1nc vs Chris and Julius K Aff

Framework a) Our interpretation is that topical affirmatives must provide a normative answer to the question of the resolution and instrumentally defend it– the role of the ballot is to vote on a yes/no question of whether the aff is a topical action

1) ‘Resolved’ denotes a proposal to be enacted by law Words and Phrases 64 Permanent Edition

Definition of the word “ resolve ,” given by Webster is “to express an opinion or determination by resolution or vote; as ‘it was resolved by the legislature ;” It is of similar force to the word “enact,” which is defined by Bouvier as meaning “to establish by law ”.

2) USFG is the federal government of the USA, based in DCDictionary of Government and Politics ’98 (Ed. P.H. Collin, p. 292)

United States of America (USA) [ju:’naitid ‘steits av e’merike] noun independent country, a federation of states (originally thirteen, now fifty in North America; the United States Code = book containing all the permanent laws of the USA, arranged in sections according to subject and revised from time to time COMMENT: the federal government (based in Washington D.C. ) is formed of a legislature (the Congress) with two chambers (the Senate and House of Representatives), an executive (the President) and a judiciary (the Supreme Court). Each of the fifty states making up the USA has its own legislature and executive (the Governor) as well as its own legal system and constitution

3) should reflects an immediate normative mandate, not personal speculationSummers 94 (Justice – Oklahoma Supreme Court, “Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food Warehouse of Durant”, 1994 OK 123, 11-8, http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=20287#marker3fn13)

13 "Should" not only is used as a "present indicative" synonymous with ought but also is the past tense of "shall" with various shades of meaning not always easy to analyze. See 57 C.J. Shall § 9, Judgments § 121 (1932). O. JESPERSEN, GROWTH AND STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1984); St. Louis & S.F.R. Co. v. Brown, 45 Okl. 143, 144 P. 1075, 1080-81 (1914). For a more detailed explanation, see the Partridge quotation infra note 15.

Certain contexts mandate a construction of the term "should" as more than merely indicating preference or desirability. Brown, supra at 1080-81 (jury instructions stating that jurors "should" reduce the amount of damages in proportion to the amount of contributory negligence of the plaintiff was held to imply an obligation and to be more than advisory); Carrigan v. California Horse Racing Board, 60 Wash. App. 79, 802 P.2d 813 (1990) (one of the Rules of Appellate Procedure requiring that a party "should devote a section of the brief to the request for the fee or expenses" was interpreted to mean that a party is under an obligation to include the requested

segment); State v. Rack, 318 S.W.2d 211, 215 (Mo. 1958) ( "should" would mean the same as "shall" or "must" when used in an instruction to the jury which tells the triers they "should disregard false testimony"). 14 In praesenti means literally "at the present time." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 792 (6th Ed. 1990). In legal parlance the phrase denotes that which in law is presently or immediately effective , as opposed to something that will or

would become effective in the future [in futurol]. See Van Wyck v. Knevals, 106 U.S. 360, 365, 1 S.Ct. 336, 337, 27 L.Ed.

201 (1882).

4) Domestic surveillance is intelligence gathering – that means collecting non-public information concerning U.S. persons for intelligence purposes. Small, 8 – Operations Analyst at the United States Air Force (Matthew, “His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil Liberties and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis” http://cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small.pdf

Before one can make any sort of assessment of domestic surveillance policies , it is first

necessary to narrow the scope of the term “ domestic surveillance .” Domestic surveillance is a

subset of intelligence gathering . Intelligence, as it is to be understood in this context, is “information that meets the stated or

understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those needs” (Lowenthal 2006, 2). In essence,

domestic surveillance is a means to an end; the end being intelligence. The intelligence community best understands domestic surveillance as the acquisition of nonpublic information concerning United States persons (Executive Order 12333 (3.4) (i)). With this definition domestic surveillance remains an overly broad concept. This paper’s analysis, in terms of President Bush’s policies, focuses on electronic surveillance;

specifically, wiretapping phone lines and obtaining caller information from phone companies. Section f of the USA Patriot Act of 2001

defines electronic surveillance as: [T]he acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents

of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes; Adhering to the above definition allows for a focused analysis of

one part of President Bush’s domestic surveillance policy as its implementation relates to the executive’s ability to abridge certain civil liberties. However, since electronic surveillance did not become an issue of public concern until the 1920s, there would seem to be a problem with the proposed analysis.

b) Violation – the affirmative does not advocate curtailing the United States federal government’s domestic surveillancec) Vote neg – Three IMPACTS:FIRST – bounded discussion – They explode the number of potential affs – removing the incentive for the neg to conduct in-depth pre-round research – which is debate’s primary benefit. Externally constrained discussions force creativity, while preserving avenues for non-traditional forms of evidence.SECOND – competitive equity – the resolution is purposefully designed to be imperfect. They stack the deck by reducing the affirmative burden to defending their claim of choice. This is a prior question, because all substantive questions are influenced by their unilateral decision to determine negative ground.THIRD - Institutional competence:

A) Absent state reforms, surveillance will create a chilling effect on society – wrecks dissent and social change

Schneier, 15, fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, a program fellow at the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Chief Technology Officer at Resilient Systems, Inc (Bruce, Data and Goliath: the Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, Ch. 7)//AK

Surveillance has a potentially enormous chilling effect on society . US Supreme Court Justice Sonia

Sotomayor recognized this in her concurring opinion in a 2012 case about the FBI’s installing a GPS tracker in someone’s car. Her comments were much broader: “Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Government’s unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net

result is that GPS monitoring—by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantity of intimate information

about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track—may ‘alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.’ ”∂ Columbia

