Category Archives: Activism

Abortion Rights: March for Women's Lives -- April 2004 "Washington Monument"

What to do about the assault on abortion rights

Activism, Civil Liberties, , ,

I’ve been wondering what can I do to support reproductive freedom and abortion rights in light of the terrible, vile laws that have been passed recently, and I’ve come up with three prongs:

  • Your money
  • Your words
  • Your brain

Use your dollars

As is so often the case, money always helps. It costs a lot of money to fight these laws and to support individuals directly affected by them.

Donate to those organizations on the frontline of the abortion fight. Certainly, that includes the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and NARAL. But also include those smaller organizations that may not get so much publicity, such as the Yellow Hammer Fund, which directly supports those seeking care at one of Alabama’s three abortion clinics, or ARC-Southeast, which helps individuals travel to Atlanta to get reproductive services.  The National Network of Abortion Funds lists funds in many US states as wells as some supporting women outside the US.

But we can also work to reduce the flow of money to politicians who advocate and pass these laws.  So, share your concern with those whose dollars are going to those who oppose abortion rights. There are lists of companies that support the sponsors of these bills. Use them. Conversely, thank those companies that take a public stand against these laws, 

Use your words

Contact your legislators (no matter where you live) and tell them you, as a voter, can only support those who stand on the right side of this issue and back that up with your actions. Even in states that aren’t at risk to pass bad laws, we can get new, supportive laws passed, like the law in Maine allowing nurse practitioners, physician assistants and nurse midwives to provide abortion services.

Share your stories of how reproductive freedom and the assault on it affects you. Many people have shared moving stories of abortion in their lives. But even if you don’t have that story to tell, you may have another one. My wife and I can talk about choosing when to have our son (who is perfect in every way ?) and the options available to us, because of where we live and the resources we have. 

Hold legislators and candidates (including the 2020 Presidential candidates) accountable for speaking clearly. They can’t mumble, sound wishy-washy, or equivocate. They must give full-throated, clear support for abortion rights, and we need to hold them to that. At this point, we can’t accept a candidate who will merely parrot back stock phrases about his or her support for a pro-choice position (“I will appoint judges who support Roe v. Wade”). Candidates need actual plans and policies. 

Use your brain

The anti-abortion movement, like so much on the right today, willfully, flagrantly denies science, logic, and evidence.  Take, for example, the current spate of “heartbeat” bills, banning abortion at six weeks. As Dr. Jen Gunter says, these should be called “fetal pole cardiac activity bills.” That’s because, at six weeks, a fetus DOES NOT HAVE A HEART.

Abortion Rights: Man holding sign, "Warning: Dangerous Fanatics Ahead" during the March for Women's Lives, April 25, 2004
March for Women’s Lives, April 2004

Ohio’s recent bill allows for insurance coverage for transplanting the fertilized egg in an ectopic pregnancy (when the fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus). This procedure does not exist! As Daniel Grossman, MD, Director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, states in an excellent twitter thread, this is “pure science fiction.”

Clarence Thomas’s recent concurrence in the Mike Pence/Indiana abortion case provides another example of willfully distorting the historical record. Thomas claims that the “foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th-century birth-control movement.” This simply is not true. As it was in England, abortion was legal in colonial times. Abortion prior to “quickening” only became criminalized in the 1860s.

I’d add that Adam Cohen, the author of the book that Thomas cites in linking abortion and eugenics clearly indicates that Thomas gets this wrong too. While it may be true that Margaret Sanger supported eugenics, none of this was about abortion, which as illegal at the time. 

So, use your brain, use logic, and help others recognize the fallacies and fantasies in these laws. If one really wanted to support women’s health, the lives of children, and even reduce abortion, there are policies that could actually do this. 

Arguing about Confederate Statues and History

Activism, Civil Liberties, Constitution, Research, ,

Confederate Statue photo
Photo by Ron Cogswell

Much has been made about the relatively high public support for keeping Confederate statues. For example, the Reuters/Ipsos poll found that the majority (54%)of Americans favor keeping the statues, while only a minority (27%) want them removed. A number of explanations have been suggested for why such a significant portion of Americans support keeping the statues.
⁃ These represent a part of our history
⁃ They’re a symbol of Southern pride
⁃ It’s just coded racism

But if we want to remove these statues and monuments (and I’m certainly on this side), it’s important to understand why there is so much opposition to doing so and how one could counter that opposition.

Tom H.C. Anderson of the text analytics software company OdinText ran a nice survey, analyzing open-ended responses to try to understand how people explain their support for keeping or removing the statues. He first asked if Confederate Civil War Monuments should be allowed in the US.1 Following this, he gave people an open-ended question, asking why or why not.

For the three-fifths (61%) who said allow the statues, nearly all of the respondents explained this by saying something about our history. So, if keeping the statues is about maintaining our history, what happens if we explicitly make a statement out protecting history while still removing statues from public places. That should increase support for this action.

