Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 124
March 27, 2018
The myth of the echo chamber
(Credit: AP/Richard Drew)
“Information warfare” may be a top concern in the next Canadian election cycle, as a report on a workshop by CSIS suggests, but some fears about how people get their political information and the impact of social media are overstated.
In a recently published study, we show that fears about an “echo chamber” in which people encounter only information that confirms their existing political views are blown out of proportion. In fact, most people already have media habits that help them avoid echo chambers.
There is a common fear that people are using social media to access only specific types of political information and news. The echo chamber theory says people select information that conforms to their preferences.
A related theory about “filter bubbles” claims social media companies are incentivized to prioritize likeable and shareable content in an individual’s feed, which in turn puts people in an algorithmically constructed bubble.
The democratic problem with these supposed echo chambers and filter bubbles is that people are empowered to avoid politics if they want. This means they will be less aware of their political system, less informed and in turn less likely to vote — all bad signs for a healthy democracy.
People who like politics aren’t immune either. They might become increasingly polarized in their views since all they see are people confirming their own beliefs. While a lot of the current work is theoretical, a few studies have shown that echo chambers and filter bubbles could exist on Twitter or Facebook, for example.
People get information from many sources
But people don’t consume political information and news from only one source or channel.
Individuals have access to a wide range of media, from traditional news outlets on television, radio and newspapers (and their digital versions) to a wide range of social media sites and blogs. This means studies that focus on any one single platform simply cannot speak to the actual experiences of individuals.
We wanted to solve this problem by conducting a study examining the media habits of individuals. We wanted to understand what social media they use on a daily basis, what political information and news sources they incorporate in their daily lives, and whether they do things that might help them avoid echo chambers.
To do this we conducted a nationally representative online survey of 2,000 British adults. This is part of the larger Quello Search Project that examines the formation of political opinions and the digital media habits of adults in seven different countries. Unfortunately no similar Canadian data set exists at present.
Our analysis suggests that people are rarely caught in echo chambers. Only about eight per cent of the online adults in Great Britain are at risk of being trapped in an echo chamber.
Individuals actively check additional sources, change their minds based on information they find using search engines and seek out differing views. All of these are ways individuals can avoid that echo chamber effect.
Importantly, political interest and media diversity — how many sources of information and how many social media a person uses — both help people avoid the threats of echo chambers.
People who have more than one source of political information are far more likely to act to avoid echo chambers.
They encounter different perspectives, they verify information and they sometimes change their minds. Even people who are not interested in politics are likely to do things that help them avoid echo chambers as long as they have a diverse media diet.
Fact-checking is crucial
Worries about political polarization are also dampened based on these results.
We fret about polarization, but in fact those who are politically interested are more likely to have encountered different opinions, checked facts and changed their minds about a political issue after searching for more information.
This means that most people are already on the right track for avoiding echo chambers. It also means that media literacy programs that emphasize incorporating multiple sources into your daily routines, and fact-checking, are crucial.
Social media platforms also have an important role to play.
Facebook and Twitter could still be home to communities that exchange information in a way that confirms existing beliefs and opinions. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s important to remember that people rarely get all their political information from just one place.
That said, social media companies can help promote media literacy in the very design of their platforms, for example by making sources of news content visible, explaining how their personalization algorithms work and offering suggested content that helps users find new perspectives.
Happily, some of this experimentation is going on within social media companies already. Facebook has experimented by tinkering with what shows up in news feeds and how content is flagged as false. Twitter recently announced a program to examine the health of conversations. So far there have been varying levels of success and criticism.
While we do not have access to data about the Canadian population, preliminary results from our U.S. data set, and from work others have been doing in different national contexts and with different samples from the U.K., suggests we should expect the same trends in Canada.
Most people have media habits that help them avoid echo chambers. When it comes to our elections, our democracy or information warfare, the threat of social media-enabled echo chambers is not a major concern.
Elizabeth Dubois, Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa and Grant Blank, Survey Research Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
March 26, 2018
As the March for Our Lives grabs headlines, PBS presents “Dolores,” godmother of social struggle
United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta organizing marchers on the 2nd day of March Coachella in Coachella, CA 1969. (Credit: George Ballis/Take Stock/The Image Works)
One of the lasting images emerging from the March For Our Lives in Washington features Emma González standing silently, tears streaming down her cheeks, for approximately six minutes. Based on what I’ve read those attending the event weren’t aware of this planned pause, a conscious silence meant to demonstrate how long it took for the lives of 17 of her classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., to be snuffed out in a mass shooting on February 14.
The 18-year-old is one of the #NeverAgain movement’s best-known figures because of her passion, and in part because her shorn head and unflappable composure has made her a favorite target among the political right.
During the march National Rifle Association supporters circulated a meme featuring doctored footage of her tearing a copy of the constitution in half, which was quickly debunked by social media users circulating the original image of her ripping a paper target in half next to the fake footage. Champions of social justice have long faced such efforts to slander and taint their intent in order to mute or bury their influence, making González part of a long lineage of warriors for change, joining the ranks of civil rights champion Dolores Huerta.