University law professor Eben Moglen wrote that “omnipresent invasive listening creates fear. And that fear is the enemy of reasoned, ordered liberty.” Surveillance is a tactic of intimidation.∂ In the US, we already see the

beginnings of this chilling effect. According to a Human Rights Watch report, journalists covering stories on the intelligence community, national security, and law enforcement have been significantly hampered by government surveillance. Sources are less likely to contact them, and they themselves are worried about being prosecuted. Human Rights Watch concludes that stories in the national interest that need to be reported don’t get reported, and that the public is less informed as a result. That’s the chilling effect right there.∂ Lawyers working on cases where there is some intelligence interest—foreign government clients, drugs, terrorism—are also affected. Like journalists, they worry that

their conversations are monitored and that discussions with their clients will find their way into the prosecution’s hands.∂ Post-9/11 surveillance has caused writers to self-censor. They avoid writing about and researching certain subjects; they’re careful about communicating with sources, colleagues, or friends abroad. A Pew Research Center study conducted just after the first Snowden articles were published found that people didn’t want to talk about the NSA online. A broader Harris poll found

that nearly half of Americans have changed what they research, talk about, and write about

because of NSA surveillance. Surveillance has chilled Internet use by Muslim Americans, and by groups like environmentalists, gun-rights activists, drug policy advocates, and human rights workers. After the Snowden revelations of 2013, people across the world were less likely to search personally sensitive terms on

Google.∂ A 2014 report from the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights noted, “Even the mere possibility of communications information being captured creates an interference with privacy, with a potential chilling effect on rights, including those to free expression and association.”∂ This isn’t paranoia. In 2012, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said in a campaign speech, “Anyone who regularly consults internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison.”∂ This fear of scrutiny isn’t just about the present; it’s about the past as well. Politicians already live in a world where the opposition follows them around constantly with cameras, hoping to record something that can be taken out of context. Everything they’ve said and done in the past is pored through and judged in the present, with an exactitude far greater than was imaginable only a few years ago. Imagine this being normal for every job applicant.∂ Of course, surveillance doesn’t affect everyone equally. Some of us are unconcerned about government surveillance, and therefore not

affected at all. Others of us, especially those of us in religious, social, ethnic, and economic groups that are out of favor with the ruling elite, will be affected more.∂ Jeremy Bentham’s key observation in conceiving his panopticon was that people become conformist and compliant when they believe they are being observed. The panopticon is an architecture of social control. Think of how you act when a police car is driving next to you, or how an entire country acts when state agents are listening to phone calls. When we know everything is being recorded, we are less likely to speak freely and act individually. When we are constantly under the threat of judgment, criticism, and correction for our actions, we become fearful that—either now or in the uncertain future— data we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has then

become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. In response, we do nothing out of the ordinary. We lose our individuality, and society stagnates. We don’t question or challenge power. We become obedient and submissive. We’re less free .∂ INHIBITING DISSENT AND SOCIAL CHANGE∂ These chilling effects are especially damaging to political discourse. There is value in dissent. And, perversely, there can be value in lawbreaking. These are both ways we improve as a society. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is the enemy of democracy, liberty, freedom, and progress. ∂ Defending this assertion involves a subtle argument—something I wrote about in my previous book Liars and Outliers—but it’s vitally important to society.

Think about it this way. Across the US, states are on the verge of reversing decades-old laws about homosexual relationships and marijuana use. If the old laws could have been perfectly enforced through surveillance, society would never have reached the point where the majority of citizens thought those things were okay. There has to be a period where they are still illegal yet

increasingly tolerated, so that people can look around and say, “You know, that wasn’t so bad.” Yes, the process takes decades, but it’s a process that can’t happen without lawbreaking. Frank Zappa said something similar in 1971: “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” ∂ The perfect enforcement that comes with ubiquitous government surveillance chills this process. We need imperfect security—systems that free people to try new things, much the way off-the-record brainstorming sessions loosen inhibitions and foster creativity. If we don’t have that, we can’t slowly move from a thing’s being illegal and not okay, to

illegal and not sure, to illegal and probably okay, and finally to legal.∂ This is an important point. Freedoms we now take for granted were often at one time viewed as threatening or even criminal by the past power structure. Those changes might never have happened if the authorities had been able to achieve social control through

surveillance.∂ This is one of the main reasons all of us should care about the emerging architecture of surveillance, even if we are not personally chilled by its existence. We suffer the effects because people around us will be less likely to proclaim new political or social ideas, or act out of the ordinary. If J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. had been successful in silencing him, it would have affected far more people than King and his family. ∂ Of course, many things that are illegal will rightly remain illegal forever: theft, murder, and so on. Taken to the extreme, though, perfect enforcement could have unforeseen repercussions. What does it mean for society if the police can track your car 24/7, and then mail you a bill at the end of the month itemizing every time you sped, ran a red light, made an illegal left turn, or followed the car in front of you too closely? Or if your township can use aerial surveillance to automatically fine you for failing to mow your lawn or shovel your walk regularly? Our legal systems are largely based on human judgment. And while there are risks associated with biased and prejudiced judgments, there are also risks

associated with replacing that judgment with algorithmic efficiency. Ubiquitous surveillance could lead to the kind of society depicted in the 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, where people can become the subject of police investigations before they commit a crime. Already law enforcement agencies make use of predictive analytic tools to identify suspects and direct investigations . It’s a short step from there to the world of Big Brother and thoughtcrime. ∂ This notion of making certain crimes impossible to get away with is new—a potential result of all this new technology—and it’s something we need to think about carefully before we implement it. As law professor Yochai Benkler said, “Imperfection is a core dimension of freedom.”

B) Promoting interim gains is essential, it allows for the rupture in power relations necessary for revolutionary change, the affirmatives plan cedes to the right Connolly 13 – Professor of Political Science @ JHU

(William, “The Fragility of Things,” p. 36-42)

