EP 77 SOCIAL CHANGE IS HARD WORK
Today, many young people, women and others are feeling the need to get busy trying to achieve change in the political and social realm in America. On this special edition of America Trends, we explore a remarkable effort to make dramatic social change in Boston back in the 1980’s when two men, Curtis Davis and Andrew Jones, spearheaded an effort to re-incorporate Greater Roxbury into its own municipality, to be named Mandela, Massachusetts. Brazen. Bold. Unheard of. Ultimately, it was taken very seriously by the Boston power structure and resisted aggressively. By their ingenuity and determination, the proposition made it to the ballot twice, failing both times. However, the lessons learned can certainly be applied today. Curtis Davis recently gave a presentation in Boston which you must hear. Most recently, Mr. Davis, an architect and urban planner, was a Project Executive for the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Planning and Project Management in Washington, D.C. He was responsible for planning for the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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Amanda Litman headed up the e-mail operation(not that one)for the Hillary Clinton for President campaign in 2016. She was devastated by the loss but quickly re-grouped to found an organization and write a book encouraging millennials to ‘run for something’ on the state or local level. Thousands have come forward to seek practical advice from her on how a campaign needs to be organized and conducted. We talk to Amanda about the ways millennial’s look at public service and the unique contributions they can make the political offices they seek.
In truth, there is no country on earth that is gender- blind. Men dominate the politics and power around the globe. (Iceland comes closest in being gender- equal.) Catherine Mayer, founder of the Women’s Equality Party in the United Kingdom, imagines what it would be like if women were on the same footing as men so she designs Equalia and takes us there in her book, ‘Attack of the 50 ft. Women’, a title based on a B movie years back. We discuss with her whether the women she writes about could assume positions of power and make changes that undo some of the ‘man-made’ messes of today.
Geoff Dembicki writes about millennials who think ‘gee, we’re going to be around long enough to suffer the dire consequences many climate scientists believe await mankind if we don’t wean ourselves off fossil fuels’. So, he explores what his generation is doing politically to become more active in this arena. And he finds that their impact is already being felt in many ways. You will be surprised at their activism and its effect already in the U.S., Canada and Britain.
No, that’s not the horse who won America’s heart back in the day. It’s an old term to sescribe a maritime nation’s forgetfulness of the oceans’ role in its prosperity and security.
President Trump proposes to cut the number of green cards issued each year from one million to 500,000 and issuing them based on skill levels. While our guest, Edward Conard, believes he may be on to something regarding the skills assessment he feels that fewer green cards will not support the economic growth necessary to sustain benefits to our aging baby boomer population. Mr. Conard is an American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar and a former Bain Capital partner. He is also the author of ‘The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class.
Operation RedMap is one of the great successes of modern politics and yet it remains a mystery to many. Yet its implications are apparent to all. A Republican House of Representatives guaranteed through 2020 despite more popular Congressional votes going to Democrats. How is this possible? If you can draw the Congressional lines, all things are possible. This story goes back to 2010 and is told, with authority by David Daley, who heads communications for FairVote and wrote the book, Ratf***ed. We’ll find out if there are reforms going forward that can get us back fairer representation of the popular will.
By so many measures, Brooklyn is a borough of New York City that is rising. In her book, ‘The New Brooklyn’, Kay Hymowitz describes the process and who has benefited greatly from the re-emergence of Brooklyn and who has not. The Manhattan Institute scholar will give us a sense of what it takes for a hard luck city to come back in the 21st century.