Huerta was one of the activists featured onstage at the 90th Oscars telecast that aired earlier this month, standing beside founders of #GirlsLikeUs, #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo.
Honored beside her that that night was Nicole Hockley, managing director of the anti-gun violence organization Sandy Hook Promise, founded by parents of the children and teachers who died in the Newtown, Connecticut massacre in 2012. The parents in Newtown have been the standard bearers in the push for gun control since that horrific mass shooting, so in a real way the current moment owes a debt to them.
But all of the aforementioned honorees at this year’s Academy Awards owe a debt to Huerta, whose work, dedication and sacrifice is highlighted in the documentary “Dolores,” airing Tuesday at 9 p.m. on PBS’s “Independent Lens.”
Executive produced by Carlos Santana and directed by Peter Bratt, “Dolores” glows with a celebratory spirit as it illuminates the details Huerta’s life’s work, and her love of life. Time and again Bratt employs visual callbacks to Huerta’s twinned loves of music and dancing, using archival footage of live musicians and film of brown men and women dancing in traditional regalia as well as simply grooving on city stoops. The filmmaker handles Huerta’s story with consummate affection and reverence, and this serves to amplify the degree of injustice done to her legacy.
To the same extent that the liveliness governing “Dolores” gives Huerta her due, it is also a story of erasure. Not only does it call attention to the concerted efforts to write her out of civil rights history, it also points out political efforts to destroy the gains of a generation by legislating ethnic-centered education out of school systems, as is the case in Arizona.
It has frequently been remarked that our current, youth-led movement to enact common-sense gun control legislation feels different, as if it just might succeed where past efforts have not. That may prove to be true. The high profile of González and other young leaders among the Parkland Survivors has been magnified by social media, and as such, rides a crest of momentum that many hope will result in a blue wave in November.
But history is the story of ebb and flow, surging gains and optimism interrupted by retreat and setback, which is precisely the lesson of “Dolores.” For though there was a time when she stood at Robert Kennedy’s side, sharing in celebrating his win in the 1968 presidential primary in California, a decade ago Bill O’Reilly was claiming that he’d never heard of her and other right-wing commentators and politicians were referring to her as Cesar Chavez’s girlfriend.
Peter Bratt takes care to ensure that “Dolores” maintains its focus on the biography of his subject, who calmly tells her own story alongside accounts from her children, politicians, filmmakers and activists including Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis. And while one would think that to be a simple task, Huerta’s career and person life takes so many turns that the viewer soon appreciates how deftly the filmmaker streamlines her achievements as well as surfacing her flaws.
In the nascent years of her activism Huerta achieved major gains for farmer laborers, first winning basic human rights legislation for field workers before helping labor unions gain a foothold within agribusiness. She eventually co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which became the United Farm Workers labor union.
Soon, however, Huerta’s localized activism expanded nationally when she connected the migrant labor’s struggle to environmental concerns over pesticides being used to grow our foods. Eventually she joined forces with movements led by women and African Americans in order to increase their combined impact on national politics. The nationwide grape boycott in the mid-1960s? She played a significant role in that.
Another of her most effective strategies was to mobilize voters using door-to-door campaigning, the same grassroots-style action plan Barack Obama used to win the presidency in 2008.
Much of what is revealed in “Dolores” may come as a surprise to people who lionize labor icon Cesar Chavez. Huerta worked side-by-side with Chavez, and the film carefully examines the point at which her path meets and merges with his. (She also had a long-term relationship with Cesar’s brother Richard, with whom she had four of her 11 children.) All while Bratt takes pains to ensure the narrative remains firmly about Huerta, making a solid case as to how and why Chavez’s significance to our modern social justice movements has been elevated while Huerta’s was muted.
Among other things, thanks to a process of steady revisionism, the average person attributes a popular slogan Huerta originated, “Sí se puede,” to Chavez. Even Obama mistakenly did this in anglicizing the rallying cry to make “Yes We Can” his campaign slogan.
“The assumption was, he was the leader, and Dolores was the housekeeper of the movement,” Davis says with no small amount of frustration.
Eventually Obama corrected his error, awarding her the Presidential Medal of Freedom while doing so.
As a nimble and engaging history “Dolores” is a wonderful achievement. But it’s also a primer for all movements dedicated to enacting change: Huerta sacrificed a life with her family, endured endless slander and survived violence that nearly ended her life to fight for justice. Even now, at 87, she simply says this is what is required to make change possible.
Her message, echoed throughout the film by the politicians, teachers, artists and other pioneers she inspires, is that any justice movement requires total commitment, that regardless of how many wins a person nets, all involved must remain engaged and keep fighting.
Youthful fervor can be famously fickle, and the NRA still pours millions into purchasing the votes of politicians at the local and federal levels. But some six decades ago, Huerta faced down agribusiness, a group of wealthy growers she told were “too rich, they’re too powerful and they’re too racist” to listen to the demand of poor field workers, and emerged victorious again and again.