A philosophy attending to the acceleration, expansion, irrationalities, interdependencies, and fragilities of late capitalism suggest that we do not know that

confidence, in advance of experimental action, just how far or fast changes in the systemic character of neoliberal capitalism can be made. The structures often seem solid and intractable, and indeed such a semblance may turn out to be true. Some may seem solid, infinitely

absorptive, and intractable when they are in fact punctuated by hidden vulnerabilities , soft spots ,

uncertainties , and potential lines of flight that become apparent when they are subjected to

experimental action , upheaval, testing, and strain. Indeed no ecology of late capitalism, given the variety of forces to which it is connected by

a thousand pulleys, vibrations, impingements, dependencies, shocks, and threads, can specify with supreme confidence the solidity or potential flexibility of the structures it seeks to change. ¶ The strength of structural theory, at its best, was in identifying institutional intersections that hold a system together; its conceit, at its worst, was the claim to

know in advance how resistant such intersections are to potential change. Without adopting the opposite conceit, it seems important to pursue possible sites of strategic action that might open up room for productive change. Today it seems important

to attend to the relation between the need for structural change and identification of multiple sites of potential action. You do not know precisely what you are doing when you participate in such a venture. You combine an experimental temper with the appreciation that living and acting into the future inevitably contain a shifting quotient of uncertainty. The following tentative judgments and sites of action may pertinent. ¶ 1) Neither neoliberal theory, nor socialist productivism, nor deep ecology, nor social democracy in its classic form seems sufficient to the contemporary condition. This is so in part because the powers of market self-regulation are both real and limited in relation to a larger multitude of heterogeneous force fields beyond the human estate with differential power of self-regulation and metamorphosis. A first task is to challenge neoliberal ideology through critique and by elaborating and publicizing positive alternatives that acknowledge the disparate relations between market processes, other cultural systems, and nonhuman systems. Doing so to render the fragility of things more visible and palpable. Doing so, too, to set the

stage for a series of intercoded shifts in citizen role performances, social movements, and state action. ¶ 2) Those who seek to reshape the ecology of

late capitalism might set an interim agenda of radial reform and then recoil back on the initiatives adopted to

see how they work. An interim agenda is the best thing to focus on because in a world of becoming the more distant future is too cloudy to engage. We must, for instance, become involved in experimental micro-

politics on a variety of fronts, as we participate in role experimentations, social movements, artistic displays, erotic-political shows, electoral campaigns,

and creative interventions on the new media to help recode the ethos that now occupies investment practices, consumption desires, family savings, state priorities, church

assemblies, university curricula, and media reporting. It is important to bear in mind how extant ideologies, established role performances, social

movements, and commitments to state action intersect . To shift some of our own role performances in the zones of travel, church

participation, home energy use, investment, and consumption, for instance, that now implicate us deeply in foreign oil dependence and the huge military expenditures that secure it, could make a minor difference on its own and also lift some of the burdens of institutional implication from us to support participation in more adventurous interpretations, political strategies, demands upon the state, and cross state citizen actions. ¶ 3) Today perhaps the initial target should be on reconstituting established patterns of consumption by a combination of direct citizens actions in consumption choices, publicity of such actions, the organization of local collectives to modify consumption practices, and social movements to reconstitute the current state-and market-supported infrastructure of consumption. By the infrastructure of consumption I mean publicly supported and subsidized market subsystems such as a national highway system, a system of airports, medical care through private insurance, agribusiness pouring high sugar, salt, and fat content into foods, corporate ownership of the public media, the prominence of corporate 403 accounts over retirement pension, and so forth that enable some modes of consumption in the zones of travel, education, diet, retirement, medical care, energy use, health, and education and render others much more difficult of expensive to procure. To change the infrastructure is also to shift the types of work and investment available. Social movements that work upon the infrastructure and ethos of consumption in tandem can thus make a real difference directly, encourage more people to heighten their critical perspectives, and thereby open more people to a more militant politics if

and as the next disruptive event emerges. Perhaps a cross-state citizen goal should be to construct a pluralist assemblage by moving back and forth between experiments in role performances, the refinement of sensitive modes of perception, revisions in political ideology, and

adjustments in political sensibility, doing so to mobilize enough collective energy to launch a general strike simultaneously in several countries in the near future. The aim

of such an event would be to reverse the deadly future created by established patterns of climate change by fomenting significant shifts in

patterns of consumption, corporate policies , state law , and the priorities of interstate organizations. Again, the dilemma of today is that the fragility of

things demands shifting and slowing down intrusion: into several aspects of nature as we speed up shifts in identity, role performance, cultural ethos, market regulation, and state policy. ¶ 4) The existential forces of hubris (expressed above all in those confident drives to mastery conveyed by military elites, financial economists, financial elites, and CEOs) and of ressentiment (expressed in some sectors of secularism and evangelicalism) now play roles of importance in the shape of consumption practices, investment portfolios, worker routines, managerial demands, and the uneven semen of entitlement that constitute neoliberalism. For that reason activism inside churches, schools, street life, and the media must become increasingly skilled and sensitive. As we proceed, some of us may present the themes of a world of becoming to larger audiences, challenging thereby the complementary notions of a providential world and secular mastery that now infuse too many role performances, market practices, and state priorities in capitalist life. For existential dispositions do infuse the role priorities of late capitalism. Today it is both difficult for people to perform the same roles with the same old innocence and difficult to challenge those performances amid our own implication in them. Drive by evangelists, the media, neoconservatives, and the neolibreal right to draw a veil of innocence across the priorities of contemporary life make the situation much worse. ¶ 5) The emergence of a neofascist or mafia-type capitalism slinks as a dangerous possibility on the horizon, partly because of the expansion and intensification of capital, partly because of the real fragility of things, partly because the identity needs of many facing these pressures encourage them to cling more intensely to a neoliberal imaginary as its bankruptcy becomes increasingly apparent, partly because so many in America insist upon retaining the special world entitlements the country achieved after World War II in a world decreasingly favorable to them, partly because of the crisis tendencies inherent in neoliberal capitalism, and partly because so many resist living evidence around and in them that challenges a couple of secular and theistic images of the cosmos now folded into the institutional life of capitalism. Indeed the danger is that those constituencies now most disinclined to give close attention to public issues could oscillate between attraction to the mythic promises of neoliberal automaticity and attraction to a neofascist movement when the next crisis unfolds. It has happened before. I am not saying that neoliberalism is itself a form of fascism, but that the failures and meltdowns it periodically promotes could once again foment fascist or neofascist responses, as happened in

several countries after the onset of the Great Depression. ¶ 6) The democratic state, while it certainly cannot alone tame capital or reconstitute the ethos and

infrastructure of consumption, must play a significant role in reconstituting our lived relations to climate, weather, resource use, ocean currents, bee survival, tectonic instability, glacier flows, species diversity, work, local life, consumption, and investment, as it also responds favorable to the public

