and looked at the alien colonization story and said, “Oh, hey it’s a lot like what happened to [black people]! Why don’t we just make all that stuff explicit? Instead of rape, why don’t we include aliens trying to assimilate our genes?” And it does take people who understand systems of power, who understand the complexities of how people interact with each other to depict that.

The 12-Year-Old Freshman at Cornell

NEWS BRIEF Jeremy Schuler, a 12-year-old boy from Texas, just began his freshman year at Cornell University’s engineering school.

The prodigious youngster, who’s been covered in national and local news, has been reading in English and Korean since age 2, taught himself chemistry by age 11, and earned his high-school diploma from a special online program called the Texas Tech University Independent School District (TTUISD) “that allows K-12 students to earn credits at their own pace,” according to a story about Schuler on the program’s website.

Jeremy’s mother, who grew up in Seoul, and his father are both aerospace engineers, and they’ve opted to homeschool their son for his entire academic life.

“Early on we realized Jeremy wasn’t really ordinary,” said his mother, Harrey Schuler, who put her career on hold to focus on her son’s education. “We briefly considered sending him to a charter school or a school for the gifted and talented, but in the end there wasn’t much of a choice because he was way too advanced to be enrolled in any traditional schools. So I quit my career to dedicate my time to teaching Jeremy myself. I have been homeschooling him ever since.”

Now, though, Jeremy needs more strenuous academic challenges. He applied to colleges in the fall of 2015, was accepted to Cornell Engineering in March of this year, and just recently began his coursework.

“The classes are kind of easy so far,” Jeremy said, according to the Associated Press. “But I know they'll be harder pretty soon.”

He’s also ready for the challenges of adjusting to college life. Unlike a typical college freshman, Jeremy lives with his parents—the family moved to Ithaca, New York, and his father works at the Lockheed Martin branch near there—but his pre-college concerns were the same as every incoming freshman: making friends, fitting in, finding his way around campus.

“I was nervous at first, but I'm a lot more excited than nervous now,” he told the AP. “As Mommy said, all the kids in math camp were older than me, so I’m used to having older friends. As long as they like math.”

He also said, according to the TTUISD story, “Cornell will be different, though, especially in the first few weeks as I’ll need help to navigate campus and get used to life at school because I’ve been homeschooled my whole life.”

For its part, Cornell is happy to welcome Jeremy as a student.

“It’s risky to extrapolate, but if you look at his trajectory and he stays on course, one day he’ll solve some problem we haven't even conceived of,”  Lance Collins, the Cornell Engineering dean, said to the AP. “That's pretty exciting.”

The Private Meeting Between British Students and Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to meet with new British Prime Minister Theresa May, but he did find time for a two-hour sit-down with 11 students from one of Britain's most expensive boarding schools, Eton College.

The students from the renowned all-boys school were photographed at the Kremlin, shaking hands with Putin and sitting with him around a table. The Telegraph reported Wednesday that the meeting was believed to have “been set up by a Russian bishop after he gave a talk at the Berkshire college in March.” It’s not clear exactly when the meeting took place.

The newspaper also wrote that one of the boys, David Wei, said he organized the trip to “improve relations between the West and Russia.” Wei reportedly wrote on Facebook:

“It took me a total of ten months, 1040 emails, 1000 text messages, countless sleepless nights, constant paranoia during A2 exam season, declining academic performance… but here we are.

Guys, we truly gave Putin a deep impression of us and he responded by showing us his human face.”

An Eton spokeswoman told The Telegraph the trip was in no way connected with the school.

“This was a private visit by a small group of boys organised entirely at their own initiative and independently of the College,” she said.

The Kremlin has declined to comment, according to the newspaper.

Some of the boys shared their Kremlin experience on social media. Trenton Bricken, who, per his Facebook page, just started college at Duke University, shared on August 24 this photo, captioned, “Two hour meeting with President Putin. He was small in person but not in presence.”

The Sun spoke to a “source close to the students,” who said the boys “went last week” and “didn’t tell anyone they were going, I would assume it was so the school didn’t find out because I don’t think they would be happy.” The source said:

From what I understand, they were talking to him about Eton because he had a keen interest in the college, mainly due to previous politicians in the UK who had attended.

After they got home, the boys posted the pictures to social media, which I thought was strange because it looked like they had been trying to keep it quiet previously.

Wei’s hopes—that the meeting would “improve relations between the West and Russia”—likely won’t be realized. But at least the boys got some cool photos out of it.

What Syria's Tourism Office Isn't Telling You

NEWS BRIEF The Syrian Ministry of Tourism released a new promotional video of the coastal city of Tartus, featuring its expansive Mediterranean coastline, packed beaches, and lush green landscapes.  

But the video fails to capture one thing: the country’s five-year civil war.

The one-minute, 43-second video titled “Syria—Always Beautiful,” set to an upbeat remix of Alan Walker’s “Faded,” was one of many videos posted to the ministry’s YouTube page in recent weeks in an apparent effort to entice tourists to visit areas of the war-torn country still under the control of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Although the aerial footage of the bustling beach town gives viewers a sense of Syria’s once-booming tourism industry—the country welcomed 8.5 million visitors in 2010— it provides a stark contrast to what Tartus has since become. Five years into the civil war, which has claimed the lives of almost half a million people and displaced millions, the city has been bombarded by the Islamic State, including an attack that killed 150 people and wounded 200 others in May.