And it seems that the kids spearheading the battle against the gun industry are aware that they’re taking on a long campaign. In article that ran in The Nation, Gonzalez told reporters covering the D.C. protest that her involvement in this movement “is probably gonna be years, and at this point, I don’t know that I mind. Nothing that’s worth it is easy. We’re going against the largest gun lobby. We could very well die trying to do this. But we could very well die not trying to do this, too. So why not die for something rather than nothing?”
Consciously or unconsciously, Dolores Huerta has touched the life of this young woman. “Dolores” stands as a physical testament to this, and hopefully, it’s just a start of a larger reassessment of her place in our nation’s story.
“Yinzers for gun control” march in Pittsburgh
Signs at the Pittsburgh March for our Lives, March 24 (Credit: Ashley Murray)
Approximately 3,000 marchers in Pittsburgh, Pa., joined the worldwide March For Our Lives demonstrations on Saturday, March 24, as a protest against gun violence in schools and beyond. Pittsburgh’s march began at its City-County Building on Grant Street and crossed downtown to Market Square, where a rally commenced with speakers from local high schools and nonprofits, including CeaseFirePA.
A current bill in the Pennsylvania legislature, Senate Bill 383, would allow school employees to carry firearms on school campuses. Sen. Donald White, who represents portions of Southwestern Pennsylvania, re-introduced the bill this year.
John Kostuch, 50, of North Huntingdon, Pa., holds a sign that reads, “Yinzers 4 better + more gun control,” a reference to the so-called “Pittsburghese” word “yinz.”
Erica Leonard, 38, of Jeannette, Pa., helps her son Lyle,4, choose a “no gun” button at the Pittsburgh “March For Our Lives” rally. Amanda Hargrave, 34, Youngstown, Ohio, employee of the novelty business CN Sales, sells the buttons as she holds her two-month-old baby.
Pat, 67, from Burgettstown, Pa., served with the 101st airborne division in the U.S. war in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970. The veteran, who would not provide his last name, said he was at the rally to “support the kids.” He said that assault rifles are weapons of war and do not “belong with regular people.”
A crowd packs Market Square in downtown Pittsburgh, Pa., for one of the many “sibling” marches of the “March For Our Lives” in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2018.
A sign at the “March For Our Lives” rally in Pittsburgh reads: “Is our blood not enough proof? #NeverAgain”
Alan Cumming, star of “After Louie” talks about, sex, queer politics and legacy
Alan Cumming in "After Louie"
Alan Cumming is the star of the new film “After Louie” (now in theaters and on VOD) as well as the new TV series, “Instinct.” He also owns “Club Cumming” in NYC. Cumming is also an author, Broadway star, concert performer, and tech genius.
In “After Louie” Cumming plays Sam, a single and grieving gay activist and artist who is adrift in his life and his career. A project he has been working on for far too long is still unfinished. He criticizes his friends Jeffrey (Patrick Breen) and Mateo (Wilson Cruz) for getting married and conforming to social codes. He meets and pays Braeden (Zachary Booth) for sex, unaware of the fact that Braeden is not an escort. As Sam keeps “hiring” Braeden, he tries to impress upon the younger gay man the struggles and strides the gay community has faced over the years. He also aims to create a legacy.
Cumming, who is as outspoken in real life as Sam is in the film, arrived in Philadelphia where he was honored at the closing night of QFlix, the LGBTQ+ Film Festival. He chatted with Salon about his legacy, his outspokenness, sex, and queer politics. He also displayed his technical 0genius for recording our interview.
Alan, congratulations on the film . . .
I hope you’ll point out that I got your recording device going.
Yes. I’m going to write about your technical savvy!
I’m all over this! I’m down with the kids!
Sam feels he must do something important and create a legacy. You seem to balance your career between fun and important projects; pop films and indie films, even gay films and straight films. You’re doing a TV series now, you have a club. You’ve written books . . . Can you talk about the idea of legacy and career?
Gosh, that’s a huge question! First of all, I don’t think about my legacy. Not until you asked this question have I thought about my legacy. What I mean is: I don’t make decisions about what I do based on what I think my legacy is going to be. I just do things that I feel are right for me at the time.
But I am also aware of my impending death, and great age, and I come into contact with people who tell me about how I have affected their lives. So, my legacy, I would hope, would be connected to Club Cumming — but that is a portal for everything I stand for, which is inclusion and fun and kindness and sexiness and challenge. So, I’d rather have that be my legacy than some of the films or plays I’ve done. My message as a person is more important than my work. Wow, that was a lot. You set the bar high.
I go highbrow, I go lowbrow. Should I ask the naughty question next?
Yes.
Why do you think Sam pays for sex? And by the way, I love that you did a nude scene. I think your body looks like my body.
What does that mean?
It means that I rarely see a man of my age, with my physique, naked on screen.
A real 50-something man. Thanks! It’s true! You don’t get to see that.
But back to the question: Why do you think Sam pays for sex?