pressures we must generate to forge a new ethos. A new, new left will thus experimentally enact new intersections between role performance and political

activity, outgrow its old disgust with the very idea of the state, an d remain alert to the dangers states can pose. It will do so because, as already suggested, the fragile ecology of late capital requires state interventions

of several sorts. A refusal to participate in the state today cedes too much hegemony to neoliberal markets , either explicitly or by implication. Drives to fascism, remember, rose the last time in capitalist states after a total market meltdown. Most of those movements failed. But a couple became consolidate through a series of resonances (vibrations) back and forth between industrialists, the state, and vigilante groups, in neighborhoods,

clubs, churches, the police, the media, the pubs. You do not fight the danger of a new kind of neofascism by withdrawing from either micropolitics or state politics. You do so through a multisited politics designed to infuse a new ethos into the fabric of everyday life. Changes in ethos can in turn open doors to new possibilities of state and interstate action, so that an advance in one domain seeds that in the other. And vice versa. A positive dynamic of mutual amplification might be generated here. Could a series of significant shifts in the routines of state and global capitalism even press the fractures system to a point where it hovers

on the edge of capitalism itself? We don’t know. That is one reason it is important to focus on interim goals . Another is that

in a world of becoming, replete with periodic and surprising shift in the course of events, you cannot project far beyond an interim period. Another yet is that activism needs to project concrete, interim possibilities to gain support and propel itself forward. That being said, it does seem unlikely to me, at least, that a positive interim future includes either socialist productivism or the world

projected by proponents of deep ecology. ¶ 7) To advance such an agenda it is also imperative to negotiate new connections between

nontheistic constituencies who care about the future of the Earth and numerous devotees of diverse religious traditions who fold positive

spiritualties into their creedal practices. The new, multifaceted movement needed today, if it emerges, will take the shape of a vibrant pluralist assemblage acting at a multiple

sites within and across states, rather than either a centered movement with a series of fellow travelers attached to it or a mere electoral constellation. Electoral

victories are important , but that work best when they touch priorities already embedded in churches, universities, film, music, consumption practices,

media reporting, investment priorities, and the like. A related thing to keep in mind is that the capitalist modes of acceleration, expansion, and intensification that heighten the fragility of things today also generate pressures to minorities the world along multiple dimensions at a more rapid pace than heretofore. A new pluralist constellation will build upon the latter developments as it works to reduce the former effects. ¶ I am sure that the forgoing comments will appear to some as “optimistic” or “utopian.” But optimism

and pessimism are both primarily spectatorial views. Neither seems sufficient to the contemporary condition. Indeed pessimism, if you dwell on it long, easily slides into cynicism, and cynicism often plays into the hands of a right wing that applies it exclusively to any set of state activities not designed to protect or coddle the corporate estate. That is one reason that “dysfunctional politics” resounds so readily to the advantage of cynics on the right who work to promote it. They want to promote cynicism with respect to the state and innocence with respect to the market. Pure critique, as already suggested, does not suffice either. Pure critique too readily carries critics and their followers to the edge of cynicism. ¶ It is also true that the above critique concentrates on neoliberal capitalism, not capitalism writ large. That is because it seems to me that we need to specify the terms of critique as closely as possible and think first of all about interim responses. If we lived under, say, Keynesian capitalism, a somewhat different set of issues would be defined and other strategies identified. Capitalism writ large—while it sets a general context that neoliberalism inflects in specific ways—sets too large and generic a target. It can assume multiple forms, as the difference between Swedish and American capitalism suggest the

times demand a set of interim agendas targeting the hegemonic form of today, pursued with heightened militancy at several sties. The point today is not to

wait for a revolution that overthrows the whole system. The “system,” as we shall see further, is replete with too many loose ends, uneven edges, dicey intersections with nonhuman forces, and uncertain trajectories to make such

a wholesale project plausible. Besides, things are too urgent and too many people on the ground are suffering too much now. ¶ The need now is to activate the most promising political strategies to the contemporary condition out of a bad set. On top of assessing probabilities and predicting them with secret relish or despair—activities I myself pursue during the election season—we must define the urgent needs of the day in relation to a set of interim possibilities worthy of pursuit on several fronts, even if the apparent political odds are stacked against them. We then test ourselves and those possibilities by trying to enact this or that aspect of them at diverse sites, turning back to reconsider their efficacy and side effects as circumstances shift and

results accrue. In so doing we may experience more vibrantly how apparently closed and ossified structures are typically punctuated by jagged edges, seams, and fractures best pried open with a mix of public

contestation of established interpretations, experimental shifts in multiple role performances, micropolitics in churches, universities , unions, the

media, and corporations, state actions , and large-scale, cross-state citizen actions.

C) Attitude and information alone are irrelevant – only tying legal goals to political actors translates knowledge into powerHodson 10 - professor of education – Ontario Institute for Studies @ University of Toronto

(Derek, "Science Education as a Call to Action," Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 10.3)

The final (fourth) level of sophistication in this issues-based approach is concerned with students findings ways of putting their values and convictions into action, helping them to prepare for and engage in responsible action, and assisting them in developing the skills, attitudes, and values that will enable them to take control of their lives, cooperate with others to bring about change, and

work toward a more just and sustainable world in which power, wealth, and resources are more equitably shared. Socially and environmentally responsible behavior will not necessarily follow from knowledge of key concepts

and possession of the “right attitudes.” As Curtin (1991) reminded us, it is important to distinguish between caring about and caring for. It is almost always much easier to proclaim that one cares about an issue than to do something about it. Put

simply, our values are worth nothing until we live them. Rhetoric and espoused values will not bring about social justice and will not save the planet. We must change our actions. A politicized ethic of care (caring for) entails active involvement in a local manifestation of a particular problem or issue, exploration of the complex sociopolitical contexts in which the problem/issue is located, and attempts to resolve conflicts of interest.¶ Writing from the perspective of environmental education, Jensen (2002) categorized the knowl- edge that is likely to promote sociopolitical action and encourage pro-environmental behavior into four dimensions: (a) scientific and technological knowledge that informs the issue or prob- lem; (b) knowledge about the underlying social, political, and economic issues, conditions, and structures and how they contribute to creating social and environmental problems; (c) knowledge about how to bring about changes in society through direct or indirect action; and (d) knowledge about the likely outcome or direction of possible actions and the desirability of those outcomes. Although formulated as a model for environmental education, it is reasonable to suppose that Jensen’s arguments are applicable to all forms of SSI-oriented action. Little needs to be said about dimensions 1 and 2 in Jensen’s

framework beyond the discussion earlier in the article. With regard to dimension 3, students need knowledge of actions that are likely to have positive impact and knowledge of how to engage in them . It is essential that they gain robust knowledge of the social, legal, and political system (s) that prevail in the communities in which they live and develop a clear understanding of how decisions are made within local, regional, and national gov- ernment and within industry, commerce, and the military.

