Bret Kavanagh and the art of protest

Judge Bret Kavanagh's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed by the Senate this weekend by nearly the narrowest of margins, 51-49. While any appointment by President Donald Trump would have been cheered by conservatives and damned by liberals, Kavanagh's selection was especially problematic because of [a] time spent as a partisan hatchet man, about which he has been less than candid; [b] recent conversion to a broad view of presidential immunity, which might have been what attracted him to Trump; and then, at the eleventh hour, [c] several accusations of sexual assault or harassment.

Those last were the occasion for a spectacular hearing September 27, featuring separate interviews with Kavanagh and his first accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Then followed a brief follow-up investigation by the FBI, a clumsy and clueless interjection by the President, and some senatorial speeches, before Saturday's vote. Much, or not much, was revealed in this cauldron of a week; what was revealed depends on your frame of reference.

For many women, the situation described by Dr. Ford rang all too familiarly, as did the dismissive-to-angry responses of Kavanagh and his backers, including the Senate leadership and the President. It reopened personal experiences, or the experiences of close friends, because a year on the "#Metoo" movement has shown that an astonishing (to this naive male, anyway) pervasiveness of sexual aggression by powerful men. Even if it didn't happen to Ford and the other accusers, similar behavior has happened so frequently that the confirmation saga rubbed a lot of raw wounds. For these women and their friends, the political became painfully personal.

So it was so surprise, when I returned to Washington this weekend for a professional meeting, to find a lot of people gathered in protest of the Senate's handling and eventual confirmation of Kavanagh's nomination. When I went out Saturday morning, I found a sizable contingent preparing for some "civil disobedience"--not sure how that turned out. Across the street was a man with a very loud microphone addressing a small audience, on the same topic. Then there was this group, gathered in front of the Capitol.

The rally was organized by students from area law schools. Speeches were short but well-articulated and passionate. They called out Kavanagh and some of the offending senators, but mostly they demanded a country in which women are safe from sexual predation--a vision we should all be able to celebrate. I find it personally energizing to be around so much energy and passion, and I hope they're able to sustain that energy, not just for the midterm elections but into their careers and their lives as citizens.

On the other side of the ledger, there's this.

This is bad. Don't do this. I shouldn't have to explain why, but my whole professional identity is based on explanation, so I will. Expression of political views can be as strong and as pointed and as public as you wish, but don't follow people. Or attack them when they're eating dinner. (Senator McConnell is in the top three of people responsible for the general fix we're now in, but I'd still treat him like a human being, and allow him the same zone of privacy I value.) And don't do this, for goodness' sake.

Because then we've made it about the person, and just about winning by whatever means, instead of about a positive vision for living together in the 21st century.

When we protest, we call out what is wrong and demand/promise it be made right, "as God gives us to see the right," to quote Abraham Lincoln. Parker Palmer writes about the power of "hearts broken open" (as opposed to "broken apart") to work with others to heal the world's wounds. As the student speakers outside the Capitol repeatedly articulated, this isn't just about one judge, or one President, or on election--it's about building a common life where everyone is heard, and valued, and safe, and has the opportunity to live their best lives. President Trump has shown he does not share this vision, and the Republican leaders who have enabled his toxic rhetoric clearly don't value it, either. We who care about communities should no more emulate his toxicity than we do his hostility. As some of us (like me) become aware of the indignities many of us have known all too well, let our broken hearts help us see what needs changing, and to build the world we need.

SEE ALSO:"The Scary Side of Urbanism," 18 October 2017

The scary side of urbanism

Harvey Weinstein (Source: videomovie.in)

Film mogul Harvey Weinstein's resignation-in-disgrace has unleashed a social media campaign, MeToo, in which women have reported experiences of sexual harassment or worse. The basic version says:

Me too.
If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Please copy/paste.

#metoo

Several posters, with commendable courage, added personal stories. The clear impression is that verbal or physical harassment is widespread, and affects a huge swath of American women. (Several posters included a rhetorical question asking if any women were exempt.)