My way of getting around it in my head was that he was once rich and helping out people, but also, he knew if he paid for sex, he knew he could feel intimacy and not have to explain his desires to people.
Yes, I thought it was his inability to connect with people.
I think that’s the same thing. Mine’s a more flooded way of saying that.
Do you think Sam is sentimental, focusing on the “good old days?” One friend says he is “grave digging,” trying to revive the past. How do you identify with his character?
It was very difficult for me not to be charming. In my life, I always try to make people like me when I’m telling them something they don’t want to hear. Like when I don’t want to take a photo with you, here’s the reason why. Sam doesn’t do that. I’m rarely asked to play people who are not likeable. Even a baddie can be flashy, but Sam, when you meet him, there’s nothing really about him that is charming.
How did you find your inner bitch?
I just do the script. I don’t have to unlock it. I wasn’t mean between takes. I’m an actor. But I loved this part because I rarely get asked to do something like this. I’m not brooding. I’m not a brooding sort of person. But I brood in this film. [Cumming’s Scottish accent is swoon-inducing when he says “brooding.”]
Sam seems to be rather self-loathing. I also think he has survivor’s guilt. What observations do you have about Sam’s feelings of humiliation, shame, and inadequacy?
I can imagine those qualities. I don’t have them. Just because you can do things that you don’t have as a person doesn’t make you a good actor. You can fake it. I fake it as Sam, who is all the things you said. He has shame and not a lot of self-esteem. I’m really not that person.
Where do you get your confidence from? I think confidence is sexy.
I am a sexual being, and I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older — I’m in my sixth decade — most of the people my age, I stop having conversations about sex with them. Our sexuality becomes less of a thing.
I still feel I’m as sexually active as I was in my twenties, and that has infused my work. As a man in my 50s, there has not been a slow-down in the way I feel about sex at all.
There’s a body painting scene in the film that’s kind of erotic . . .
I love that that scene works because it was one of the most annoying scenes of the whole film. I was so furious . . .
Furious to have to do it?
No, not at all. Nothing in the film I’m furious to do. I agreed to do it, and when I agree to do something, I fully embrace everything I have to do absolutely. There were some extenuating circumstances that night when we shot. I was naked and covered in paint and they had not thought it through that we might need a shower afterwards. And I asked, “Where are we showering?” And they said, “We’ll drive you in a taxi about 3 miles to this hotel in Williamsburg.” And I thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
What observations do you have about the progression of political gay culture — from AIDS activism, we now have PREP, to marriage equality? What are your thoughts about “how far we’ve come”?
I think there’s been lots of progress made in terms of legal rights of certain citizens who have been neglected, and I am connected to that. Great things have happened medically, where people who have felt shameful about sex are now able to not be so shameful because they are not afraid of dying. There have been huge strides made, but we still have a long way to go.
I still think it’s terrible that PREP costs so much and that it’s difficult to get, and they charge you many, many, many times the cost of it. The bigger question is why do we live in a culture where the pharmaceutical and insurance industries dictate so much of health care.
Sam is very candid and says what he thinks. [Cummings laughs] But it doesn’t do him any favors. What can you say about this quality of his, and how outspoken you can be?
Sam’s outspokenness hasn’t done him much good, but my outspokenness has done me much good. One of the reasons people connect with me—as an audience and people who like me—is because I am an authentic person. What you see is what you get. I’m not afraid to say how I feel about things that are important to me. In America, I think that everyone is very scared to risk a judgment or risk an opinion. I’m just not like that. But I don’t see myself as being noble for that. I just see it as being a normal person. And I don’t see why being a celebrity makes you have to be silent about what you feel.
You produced “After Louie.” Can you talk about how you are developing projects for yourself, like the TV show, and Club Cumming?
I was one of the producers on “After Louie,” and a slightly low-functioning one. Producing is making your own work and trying to get things made that you believe in. I do that in other ways, like writing books, doing my concert tour, and my TV show, where I’m an executive producer as well. As you get older, hopefully you harness your fame to do things you want to do.
Rep. Steve King’s campaign attacks Parkland shooting survivor for expressing Cuban pride
Emma Gonzalez
Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who has a penchant for controversy and attention-grabbing rhetoric, has created an uproar on social media — again. This time, the congressman is being widely condemned after he or someone managing his campaign’s Facebook page shared a meme on Sunday criticizing a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and shooting survivor for wearing a patch of the Cuban flag.
“This is how you look when you claim Cuban heritage yet don’t speak Spanish and ignore the fact that your ancestors fled the island when dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense,” the meme said alongside an image of Cuban-American Emma González, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, speaking at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.
King’s congressional office told The Washington Post that King’s campaign team was responsible for the image. The meme elicited hundreds of comments, many of them criticizing the congressman and defending González.
“Are you SERIOUSLY mocking a school shooting survivor for her ethnic identity?!” Brandon Wolf, one of the survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, commented. “When it was my community, where were you? When it was Sandy Hook? Columbine? Were you on the sideline mocking those communities too? Did you question someone identifying as a mother? Did you question whether people like me were crisis actors?”