Without knowledge of where and with whom power of decision making is located and awareness of the mechanisms by which decisions are reached, intervention is not possible . Thus, the curriculum I propose requires a concurrent program designed to achieve a measure of political literacy, including knowledge of how to engage in collective action with individuals who have different competencies, backgrounds, and attitudes but

share a common interest in a particular SSI. Dimension 3 also includes knowledge of likely sympathizers and potential allies and strategies for encouraging cooperative action and group interventions . What Jensen did not mention but would seem to be a part of dimension 3 knowledge is the nature of science-oriented knowledge that would enable students to appraise the statements, reports, and arguments of scientists, politicians, and journalists and to present

their own supporting or opposing arguments in a coherent, robust, and convincing way (see Hodson [2009b] for a lengthy discussion of this aspect of science education). Jensen’s fourth category includes awareness of how (and why) others have sought to bring about change and entails for- mulation of a vision of the kind of world in which we (and our families and communities) wish to live. It is important for students to explore and develop their ideas, dreams, and aspirations for themselves, their neighbors and families and for the wider communities at local, regional, national, and global levels—a clear overlap with futures studies/education. An essential step in cultivating the critical scientific and technological literacy on which sociopolitical action depends is the application of a social and political critique capable of challenging the notion of techno- logical determinism. We can control technology and its environmental and social impact. More significantly, we can control the controllers and redirect technology in such a way that adverse environmental impact is substantially reduced (if not entirely eliminated) and issues of freedom, equality, and justice are kept in the forefront of discussion during the establishment of policy.

Evaluate this debate based on pedagogical interpretations of debate, not the substance of the 1ac alone – it’s a logical consequence of their choice to ignore the topic in this debate.

Public Forum CPNick and I counter advocate to reject the affirmative within the realm of a competitive debate round – we believe the better way to confront Antiblackness is to host a public forum wherein we could discuss the issue of antiblackness

The Counterplan is mutually exclusive because any permutation will have to include the affirmative’s 1AC advocacy in this debate, which is the link to our offense. Fundamentally, we are offering an approach to antiblackness and they are defending that they should win this debate round. These approaches are not compatible and if we win the disadvantages to using the competitive format and solvency for our counterplan then you vote negative.

Also, their Wilderson 10 ev from the 1ac says that debate should be a public forum to challenge America’s legitimacy

The Counterplan solves the case better for two reasons: Attempting to create recognition through a competitive debate round is structurally flawed since there are no written records of decisions and there is little collective memory of what happened in any given debateAtchison and Panetta, 09 (Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, "Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future," The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334) //NM

In addition to the structural problems, the collective forgetfulness of the debate community reduces the

impact that individual debates have on the community . The debate community has a high

turnover rate . Despite the fact that some debaters make their best effort to debate for more than four years, the debate community is largely made up of participants who debate and then move on . The coaches and directors that make up the backbone of the community are the people with the longest cultural memory, but they are also a small minority of the community when considering the number of debaters involved in the activity. We do not mean to suggest that the activity is reinvented every year—certainly there are conventions that are passed down from coaches to debaters and from debaters

to debaters. However, given the fact that there are virtually no transcriptions available for everyone to read, it is difficult to assume that the debate community would remember any individual

debate. Additionally, given the focus on competition and individual skill, the community is more likely to remember the accomplishments and talents of debaters rather than what argument they won a particular round on. The debate community does not have the necessary components in place for a strong collective memory of individual debates. We believe that the combination of the structures

of debate and the collective forgetfulness means that any strategy for creating community change that is premised on winning individual debates is less effective than seeking a larger community dialogue that is recorded and/or transcribed. The second major problem with attempting to create

community change in individual debates is that the debate community is made up of more individuals than the four debaters and one judge that are a part of every debate. The coaches and directors that make up the backbone of the community have very little space for engaging in a discussion about community issues. We suspect

that this helps explain why so few debaters get involved in the edebates over activist strategies. Coaches and directors dominant this forum because there is so little public dialogue over the issues that directly affect the community that they have dedicated so much of their professional and personal lives. This is especially true for coaches and directors that are not preferred judges and therefore do not even have a voice at the

end of a debate. Coaches and directors sh ould have a public forum to engage in a community conversation with debaters instead of attempting to take on their opponents through the wins and losses of their own debaters.

The plea for change through winning the ballot not only fails to inculcate communal response but also re-entrenches the very evil they criticize by reproducing antagonism rather than coalitionsAtchison and Panetta, 09 (Jarrod Atchison, Phd Rhetoric University of Georgia, Assistant Professor and Director of debate at Wake Forest University, and Edward Panetta, Phd Rhetoric Associate Professor University of Pitt and Director of Debate at Georgia, Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication, Historical Developments and Issues for the Future, “Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future,” The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed. (Los Angeles: Sage Publications Inc., 2009) p. 317-334)

Competition has been a critical component of the interest in intercollegiate debate from the beginning,

and it does not help further the goals of the debate community to dismiss competition in the name of community change. The larger problem with locating the " debate as activism " perspective within the competitive framework is that it overlooks the communal nature of the community problem. If each individual debate is a

decision about how the debate community should approach a problem, then the losing debaters become collateral damage in the activist strategy dedicated toward creating community change. One frustrating

example of this type of argument might include a judge voting for an activist team in an effort to help them reach elimination rounds to generate a community discussion about the problem. Under this

scenario, the losing team serves as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of community change. Downplaying the important role of competition and treating opponents as scapegoats for the failures of the community may increase the profile of the winning team and the community problem, but it does little to generate the critical coalitions necessary to address the community problem , because the competitive focus encourages teams to concentrate on how to beat the strategy with little regard for addressing the community problem. There is no role for competition when a judge decides that it is

important to accentuate the publicity of a community problem. An extreme example might include a team arguing that their opponents' academic institution had a legacy of civil rights abuses and that the judge should not vote for them because that would be a community endorsement of a problematic institution. This scenario is a bit more outlandish but not unreasonable if one assumes mat each debate should be about what is best for promoting solutions to diversity problems in the debate community.