One survey, by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling supports this interpretation. They asked specifically asked about support or opposition to relocating to museums or other locations where they can be placed in historical context. This was the only poll I found that found a majority supporting removal (58% supporting relocation, 26% opposing).

However, I don’t think most people really consider moving them to museums, so I wanted to tease apart the issue of how one might remove the statues. I ran my own survey, using Google Consumer Surveys,2 asking the following question:

Which best represents your opinion about Confederate statues and monuments in public places?3

  • They should remain where they are
  • They should be moved to a museum
  • They should be completely removed

When presented with these three choices, people still chose “remain” most frequently, but it was no longer the majority option, but a plurality. Instead, the combination of moving to a museum or removing completely was the majority choice. See table 1, below.

Answer ChoicePercent
Remain44%
Moved to a museum34%
Removed completely22%

For those that really see statues as representing an important part of history and want them to be preserved for that reason, they now have a way to express that.

I take two key ideas away from this:

  1. Framing the argument: Those who want the statues removed (and I count myself among them) can more effectively frame the argument by including the concept of preserving history (and setting the context). There are some (although perhaps a small percentage) who really believe that it’s about history and they can (perhaps) be won over. And those that are using the argument of preserving history as a pretext will have to come up with a darned good counter-argument when removing (or rather moving) the statues is framed explicitly in terms of preserving that history.
  2. Evidence that “history” is just a pretext: A plurality (and close to a majority) still said that the statues should remain, rather than placed in historical context. Because they could have chosen to say move to a museum and didn’t do so, it suggests to me that many people who say history, don’t really mean that. Instead, it’s about, in their mind, honoring heroes fighting for a noble cause, even if they won’t acknowledge that the “noble” cause was slavery, the owning of other human beings.

A quick diversion on the history of these statues and monuments: these were largely erected between 1900 and 1915, when Jim Crow laws dominated after attempts at integration following reconstruction and leading up to the rebirth of the KKK in 1915. The United Daughters of Confederacy put up a huge portion of these monuments and worked to promote a revisionist history of the South.

A second, but smaller peak occurred during the 1960s, during the civil rights era, especially in the naming of schools after Confederate politicians and soldiers.

In other words, these statues, monuments, and schools weren’t put there to celebrate what happened in 1865 but promote White supremacy and attack the civil rights of Blacks at that time.

  1. I do have some issues with this framing of the alternatives. The “should be allowed” phrasing suggests a ban on such monuments, which some people would see as running counter to the American ideals of freedom and liberty.
     ↩
  2. Google Consumer surveys attempt to match the overall US internet population through the use of stratified sampling and then weighting at the end. Google uses “inferred” data on gender, geographic distribution, and age distribution, through respondents’ browsing history (DoubleClick cookies for age & gender and IP address for geography). They then attempt to match this inferred data to national demographics from the US Census Current Population Survey (CPS). Because it matches the US internet population (now about 87% of the total US adult population), the results skew somewhat younger, higher in income, higher educational attainment, and less rural. In addition, there’s no information on race/ethnicity, which would have been particularly useful for this question. Not surprisingly, Whites and Blacks, on average, respond very differently to this question (see the Reuters/Ipsos poll referenced above). ↩
  3. The survey ran between 24 August and 26 August, with 384 respondents, for a margin of error of ±5%. ↩

Associations and Professional Societies Respond to Trump Immigration & Refugee Ban

Activism, Associations, Blog Postings, Constitution, ,

Numerous non-profit professional and trade associations and other professional societies have responded to Trump’s ill-formed and unconstitutional1 Executive Order banning refugees and immigration from seven predominately Muslim countries. These associations and societies serve to bring together professionals in their fields of interest through conferences, publications, certifications, and so on. Given their missions, it’s not surprising that many of them have been outspoken about how the open and free flow of information and educated professionals strengthens the United States, not weakens it.

Highlights of Responses to the Executive Order

On 31 January 2017, 164 (at last count) professional scientific, engineering and education societies, national associations, and universities signed an open letter to Donald Trump urging him to rescind the order. Signatories include organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the Vision Sciences Society; as well was major research universities including Harvard, Rutgers, Yale, and others.

In part, the statement says that the groups are “…deeply concerned that this Executive Order will have a negative impact on the ability of scientists and engineers in industry and academia to enter, or leave from and return to, the United States. This will reduce U.S. science and engineering output to the detriment of America and Americans.”

More than 27,000 individual academic supporters have signed a petition against the Executive Order, including more than 20,000 faculty members, 51 Nobel Laureates and 572 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Arts.

American Association for the Advancement of Science
AAAS seeks to “advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.” Based in Washington, DC, AAAS has over 120,000 members in 90 countries in all fields of science and mathematics.

science photo
Photo by Kingsway School

In addition to being a signatory to the letter above, AAAS released an earlier statement calling on “…President Donald Trump to consult with the world’s largest general scientific organization to find ways to balance the nation’s necessity for the free flow of international scientific talent while safeguarding national security.” In addition, they’ve sent out member recruitment emails using this issue to encourage people to join AAAS, with the tag line “Science has no borders.”