“Emma stood for 6 minutes and 20 seconds to honor the lives of 17 gone too soon,” Wolf added. “The least you could do is shut your privileged, ineffective trap for 6 seconds to hear someone else’s perspective.”
King’s campaign team fired back on Facebook at the individual comments, igniting a heated exchange on the post.
“Pointing out the irony of someone wearing the flag of a communist country while simultaneously calling for gun control isn’t ‘picking’ on anyone,” King’s campaign team responded. “It’s calling attention to the truth, but we understand that lefties find that offensive.”
As of Monday afternoon, the post is still up.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and activist David Hogg asked Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio to reply to King’s post.
“Hey @marcorubio, [Emma Gonzalez’s] family fled Cuba to escape totalitarianism and live in freedom just like your family could you please respond to [Rep. Steve King],” Hogg tweeted.
Hey @marcorubio @Emma4Change s family fled Cuba to escape totalitarianism and live in freedom just like your family could you please respond to @SteveKingIA
— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 26, 2018
The meme is one of several posts on King’s page that have expressed criticism of the activism exhibited by the Parkland shooting survivors in their push for gun control.
The Republican congressman is one Congress’s fiercest immigration critics, and he often voices this position in colorful language.
Last year, King praised Dutch nationalist politician Greet Wilders, writing on Twitter, Wilders “understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We have our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017
King’s tweet echoes comments he made during the 2016 presidential election. During a panel discussion on MSNBC, King, who was a supporter of Donald Trump, defended the RNC’s lack of diversity and suggested that white people had contributed more to civilization than any other “subgroup.”
Earlier in 2016, the Des Moines Register reported that King kept a Confederate flag sitting on his desk.
“I don’t agree with that, and I guess that’s his decision,” then-Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, told the Register. “People have a right to display whatever they want to. But I’m proud to say we’re on the side of the Union. And we won the war.”
Even before Trump reignited the torches of white supremacy and nationalism, King gained notoriety for his opposition to the DREAM Act, which provides legal status to young undocumented immigrants, commonly known as Dreamers, who were brought to the United States by their parents as children, when he described them as misshapen drug mules in an interview in 2013.
“For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got the calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the dessert,” he told Newsmax.
Wisconsin students march 50 miles to Paul Ryan’s house for gun reform
Paul Ryan (Credit: Getty/Win McNamee)
One day after hundreds of thousands of people participated in the worldwide March for Our Lives protests to demand action against gun violence, teens in Wisconsin announced they weren’t done marching and will be walking 50 Miles More, which is both the name and the mission of the student-led activist group leading the crusade.
“We started 50 Miles More to keep the national demand for gun reform going after the March 24th March for Our Lives events are over,” the group’s website says. “Our generation has grown up watching school shootings destroy lives and then get swept out of the spotlight. We refuse to let this happen again.”
In solidarity with the high school students from Parkland, Florida, more than 40 students from Shorewood High School, a suburb of Milwaukee, have embarked on a four-day, 50-mile march from Madison to Janesville, the home town of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.).
Their goal? To point the finger at the Republican Congressman for his “lead role in blocking and burying any chance of gun reform again and again,” the 50 Miles More website states.
“We have a unique opportunity, because the speaker of the House is the most important member of the House, and he’s from Wisconsin,” 17-year-old Brendan Fardella, one of the march organizers, told CNN. “This is a unique way to catch his attention and call him out for his constant burying of possible gun legislation that would save hundreds of lives every day in this country.”
AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, told CNN that “the speaker appreciates those making their voices heard today.
Instead of hitting the beach, binge watching a new television show or catching up on sleep, the students will be spending their spring break walking more than a dozen miles a day and sleeping on gym floors.
“We’re trying to change the laws. We’re trying to change the country. The beach can wait,” Katie Eder, an 18-year-old organizer of the march, told The Chicago Tribune.
The students were also inspired by civil rights leaders of the 1960s. It’s not a fluke that the four-day, 54-mile journey from Madison began Sunday — exactly 53 years after Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, to conclude a five-day, 54-mile march from Selma.
“We looked to history and an earlier generation of young leaders who fueled real change,” the group’s website says. “In 1965, civil rights leaders organized the multi-day, 54-mile Selma to Montgomery marches. Those 54 long miles took us a long way toward progress, and are the inspiration for our march.”
At the end of every mile walked, the marchers honor a victim of gun violence. The students have also been tweeting our names and ages of victims.
In addition to calling for stricter gun control laws, the students shared a list of demands to their website, which includes a ban on “military-style weapons” and “accessories that turn semi-automatic weapons into automatic weapons.” They also want background checks on all gun sales, a four-day waiting period on all gun sales and to raise the age restriction to 21 for gun purchases.
The march is expected to end Wednesday with a rally in Janesville, at Traxler Park, where the student activists will voice their concerns. Katie Eder, an 18-year-old organizer of the march, told CNN they are inviting “everyone of any age to come out.”