Cap KRace and class are dialectically conjoined in the reproduction of capitalist relations—capitalism racializes subjects to entrench competition and destroy universal consciousness as well as sustains white racism as a method of papering over contradictions.San Juan 3

[E., Fulbright Lecturer at Univ of Leuven, “Marxism and the Race/Class Problematic: A Re-Articulation”, p. online]

It seems obvious that racism cannot be dissolved by instances of status mobility when sociohistorical circumstances change gradually or are transformed by unforeseen interventions. The black bourgeoisie continues to be harassed and stigmatized by liberal or multiculturalist practices of racism, not because they drive Porsches or conspicuously flaunt all the indices of wealth.

Class exploitation cannot replace or stand for racism because it is the condition of possibility for it. It is what enables the racializing of selected markers, whether physiological or

cultural, to maintain, deepen and reinforce alienation, mystifying reality by modes of commodification,

fetishism, and reification characterizing the routine of quotidian life. Race and class are dialectically conjoined in the reproduction of capitalist relations of exploitation and domination. 30. We might take a passage from Marx as a source of guidelines for developing a historical-materialist theory of racism which is not empiricist but dialectical in aiming for theorizing conceptual concreteness as a multiplicity of historically informed and configured determinations. This passage comes from a letter dated 9 April 1870 to Meyer and Vogt in which Marx explains why the Irish struggle for autonomy was of crucial significance for the British proletariat: . . . Every industrial and commercial center in England possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude towards him is much the same as that of the 'poor whites' to the 'niggers' in the former slave states of the USA. The Irishman pays him back with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker at once the accomplice and stupid tool of the English rule in Ireland. This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by

which the capitalist class maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it (quoted in Callinicos 1993). Here Marx sketches three parameters for the sustained viability of racism in modern capitalist society. First, the economic competition among workers is dictated by the distribution of labor power in

the labor-market via differential wage rates. The distinction between skilled and unskilled labor is contextualized in differing national origins, languages and traditions of workers, which can be manipulated into racial antagonisms. Second , the appeal of racist ideology to white workers, with their identification as members of the "ruling nation" affording--in W.E.B. DuBois's words--"public and

psychological wage" or compensation. Like religion , white-supremacist nationalism provides the illusory resolution to the real contradictions of life for the working majority of citizens. Third, the ruling class reinforces and maintains these racial divisions for the sake of capital accumulation within the framework of its ideological/political hegemony in the metropolis and worldwide. 31.

Racism and nationalism are thus modalities in which class struggles articulate themselves at strategic points in history. No doubt social conflicts in recent times have involved not only classes but also

national, ethnic, and religious groups, as well as feminist, ecological, antinuclear social movements (Bottomore 1983). The concept of "internal colonialism" (popular in the seventies) that subjugates national minorities, as well as the principle of self-determination for oppressed or "submerged" nations espoused by

Lenin, exemplify dialectical attempts to historicize the collective agency for socialist

transformation. Within the framework of the global division of labor between metropolitan center and colonized periphery, a Marxist program of national liberation is meant to take into account the extraction of surplus value from colonized peoples through unequal exchange as well as through direct colonial exploitation in "Free Trade Zones," illegal traffic in prostitution, mail-order brides, and contractual domestics (at present, the Philippines provides the bulk of the latter, about ten

million persons and growing). National oppression has a concrete reality not entirely reducible to class exploitation but incomprehensible apart from it; that is, it cannot be adequately understood without the domination of the racialized peoples in the dependent formations by the colonizing/imperialist power, with the imperial

nation-state acting as the exploiting class, as it were (see San Juan 1998; 2002). 32. Racism arose with the creation and expansion of the capitalist world economy (Wolf 1982; Balibar and Wallerstein, 1991).

Solidarities conceived as racial or ethnic groups acquire meaning and value in terms of their place within the social organization of production and reproduction of the ideological-

political order; ideologies of racism as collective social evaluation of solidarities arise to reinforce structural constraints which preserve the exploited and oppressed position of these "racial" solidarities. Such patterns of economic and political segmentation mutate in response to the impact of changing economic and political relationships (Geshwender and Levine 1994). Overall, there is no denying the fact that national-liberation movements and indigenous groups fighting for sovereignty, together with heterogeneous alliances and coalitions, cannot be fully understood without a critical analysis of the production of surplus value and its expropriation by the propertied class--that is, capital accumulation. As John Rex noted, different ethnic groups are placed in relations of cooperation, symbiosis or conflict by the fact that as groups they have different economic and political functions.Within this changing class order of [colonial societies], the language of racial difference frequently becomes the means whereby men allocate each other to different social and economic positions. What the type of analysis used here suggests is that the exploitation of clearly marked groups in a variety of different ways is integral to capitalism and that ethnic groups unite and act together because they have been subjected to distinct and differentiated types of exploitation. Race relations and racial conflict are necessarily structured

by political and economic factors of a more generalized sort (1983, 403-05, 407). Hence race relations and race conflict are necessarily structured by the larger totality of the political economy of a given society, as well as by modifications in the structure of the world economy. Corporate profit-making via class exploitation on an international/globalized scale, at bottom, still remains the logic of the world system of finance capitalism based on historically changing structures and retooled practices of domination and subordination.