Sexual harassment is of particular interest to urbanists in part because it violates the spirit of community. Recall the words of Isaiah that inspired the name of this virtual space: "They shall neither hurt nor destroy on all my holy mountain." One person hurt is one too many, but it's clear that so many incidents occur and so regularly that it represents an epidemic. This must not go on.

Another pressing concern is that, while sexual harassment can occur anywhere, many women's stories show that urban living can increase the danger. Urbanists commend density and street life because they are more economically and financially sustainable, better for business, more intellectually stimulating and more fun. But the more unplanned encounters occur on urban streets, without something changing rather drastically for the better, the more incidents of harassment will occur. And public transportation! It's an essential element of a successful urban place, but I've read any number of accounts of groping on buses and trains (not including the train scene in an episode of the Netflix series Master of None). I'm all in on urbanism, but it's no good if it makes women less safe. (See below for other potential costs to some people of even the good aspects of urbanism.)

Clearly we need to strengthen the norm against sexual harassment. But, for goodness' sake, how is it not already strong? I realize gender roles have changed, but that was mostly in the 1960s and 1970s. People like me, in my sixth decade of life, have never known an America where women were not publicly equal to men. Is the problem isolated individuals-with-problems? Subcultures where the value of women's equality has not taken hold? A general fear/respect/awe of financial power that is stronger than our sense of what is right? Low expectations/standards for male behavior?

This problem is clearly widespread, and attention must be paid, for the sake of women everywhere, and for the sake of the community we must be building.

SEE ALSO:
"Peace and Quiet," Holy Mountain, 22 July 2013
Charles Marohn, "Autism, PTSD and the City," Strong Towns, 28 August 2017
Tamara Coffman Wittes, "#I Will? What I Learned From My Week As An Online Activist," Brookings, 19 October 2017

Issues of privilege in walkable cities

A couple reports out this week share a theme of how and to whom the benefits of urbanism are flowing. Smart Growth America's study of America's largest metropolitan areas describes how some are moving faster than others in providing walkable downtown areas, but also notes that housing and office rental prices have increased there and may be pricing some people out. FiveThirtyEight cites data, particularly from a new study on BuzzFeed, that bicycle use varies widely by sex and class, with men and middle class people biking far more often.

Smart Growth America puts six cities at the top of the walkable urbanism charts: Washington, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle. Together these six cities account for 48 percent of the walkable urban places in the 30 metro areas studied (pp. 11-13). They predict, however, based on a number of factors, that Miami, Atlanta, Detroit and Denver have the potential of reaching the top, with Chicago in particular likely to drop in the rankings (pp. 14-17). Impressively, walkable urbanism is positively correlated with educational attainment and metropolitan per capita income (p. 20). 

The authors note, however, "The vast majority of growth in regionally significant development in the late 20th century occurred in a metropolitan's 'favored quarter' areas of concentrated upper-middle-class housing separated from concentrated minority housing." And "Further research is needed to determine how walkable urbanism influences housing in terms of prices, rents, affordability, and the propensity to rent versus own" (p. 32). 

Much of the discussion on the webcast release of the report focused on the need to stimulate affordable housing construction. Richard Bradley, executive director of Washington, D.C.'s Business Improvement District and a panelist at the rollout, called the traditional approach to housing costs "Drive 'til you qualify"--that is, find a suburb distant from work but whose real estate prices you can afford--but noted that is not viable in the long term either for regions or families ("Foot Traffic Ahead" 2014; see also Samuels 2014).

There's construction in the city center, such as the soon-to-be Coventry Lofts apts...

...but a lot of affordable housing, like this complex on Johnson Av SW, is remote from places of value

Speaking of commuting, significantly more jobs in high-skill industries are accessible by public transit than in low- and middle-skill industries (Tomer et al. 2011).

Women account for less than a quarter of bicycle rides. On BuzzFeed, Jeremy Singer-Vine tracked usage of bike sharing programs in Boston, Chicago and New York. While there is some variation across bike share stations, all three cities show women accounting for between 21 and 25 percent of users. The rate goes up on weekends in all three cities, but only to about 1/3. Hypotheses for the gender difference abound, including fear of distracted drivers and physical assaults, additional responsibility for transporting children, and the intervening factor of pay differential. 