“What cheeses off kids in Wisconsin? B.S. gun laws,” the 50 Mile More marchers wrote on social media earlier this month.
The man responsible for making March Madness the moneymaking bonanza it is today
South Carolina head coach Frank Martin watches during a practice session for their NCAA Final Four tournament college basketball semifinal game Friday, March 31, 2017, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) (Credit: AP)
In a legendary “South Park” episode lampooning the NCAA, the character Eric Cartman asks a university president if he can purchase some of his “slaves” — er, “student-athletes” — who play men’s basketball.
“How do you get around not paying your slaves?” Cartman wonders.
The outraged university president kicks Cartman out of his office. But if the president were being honest, all he would have to do is utter one name: Walter Byers.
Byers served as the NCAA’s first executive director from 1951 to 1988. During this period, the NCAA evolved from an insignificant advocate of athletic integrity into an economic powerhouse.
One critical piece of this growth was the creation of a narrative about the amateur purity of college sports. Walter Byers, who made “student-athlete” part of the American lexicon, played a central role in this enterprise. The NCAA, meanwhile, would become increasingly reliant on March Madness to finance its operations.
Cashing in on March Madness
Contrary to popular belief, college football provides the NCAA with almost no revenue.
A landmark 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision found that TV revenues for college sports would go to the various athletic conferences rather than to the NCAA. The NCAA still “regulates” college football. It just doesn’t get a piece of the pie.
The same is true for regular season and conference tournament college basketball games. Only March Madness makes money for the NCAA since it is run by the NCAA and schools are “invited” to play in it. Indeed, for many years schools often chose to play in the more prestigious National Invitation Tournament, which, since it was held in New York City, received much more of the media attention that colleges craved.
By the end of the 1960s, though, the NCAA tournament started to become more appealing to colleges than the National Invitation Tournament. Under Byers’ quiet direction, the NCAA invited a larger number of teams to its tournament and paid all of their expenses. This subsidy was made possible by the organization’s then-significant broadcasting revenue from college football (which would subsequently end in 1985). The National Invitation Tournament couldn’t compete with this business model and eventually faded to second-class status.
Just how important is March Madness to the NCAA’s current financial health?
The annual tournament generates roughly US$900 million per year, good for over 80 percent of the NCAA’s total annual revenue. The NCAA uses the bulk of its income to run the organization, give payments to conferences and subsidize nonrevenue sports championships. Even so, the NCAA accumulated a surplus in 2014 of $81 million. Tournament revenue is slated to reach $1.1 billion per year after 2025.
It wasn’t always that way. In the 1970s, the tournament itself probably cost more than it made, although there is only scant anecdotal data on this. In 1982, the tournament generated about $17 million per year. Thus, tournament revenues increased 5,200 percent over 35 years, significantly outpacing inflation over that same period.
Expanded competition for broadcasting rights, fueled by the birth of cable channels like ESPN, turned this once sleepy tournament into the NCAA’s organizational cash cow.
The “student-athlete” is born
But this moneymaker might not have developed at all if Walter Byers hadn’t coined the term “student-athlete” in the mid-1950s.
The term emerged as the NCAA defended itself in a worker’s compensation claim by the widow of Ray Dennison, who had died in 1954 while playing football for Fort Lewis A&M in Colorado. His widow likened college football to a full-time job, and argued that his death should be covered by state labor laws.
Byers and the NCAA’s lawyers countered that Dennison was a “student-athlete” participating in an extracurricular activity that just happened to be more dangerous than, say, singing in the glee club. The courts agreed with the NCAA.
Since then, Byers’ “student-athlete” moniker has become the semantic centerpiece for the NCAA’s claim that college sports is inherently noncommercial. You’ll rarely hear anyone in the college sports industry not use the term “student-athlete” when referring to varsity players.
Regrets, he had a few
Whether or not there really is such a thing as a “student-athlete,” the idea behind the phrase has served the NCAA well for over 60 years.
It allows the NCAA to advertise college basketball as a fundamentally different product than professional basketball — and a better product at that. They can say that March Madness isn’t filled by professional athletes and team owners only interested in making a buck. Rather, the participants are student-athletes who simply love playing the game.
Throughout the tournament, the NCAA will regularly tout the fact that 97 percent of student-athletes won’t become professional athletes. Video vignettes air during commercial breaks and on jumbotrons reminding fans that these players ask questions in class and will one day put away their uniforms and sports equipment in favor of lab coats and briefcases.
But the student-athlete moniker isn’t just about selling a product. It’s about maximizing the revenue from these products. By claiming that college sports is educational rather than commercial, the NCAA can maintain its IRS 501(c)(3) tax-free status. If subjected to federal and state taxes, the $880 million of March Madness revenue could be reduced by 40 percent or more. (The NCAA also doesn’t pay property taxes on its palatial headquarters in Indianapolis.)
One of the great ironies in all this is that Walter Byers eventually learned to loathe the college sports behemoth he helped create.