The determinism of capital is responsible for the instrumentalization of all life—it is this logic that mobilizes and allows for the 1ac’s scenarios in the first place Dyer 99

[Nick, Prof at U. of Western Ontario, Cyber Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism ]

For capitalism, the use of machines as organs of “will over nature” is an imperative. The great insight of the Frankfurt School—an insight subsequently improved and amplified by feminists and ecologists—was that

capital’s dual project of dominating both humynity and nature was intimately tied to the cultivation of “instrumental reason” that systematically objectifies, reduces, quantifies and fragments the world for the purposes of technological control. Business’s systemic need to cheapen labor, cut the costs of raw materials, and expand consumer markets gives it an inherent bias toward the piling-up of

technological power. This priority—enshrined in phrases such as “progress,” “efficiency,” “productivity,” “modernization,”

and “growth”—assumes an automatism that is used to override any objection or alternative, regardless of the environmental and social c onsequences . Today, we witness global vistas of

toxification, deforestation, desertification, dying oceans, disappearing ozone layers, and disintegrating immune systems, all interacting in ways that perhaps threaten the very existence of humynity and are undeniably inflicting social collapse, disease, and immiseration across the planet. The degree to which this project of mastery has backfired is all too obvious.

Vote Negative to validate and adopt the method of structural/historical criticism that is the 1NC.This is not the alternative, but in truth the only option— method is the foremost political question because one must understand the existing social totality before one can act on it—grounding the sites of political contestation or knowledge outside of labor and surplus value merely serve to humynize capital and prevent a transition to a society beyond oppressionTumino 1

[Stephen, Prof English at Pitt, ““What is Orthodox Marxism and Why it Matters Now More than Ever”, Red Critique, p. online]

Any effective political theory will have to do at least two things: it will have to offer an integrated understanding of social practices and, based on such an interrelated knowledge, offer a guideline

for praxis. My main argument here is that among all contesting social theories now, only Orthodox Marxism has been able to produce an integrated knowledge of the existing social totality and provide lines of praxis that will lead to building a society free from necessity. But first I must clarify what I mean by Orthodox Marxism. Like all other modes and forms of political theory, the very theoretical identity of Orthodox Marxism is itself contested—not just from non-and anti-Marxists who question the very "real" (by which they mean the "practical" as under free-market criteria) existence of any kind of Marxism now but, perhaps more tellingly, from within the Marxist tradition itself. I will, therefore, first say what I regard to be the distinguishing marks of Orthodox Marxism and then outline a short polemical map of contestation over Orthodox Marxism within the Marxist theories now. I will end by arguing for

its effectivity in bringing about a new society based not on humyn rights but on freedom from necessity. I will argue that to know contemporary society—and to be able to act on such knowledge—one has to first of all know what makes the existing social totality. I will argue that the dominant social totality is based on inequality—not just inequality of power but inequality of economic access (which then determines access to health care,

education, housing, diet, transportation, . . . ). This systematic inequality cannot be explained by gender, race, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, or nationality. These are all secondary contradictions and are all determined by the fundamental contradiction of capitalism which is inscribed in the relation of capital and labor. All

modes of Marxism now explain social inequalities primarily on the basis of these secondary contradictions and in doing so—and this is my main argument—legitimate capitalism. Why? Because such arguments authorize capitalism without gender, race, discrimination and thus accept economic inequality as an integral part of humyn societies. They accept a sunny capitalism —a capitalism beyond capitalism. Such a society, based on cultural equality but economic inequality, has always been the not-so-hidden agenda of the bourgeois left—whether it has been called "new left," "postmarxism," or "radical democracy." This is, by the way, the main reason for its popularity in the culture industry—from the academy (Jameson, Harvey, Haraway, Butler,. . . ) to daily politics (Michael Harrington, Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson,. . . ) to. . . .

For all, capitalism is here to stay and the best that can be done is to make its cruelties more tolerable, more humyne. This humynization (not eradication) of capitalism is the sole goal of ALL contemporary lefts

(marxism, feminism, anti-racism, queeries, . . . ). Such an understanding of social inequality is based on the fundamental understanding that the source of wealth is humyn knowledge and not humyn

labor. That is, wealth is produced by the humyn mind and is thus free from the actual objective conditions that shape the

historical relations of labor and capital. Only Orthodox Marxism recognizes the historicity of labor and its primacy as the source of all humyn weal th . In this paper I argue that any emancipatory theory has to be founded on recognition of the priority of Marx's labor theory of value and not repeat the technological determinism of corporate theory ("knowledge work") that masquerades as social theory.

Case

Bad for Race Discussion Using a competitive forum to discuss race is flawed – limits and devalues conversationBankey 13

Brendon Bankey is a PhD student at Kansas and has a MA in communication from Wake Forest University. He debated for Trinity University. “THE “FACT OF BLACKNESS” DOES NOT EXIST: AN EVOCATIVE CRITICISM OF RESISTANCE RHETORIC IN ACADEMIC POLICY DEBATE AND ITS (MIS)USE OF FRANTZ FANON’S BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS,” August 2013, Pg. 51-52, AFGA)

The other problem this understanding of privilege creates is the idea that individual debate competitions are the ideal place to do the work of community building . There exist a range of options for communicating difference to each other in spaces of the debate community. To isolate the importance of this task to debate competitions dismisses the community element entirely . It also raises the question of why young people searching for the proper script to articulate their social position must offer it forth for a judge to evaluate its accuracy. Even if an opponent is seeking to engage authentically , it is the person sitting in the back of the room that has the final say in the matter. Moreover, I am curious how supporters of strategies designed at confronting whiteness expect debaters to

accomplish the task of exposing one’s privilege during a three-minute cross-examination period , which is the only time in debate that places teams in conversation with each other . On this subject of competition, I am concerned that supporters of resistance will take the success of teams like West Georgia and Emporia at CEDA and the NDT to mean that meaningful black participation can only occur in policy debate through competitive means. This is not some backhanded way of saying non-traditional debaters should be content with losing debates; every collegiate debater dreams of winning the NDT. But are we willing to say that if a student does not ever win a debate at the NDT or even qualify for the NDT their presence in the

community was not meaningful? Moreover, in the rush to disidentify with policy debate I worry that supporters of resistance will overlook the meaningful black participation that did occur by debaters who did not choose to engage in strategies of signifyin(g) or genre violation in the 2012-2013 season.