Far more middle class households even own bicycles than poor or working class households do (Chalabi). That doesn't surprise me: at Coe, I work on a park-like campus with plenty of bike racks, and when I'm not teaching I can come to work in t-shirt and shorts. If I worked in the Geonetric building, I'd soon be able to shower after arriving by bicycle at their new 12th Avenue facility. But for workers at Wal-Mart or Target or Hy-Vee, routes to the stores are often not bike-friendly and  then you have to navigate across an enormous parking lot.

I'm for prosperity, and this blog is pretty much an ongoing plug for walkability, but there are also any number of reasons we need to be intentional about inclusiveness on the way. In a nutshell, inclusive communities are fairer and more sustainable. We need to acknowledge that the path to urbanism is affecting people differently by sex and income. If we probed further, we might well find that it's affecting people differently by race and age as well [though Streetsblog USA notes bicycling is rising fastest among people aged 60-79]. 

Some of the contributing factors can be addressed through public policy: rental price controls in some cities may be distorting the housing markets (though I suspect it's just the market itself providing higher returns on investment at the upper end), zoning laws that prevent walkable development need to be changed, and the federal government should certainly stop subsidizing highway and McMansion development. There are some possibilities for positive government action as well: Better biking infrastructure may help with the fear factor, and creative support for transit, transit-oriented development and housing diversity would be most welcome. Anything beyond that?

EARLIER POSTS ON "HOLY MOUNTAIN"
"Downtown, Where All the Lights are Bright?" November 10, 2013
"Gentrification in the Mission District," December 4, 2013
"The Gentrification Conundrum (II)," March 21, 2014

REFERENCES
  Michael Andersen, "Surprise! People Aged 60-79 Are Behind More Than a Third of the Biking Boom," Streetsblog USA, 20 June 2014, http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/06/20/surprise-people-aged-60-79-are-behind-more-than-a-third-of-the-biking-boom/
  Mona Chalabi, "Why Women Don't Cycle," FiveThirtyEight, 16 June 2013, http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/why-women-dont-cycle/
  Coventry Lofts property website: http://highpropertymanagement.com/property/coventry-lofts/
  "Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America's Largest Metros," Smart Growth America, 17 June 2014, http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/locus/foot-traffic-ahead/
  Robert Samuels, "Millennials Consider Leaving Washington as the City Becomes More Costly," Washington Post, 16 June 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/millennials-consider-leaving-washington-as-the-city-becomes-more-costly/2014/06/16/825e4308-eb67-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html?hpid=z5 [as we say on Facebook, HT Ted Carroll for this article]
  Jeremy Singer-Vine, "These Maps Show A Massive Gender Gap in Bicycle-Riding," BuzzFeed, 16 June 2014, http://www.buzzfeed.com/jsvine/these-maps-show-a-massive-gender-gap-in-bicycle-riding
  Adie Tomer, Elizabeth Kneebone, Robert Puentes and Alan Berube, "Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America," Brookings, 12 May 2011, http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/05/12-jobs-and-transit

Theater review: "Respect"

Image source

Cedar Rapids's marvelous arts venue, CSPS, hosted the premiere Saturday night of the University of Iowa's Summer Rep production of "Respect: A Musical Journey of Women". It was written by Dorothy Marcic of Vanderbilt University, based on her book Respect: Women and Popular Music (Texere, 2002). It contains 63 songs, nearly all of which were 20th century top 40 hits by female artists. A tour is planned, with other ensembles performing around the country, and I heartily encourage anyone within range to see it.

The cast is four female characters, one of whom plays the author and provides commentary and narration. (At first I thought she was the author, then realized there was no way she was old enough to have attended high school in the 1960s.) The other three sing and dance throughout the roughly 100-minute show. Some songs are sung on their own, some in simple medleys, and some in medleys that weave back and forth between the different songs. The harmonies and choreography were impressive, as was their energy level. I ran into a couple of the actresses after the show and asked them how they were even walking after all that dancing about. "Adrenaline is a wonderful thing," they said.