In his 1997 autobiography, Byers lamented that modern college sports were no longer a student activity — that they had instead become a high-dollar commercial enterprise. He argued that athletes should have the same rights as coaches and be able to sell their skills to the highest bidder.
In short, he came to agree with Cartman: The term “student-athlete” is merely a euphemism used to ensure schools and the NCAA can maximize their profits.
Rick Eckstein, Professor of Sociology, Villanova University
Proof the American dream has been indefinitely deferred
A foreclosed home in Chicago, June 29, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/John Gress)
For generations, homeownership and the equity that comes with it have symbolized the American Dream. But a recent study from the apartment search website RentCafe.com finds that in the aftermath of the Great Recession, homeowners now constitute a minority in 22 of the United States’ most populous cities. More and more, the U.S. is becoming a nation of renters, especially in its larger urban areas.
In January, RentCafe took an in-depth look at U.S. Census Bureau data from 2006-2016. During that 10-year period, the percentage of renters increased in 97 of the country’s 100 biggest cities. In San Diego, for example, the number of renters jumped from 47.9 percent of the population to 53.4 percent. Renters accounted for 47.3 percent of Chicago residents in 2006; in 2016, that number was 51.3 percent. Meanwhile, Memphis has seen its population of renters climb from 44.6 to 56.6 percent.
Other cities where renters have become more numerous than homeowners over the same 10-year period include Honolulu (56.1 percent in 2016 vs. 44.6 percent in 2006), Sacramento (50.3 percent in 2016 vs. 45.3 percent in 2006), Minneapolis (50.7 percent in 2016 vs. 44.5 percent in 2006), Reno (52.4 percent in 2016 vs. 47.8 percent in 2006), Baltimore (52.5 percent in 2016 vs. 45.5 percent in 2006), Austin, Texas (51.3 percent in 2016 vs. 48.4 percent in 2006), and Toledo, Ohio (50.3 percent in 2016 vs. 38.3 percent in 2006). RentCafe also notes that a number of cities, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Miami, already contained a majority of renters prior to 2006, and each saw their numbers grow.
The Great Recession, which officially began in December 2007 and accelerated with the crash of September 2008, has proven one of the largest impediments to homeownership, triggering the largest foreclosure crisis in nearly a century. After hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their homes in the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the Homeowners Refinancing Act of 1933, which established the Homeowners Loan Corporation. Roosevelt saw homeownership as vital to maintaining a strong middle class, and his administration incentivized aspiring buyers with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage.
Prior to the New Deal, there was no such thing. Banks typically expected down payments of 50 percent and gave their clients five years to pay off the remaining half. As a result, a vast majority of Americans were renters when FDR first took office. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, national homeownership rates in the U.S. were only 45.6 percent in 1920 and 47.8 percent in 1930. But renters would become a minority nationally after World War II, as U.S. ownership rates climbed to 55 percent in 1950, 61.9 percent in 1960, 62.9 percent in 1970, 64.4 percent in 1980 and 64.2 percent in 1990.
Few renters in the U.S. are presently doing so out of personal preference. A 2016 Pew survey found that 72 percent hoped to become homeowners someday if they could afford it, while a Trulia survey from 2017 revealed that a majority of renters regretted not owning a home.
Skyrocketing rents and home prices, property tax hikes, student loan debt, stagnant wages and tougher requirements for mortgages have all made homeownership more difficult for millennials than previous generations. It’s a vicious cycle: Because no one can afford to buy, the demand for rental units increases, resulting in higher prices that make saving toward a down payment all but impossible. Exacerbating matters, the Trump administration has scrapped an Obama-era policy of lowering fees for mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration. The National Association of Realtors estimates that in 2017, this decision likely kept as many as 40,000 potential home buyers out of the market.
The U.S. Census Bureau announced that in the fourth quarter of 2017, the national homeownership rate was 64.2 percent, just two percent lower than it was in 2000. But a closer look at individual cities, even those considered relatively affordable compared to New York City or San Francisco, reveals that homeownership has been steadily declining. In Philadelphia, for instance, homeownership has decreased while rents, home prices and property taxes have all gone up. (Mayor Jim Kenney has recently proposed a 6 percent property tax hike, the latest in a series of increases.)
In Philly’s Graduate Hospital area, median prices for single-family homes rose from $86,000 in 1997 to $275,000 in 2007, while in Fishtown (another gentrified area), rowhouses that sold for $30,000 in the early 1990s now cost $250,000 and up. Philly’s homeownership rate decreased from 59.3 percent in 2000 to 52.2 percent in 2012, good for a 7.1 percent drop. Over that same period, Phoenix, Milwaukee and El Paso saw declines of 7.8, 4 and 3.1 percent respectively.
Wages simply haven’t kept pace with climbing home prices. MSN.com reports that since 2012, median prices increased by 73 percent in the U.S., while average weekly wages have risen just 13 percent.
Obtaining a mortgage can be especially difficult in the gig economy, which comprised 16 percent of U.S. workers in 2017. In December, Fannie Mae reported that most gig economy workers who are still renting would like to purchase a home in the future but acknowledge it would be “difficult to get a mortgage, and cite down payment and credit as the biggest obstacles to getting one.”