American Society of Association Executives (ASAE)2
ASAE serves those who work at associations, large and small, from technical fields such as American Institute of Physics, to retailers like the The American Specialty Toy Retailing Association. In other words, it’s the association for those working at associations. Based in Washington, DC, ASAE has about 21,000 members.

In their response, “ASAE Responds to Trump’s Travel Ban”, ASAE President and CEO John Graham, CAE states “ASAE urges the administration to clarify the intent of this order and confirm our nation’s commitment to equality and humanitarianism.”

IEEE3
IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. IEEE has more than 420,000 members in over 160 countries in the fields of electrical and electronic Engineering, computing, biomedical engineering, and many other technical fields. IEEE’s main office is in Piscataway, NJ.

2017 President Karen Bartleson, in a statement released on 2 February 2017, states, “[IEEE] believes that governments of all countries must recognize that, in a world of increasing global connectivity, science and engineering are fundamental enterprises, for which openness, international collaboration, and the free flow of ideas and talented individuals are essential to advancement.”

American Psychological Association (APA)4
American Psychological Association (APA), based in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing all fields of psychology in the United States, from such areas as clinical psychology, social psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and so on.

In a statement released 1 February 2017, APA says that the “Trump Administration Orders Pose Harm to Refugees, Immigrants, Academic Research and International Exchange, According to Psychologists.”

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
ACM has members in all areas of computing, software, hardware, AI, networking, theory, and so on. Headquartered in New York City, ACM has more than 100,000 members with chapters in more than 50 countries.

In their statement, ACM, like other associations, expresses how science requires the open exchange of ideas. “Such practice, in all its aspects, requires freedom of movement, association, expression and communication for scientists.”

Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA)
Based in Bloomington, IN, MPSA is dedicated to the advancement of scholarship in all areas of political science. It has over 8,000 members in more than 100 countries.

In addition to signing the letter referenced above, MPSA has released two other statements about the ban. The first calls on Trump to rescind the Executive Order and the second talks about how the MPSA Conference will address the issue (such as allowing presenters from the seven countries present virtually) and lists other ways for those in the political science community to get involved in the issue.

The Gerontological Society of America (GSA)
The GSA is the largest interdisciplinary organization in the world devoted to the scientific study of aging. It has 5,500 members, 18% of which are outside the US and is based in Washington, DC.

In their statement, GSA points out that all six Americans who won Nobel prizes last year were immigrants. Further, they say that Trump’s Executive Order “…threatens the free flow of scientific information by limiting interaction among scientists. Such restrictions are not consistent with GSA’s commitment to open collaboration and communication between researchers.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…

Photo by Kevin H.

  1. See article by David Cole, ACLU Legal Director, on how the Executive Order violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. ↩
  2. Disclosure: I’m a member of ASAE and have served as a volunteer, most recently as Chair of their Research Committee. ↩
  3. Disclosure: I work at IEEE but had nothing to do with their public statement on the Trump Ban. Furthermore, I do not speak on behalf of IEEE and all writing here (and elsewhere on this blog) is my own personal opinion. ↩
  4. Disclosure: I’m a former member of APA. ↩
Photo of a dirt road with a crooked dead end sign

Fatalism is our enemy

Activism, Blog Postings, Civil Liberties, ,

As we enter a new political era, with a president that behaves in unprecedented ways (willful disregard for the truth; putting his chief strategist, a promoter of white nationalism on the National Security Council), many people are looking for ways to fight back. As we do that, I think it’s important to remember that we have many places to fight, including not just Trump, but those in Congress who want to take our country backward, state and local officials who will control redistricting in 2020, and the wealthy oligarchs who fund much of the conservative movement.

One battle we need to include in this list, however, is our own sense of fatalism. Too many times I’ve heard friends and colleagues talk as if the situation is out of our control, that nothing we will do will have an effect on the outcome. I hear this often when I talk about privacy. “Why do anything to protect my privacy from the government? They have all my data anyhow.” But these beliefs lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy — if you truly believe that your actions have no effect, you’ll never do the things that might actually make a change.

Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke eloquently of how in the fight against racism, “fatalism isn’t really an option.” Even if you believe that change won’t occur in your lifetime, you need to work to make that change happen for your children, for your grandchildren.

We don’t want people to fall into fatalism or nihilism. We must view ourselves as change-makers, optimistic about the future and our ability to change it. Our antagonists are these fatalists who don’t think the world can change, that Trump leads to Armageddon. It’s only through our actions, taking the long view, that we will eventually create the society that our ideals tell should be ours.

This is why I am so happy about the recent protests and marches. In pictures of the Women’s Marches,  you could see the joy, excitement, and determination on people’s faces.  In person, these feelings were palpable. One march may not have an effect on its own, and many have written about how the energy in those marches need to be harnessed.  But there is energy, there are people who believe they can cause change, make a difference, and dare to create “…a more perfect union.”

constitution photo
Photo by StevenANichols

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Photo by bennylin0724