The music is presented more or less linearly from 1901 into the 1980s. (The most recent song performed is "Hero," a hit for Mariah Carey in 1993.) The overall gist is that women sang popular songs with more powerful and independent voices as the century wore on. As the author asks early in the play, "Why didn't Fanny Brice [1891-1951] sing 'I am woman, hear me roar?'"

I'll buy that thesis, up to a point: The "I am strong, I am invincible" of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" (1972) was preceded by the "I'm tough" of "Piece of My Heart," sung by Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1968. Before that you weren't hearing anything in that vein, from white female singers anyway.

However, well after that time frame, the older themes continue prominently in pop. Vulnerability and yearning have always been staples of popular music, sung by singers of either sex. At least one of the songs featured in the show intended to illustrate pathetic dependence was actually sung on the charts by a male group: "Bend Me Shape Me" (American Breed, 1968). This is more than a picky detail, because if men were and are also waxing needily in song ("The Worst That Could Happen," anyone? Or "All By Myself"? Or "Living Next Door to Alice"?)  it weakens the gender argument.

With regard to female neediness, is there a substantive difference between the lyrical messages of Betty Boop in the 1930s and "Love to Love You Baby" (Donna Summer, 1976) or "Teenage Dream" (Katy Perry, 2010), neither of which the show referenced? "Bobby's Girl" by Marci Blane (1962) is one of the most awful combinations of words in the English language, and Joanie Summers's "Johnny Get Angry" from the same year is just about as bad, but you can also get world class cringes listening to the lyrics of "Jesse" by Carly Simon or "Upside Down" by Diana Ross, both of which were released in 1980. The gender evolution of pop is much less linear than the show implies: Lesley Gore sang "You Don't Own Me" two years before the Chiffons sang "Sweet-Talkin' Guy;" a year earlier she'd sung the cringe-worthy "Judy's Turn to Cry." I wonder if the later songs might seem less needy/dependent, if only because the social context in which the words are sung had changed?

Bottom line: the top 40 is not a church, nor is it a legal or ethical system. It's a commercial marketplace, and as such will always be attentive to the neediness of the vulnerable and yearning. If dependence can be sold, it will be sold. If "I Am Woman" or "Hero" can be sold, they will be sold.

All the above text shows is that I did really attend the show, and that I remember way too many details of 1960s-80s pop charts (verified along the way with The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits by Joel Whitburn [Billboard Books, 7th ed, 2000]). But it's not what I really wanted to blog about.

After the show two or three women in the audience thought it remarkable that I had stuck it out through all of what one called "the musical version of a chick flick." One said her husband had pointedly refused to attend. I had not been thinking of the show that way, and still don't, although it's true that when men are mentioned at all in Respect it's almost never positively. I think I still felt at the end like I was on the winning side, i.e. the liberation of women did not come at the expense of men, but was a victory for all humanity. We can only get to true community when all members are free and equal.

Surely whites will affirm that we are better off for the civil rights movement having happened. Even though I am middle class, the diminishment of the working class has left me poorer because society's fabric is torn. We are getting close to the day when straight people will recognize they are in a better place and the institution of marriage is strengthened because the rights of gays and lesbians are recognized. Maybe, someday, Christians will acknowledge that "religious freedom" consists, not in dominating the dialogue in a nostalgic Christian America, but in a community-wide conversation in which people of all faiths, and no faith, are full partners.

That is what I wanted to say, but now I've strayed from the show. Because the author didn't take us to a community of gender equality, but stopped with women having achieved independence.  It's her play, and bad form to demand a different play than the one the author intended, so I won't. Her story ends with her following her grandmother and mother into single parenthood, albeit her status is due to her husband's death rather than the perfidy of her father and grandfather. She ends the play with two capstone songs, pairing the title song with Gloria Gaynor's 1978 hit "I Will Survive." Gaynor sings about refusing to return to a terrible relationship, and that sounds like a good call. But once women (or men) have survived, have attained equality and independence, there needs to be a next step. Survival for what? Independence for what? Freedom for what? I think the answer to the question Dorothy Mancic doesn't ask is the same as the reason men can and should enjoy this production as much as women: community. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne, and no woman can be, either.