U.S. banks typically prefer a 20 percent down payment for the self-employed. If a house costs $250,000, that’s $50,000 plus closing — no small task for a freelancer coping with high rents, self-employment taxes and the exorbitant costs of health insurance.
Like FDR before him, Lyndon Johnson firmly believed in increasing the amount of homeownership in the U.S., creating the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1965. HUD has proven invaluable for both renters and first-time homeowners, but President Trump’s contempt for the department is obvious. His administration’s initial budget for the 2019 fiscal year included an $8.8 billion cut to the agency, a slap in the face to millions of lower-income earners.
When Newt Gingrich addressed a Heritage Foundation gathering in December 2016, the former speaker of the House of Representatives predicted the Trump administration would eradicate what’s left of the New Deal and the Great Society. The country’s plummeting homeownership numbers suggest his dark prophecy is slowly coming true.
FTC confirms its Facebook investigation as advertisers flee
Mark Zuckerberg (Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer)
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) confirmed on Monday that it is investigating Facebook amid news that the Trump campaign–linked software company Cambridge Analytica inappropriately collected the data of 50 million users on the site.
As a result, some companies have shut down their Facebook pages in protest or pulled advertisements entirely, while the social media giant’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a global apology tour to staunch the bleeding.
“Companies who have settled previous FTC actions must also comply with FTC order provisions imposing privacy and data security requirements,” said Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, in a statement according to Politico. “Accordingly, the FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.”
The auto parts retailer Pep Boys announced on Monday it had suspended all of its advertising on Facebook as a result of privacy concerns, Reuters reported.
“We are concerned about the issues surrounding Facebook and have decided to suspend all media on the platform until the facts are out and corrective actions have been taken,” Danielle Porto Mohn, the chief marketing officer of Pep Boys said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The company joined the Mozilla Corporation, which announced last week that it was “pressing pause” on its Facebook advertising amid the revelation of the data breach.
“Facebook knows a great deal about their two billion users — perhaps more intimate information than any other company does. They know everything we click and like on their site, and know who our closest friends and relationships are,” Mozilla announced in a blog post. “We understand that Facebook took steps to limit developer access to friends’ data beginning in 2014. This was after Facebook started its relationship with Cambridge University Professor Aleksandr Kogan, whose decision to share data he collected from Facebook with Cambridge Analytica is currently in the news.”
The post continued, “This news caused us to take a closer look at Facebook’s current default privacy settings given that we support the platform with our advertising dollars.”
Meanwhile, Facebook has taken out full page ads in several prominent newspapers across the world, signed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as they hope to win back public trust.
Facebook took out full page ads in the NYT, WSJ, WashPost, and 6 UK papers today https://t.co/kMA822kTpU pic.twitter.com/CUEYwyWuTT
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 25, 2018
“You may have heard about a quiz app built by a university researcher that leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014,” the advertisements read, according to CNN. “This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
Over the last few weeks Facebook’s stock has plummeted, and the announcement of the FTC’s investigation is not helping the company do damage control.
Humanity’s meat and dairy intake must be cut in half by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change
In a recent press release on its website, Greenpeace called for a reduction in meat, dairy, and egg consumption. A new report by the organization states that “global meat and dairy production and consumption must be cut in half by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change.” The report also confirms what many health professionals have said for years: Eating meat and dairy raises various health risks, including risk of cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Indeed, calling for such a reduction is vital to the fight against global warming, as animal agriculture is the number-one driver of climate change.
Why are meat, dairy and eggs so harmful to the environment? Every year we raise and kill at least 56 billion land animals for food worldwide. We feed enormous amounts of corn, soy, and wheat to each of them. Much of this animal feed is grown on deforested land whose precious rainforests and wildlife have been wiped out. These animals excrete untold amounts of feces, which pollute local waterways and accelerate climate change by emitting methane into the atmosphere. They must be transported to slaughter and their meat packaged and shipped. The process not only kills billions of animals and inflicts unspeakable cruelty but literally kills our planet.
The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the livestock sector is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide pollution and the single largest source of methane and nitrous oxide. And according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, carbon dioxide emissions from raising farmed animals make up about 15 percent of global human-induced emissions.
Raising animals for food is also culpable for more than 90 percent of Amazon rainforest destruction and uses more than one-third of the earth’s landmass. More than 80,000 acres of tropical rainforest — and 135 animal, plant, and insect species — are lost to animal agriculture each day.
Animal agriculture also takes a devastating toll on wildlife through habitat loss and hunting. Because it uses such a massive amount of land, wild animals are pushed out of their natural environments or violently killed because they are viewed as a predatory threat to the meat and dairy industries.
The good news? By going vegan you not only help protect animals but cut your carbon footprint in half.
Climate change is real and animal agriculture is undoubtedly a leading contributor. If you’re serious about the environment, it’s time to take action. Don’t just say you care about the planet, prove it by leaving all animal products off your plate.