Local Syrian news outlet Al-Masdar News notes that the coastal enclave depicted in the video has been “virtually been untouched by the war.” But such assurances are unlikely to convince the numerous countries that have issued travel warnings to their citizens asking them to avoid visiting the country.

“No part of Syria should be considered safe from violence,” the U.S. State Department says on its website. “The potential for hostile acts exists throughout the country, including kidnappings and the use of chemical warfare against civilians.”

Prior to the start of the civil war, foreign tourism accounted for 14 percent of Syria’s gross domestic product, Bloomberg reports. The country was a popular tourist destination for its numerous historic monuments, many of which have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One tourist spot, the city of Palmyra, saw many of its ancient ruins destroyed by ISIS militants this year.

Penn State's Commemoration of its Disgraced Football Coach

NEWS BRIEF Penn State plans to honor former football coach Joe Paterno, who was fired in 2011 after his former assistant coach was arrested for sexually abusing young boys, at a football game this month.

According to the football program’s promotional calendar, the September 17 game will include a “commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Coach Joe Paterno.” Paterno’s first game as head coach was September 17, 1966.

The announcement prompted outrage on social media. Joe Paterno, who died in January 2012 at age 85, served as head football coach for 46 years and was considered a beacon of integrity in the scandal-riddled world of NCAA football. But that changed in 2011, when it was revealed Paterno helped cover up years of child sex abuse by his assistant coach.

In November 2011, Jerry Sandusky, who left his Penn State coaching position in 1999, was arrested and charged with dozens of counts of sexual abuse of young boys from 1994 to 2009. Paterno and Penn State’s president were fired days later. According to an investigation of the abuse, the beloved “Joe Pa” knew that Sandusky had sexually assaulted boys and did not report him. Court documents unsealed in July revealed that the abuse was reported to Paterno as early as 1976, but the coach took no action.

Sandusky was convicted in 2012 and is currently serving 30 to 60 years in state prison.

The Retirement of a Dallas Police Chief

NEWS BRIEF Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who helped guide the city after a gunman killed five law enforcement officers last month during protests against fatal police shootings, announced his retirement Thursday.

“Serving the citizens of Dallas in this noble profession has been both a true honor and a humbling experience,” Brown said in a statement. The 33-year veteran of the city’s police department said he will leave the job October 22.

He also offered a tribute to the slain officers:

Let’s always remember the fallen officers including the five officers on July 7, 2016, and the brave men and women of the Dallas Police Department for their sacrifices to keep Dallas safe.  Their memory will remain with all of us forever.  I know the people of Dallas will never forget the ultimate sacrifice they made on the streets of our city that awful night.

Brown became a recognizable figure in national news after Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old black man, fatally shot five officers in Dallas during a protest against recent police killings of black men. Before he was killed by police, Johnson told officers he was upset by the fatal shootings of  Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castille in Minnesota, and had specifically targeted white members of law enforcement.

On the morning after the shootings, Brown gave a press conference calling for unity.

“We're hurting. Our profession is hurting. Dallas officers are hurting. We are heartbroken. There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city,” Brown, who is black, said. “All I know is this: This must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.”

In the days after the shooting, Brown also spoke repeatedly about the need for police reform, stricter federal gun laws, and more resources for police departments across the country. According to The Washington Post, during a briefing on July 11 Brown said:

We’re asking cops to do too much in this country. We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it. … Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops. … That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems.

Brown addressed protesters’ perception of police as biased, too. He said, per NPR:

We’re in a much better place than we were when I was a young man here, but we have much work to do, particularly in our profession. Leaders in my position need to put their careers on the line to make sure we do things right--not be so worried about keeping their job. That’s how I approach it. I hope that’s an example for others to approach, the way we conduct ourselves as police officers.

He called on those protesting police practices to join the force themselves, saying, “We're hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. We'll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you resolve some of the problems you're protesting about."

Brown’s life was marked by tragedy long before the Dallas police shootings. Brown’s son fatally shot two men in 2010, one of whom was a police officer, and then was shot and killed by other officers. More than two decades earlier, in 1988, Brown’s police academy classmate and former partner Walter Williams was shot and killed while on duty. Brown’s younger brother, Kelvin Brown, was killed in Phoenix by drug dealers three years later, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Brown said Thursday the decision to retire “difficult” and thanked the city for the opportunity to serve.

“I became a Dallas cop in 1983 because of the crack cocaine epidemic’s impact on my neighborhood in Oak Cliff. I wanted to be part of the solution,” he said. “Since that time I have taken great pride in knowing that we have always been part of the solution and helped to make Dallas the world class city it is today.”

The Earthquake Near New Zealand

NEWS BRIEF A magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck near the northeastern coast of New Zealand at 4:37 a.m. local time Friday.

The tremor occurred 19 miles beneath the ocean about 103 miles northeast of the city of Gisborne, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Civil Defense said there was a “potential tsunami threat” after the quake, a common warning in Pacific countries after a major seismic event.

There is a potential tsunami threat for New Zealand following the 7m earthquake near Te Araroa at 4.38NZ time today. #eqnz

— MCDEM (@NZcivildefence) September 1, 2016

New Zealand is still recovering from a 6.3-magnitude quake that struck off the coast of Christchurch in 2011, killing 185 people and devastating the city’s infrastructure.

While Friday’s earthquake is stronger than the 2011 temblor, it was also deeper beneath the ocean crust and further from land, making similar levels of damage unlikely.

This is a developing story and we’ll update as we learn more.