Bad For Change Debate rounds are ineffective sites of change – lack of audience and transcriptionBankey 13

Brendon Bankey is a PhD student at Kansas and has a MA in communication from Wake Forest University. He debated for Trinity University. “THE “FACT OF BLACKNESS” DOES NOT EXIST: AN EVOCATIVE CRITICISM OF RESISTANCE RHETORIC IN ACADEMIC POLICY DEBATE AND ITS (MIS)USE OF FRANTZ FANON’S BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS,” August 2013, Pg. 50-51, AFGA)

Atchison and Panetta’s scholarship investigates the general stubbornness to respond to forms of activism within policy debate,

challenging the notion that “any individual debate” can affect the capacity “to generate community change.” They “attribute this ineffectiveness ” of focusing on individual debates as a site of activism “to the structural problems inherent in individual debates and the collective forgetfulness of the debate community .” From a structural perspective, individual debates generally lack the necessary audience to attract attention to coalesce community opinion toward a certain team ’ s criticism of marginalizing debate practices. While this observation is called into question by the efforts made to record debates at the 2013 NDT, the majority of “elimination debates do not provide for a much better audience because debates still occur

simultaneously, and travel schedules dictate that most of the participants have left by the later elimination rounds.” Because of the sheer number of debates that occur throughout a given season and the lack of efforts to transcribe them, Atchison and Panetta propose a model for creating community change that requires public argument striving toward “a larger community dialogue that is recorded and/or transcribed” as an alternative to strategies of resistance “premised on winning individual debates” to resolve “a community problem.” Their proposal recognizes the importance of reinvigorating methods of accessible public argument often disregarded in competitive debate. At the same time, however, they remain concerned that individual “debate competitions do not represent the best environment for community change.”

TVA Next, The speech act of the 1ac can solve all their offense while pedagogically advocating an institutional curtailment of state surveillance – they can discuss both institutionalized racism and how Blacks have responded - welfare searches, stop-and-frisk, public housing surveillance, stop-and-sniff, and motor vehicle stops are all topical policy proposals that solveBailey, Chicago-Kent law assistant professor, 2014 (Kimberly D., “Watching Me: The War on Crime, Privacy, and the State,” University of California Davis Law Review, Vol. 47, January 2014, http://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3395&context=fac_schol, p. 1555-1561, IC)

Scholars have documented the fact that the poor and people of color continue to have the least amount of privacy in our society and, therefore, they are still the most vulnerable to more extreme state social control policies.101 Some argue that welfare is still a means of regulating the sexual behavior of many poor, single women.102 Indeed, many women currently must participate in mandatory paternity proceedings in order to be entitled to benefits, and many jurisdictions impose family caps, which limit cash benefit increases for any children conceived while the mother is receiving welfare benefits.103 Recipients of state funded prenatal care often have to endure highly embarrassing and intrusive questions about their parenting history, criminal history, immigration status, contraceptive use, and finances, which middleand upper-class women simply

do not have to endure.104 Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that welfare recipients are not entitled to Fourth Amendment rights when it comes to searches in their homes.105 Social workers can stop by and search a recipient’s home and interview her with no warning or warrant. As will be discussed more fully below, the privacy invasions that result from current criminal justice policies also contribute to greater social control of poor people of color because of the chilling effects they have on selfdetermination, freedom of association, and freedom of expression.∂ In addition to

making poor people of color more vulnerable to oppressive state social control, the war on crime has also created serious dignitary harms. When the state curtails privacy, it sends a powerful message: an individual cannot be trusted to use his privacy in legitimate ways.106 For example, parents tend to give their children less privacy because they do not yet trust that the children have the maturity and wisdom not to make choices that could potentially

harm themselves or others. Likewise, one reason we limit the privacy of prisoners is because their past acts suggest that we cannot trust them not to engage in criminal and potentially dangerous activities, at least for a set

period of time. The lack of trust expressed by the state through the war on crime, therefore, at best resembles a form of paternalism; at worst, it resembles a form de facto criminalization of individuals simply because they are poor and of color.107 These individuals logically conclude that the state does not respect them nor does it view their identities and viewpoints as equal to those of white and wealthier citizens.108∂ B. The War on Crime’s Impact on Individual Privacy∂ 1. Stops-and-Frisks and Motor Stops∂ The myopic focus of the war on drugs on arrest

and conviction rates, combined with the racialized view of illegal drug use, creates an environment where police officers feel free to subject poor urban African-Americans and Latinos to intrusive stops-and-frisks on a daily basis.109 In 2011, 84% of stops-and-frisks conducted in New York were on African-Americans and Latinos.110 Eighty-eight percent of these stops did not result in an arrest or a summons being given.111 Contraband was found in only 2% of these stops.112 In other words, although the vast majority of residents of poor urban

neighborhoods are law-abiding citizens, many of them still have to tolerate these intrusions.113 Indeed,

particularly for young, African-American and Latino males, they are a regular part of life.114 For example, between January 2006 and March 2010, the police stopped 52,000 individuals in an eight-block minority area in Brooklyn.115 This amounted to an average of one stop per resident per year.116 The average increased to five stops per person for

males fifteen to thirty-four years of age.117 ∂ Some of those who have been stopped by the New York Police

Department describe a hornet-like invasion where they are barraged with questions such as “where’s the weed?” and

“where’s the guns?”118 These exchanges are sometimes laced with profanity, racial epithets, and name-

calling like “immigrant,” “old man,” or “bro.”119 Other exchanges are more polite where the police officer asks whether they can talk with the individual; asks him a series of questions such as what he is doing, where he lives, and whether he

has anything on him; and then lets the individual go.120 In either type of exchange, the subjects of these stops often report “feeling intruded upon and humiliated.”121 A college student from Brooklyn describes, “‘They talk to you like you’re ignorant, like you’re an animal.’”122 Another man from Queens describes feeling “belittled,” even though he once experienced a more polite exchange.123 Individuals often feel shame after these interactions and fear that others who witness the stop-andfrisk will assume that they are criminals.124 Even young children are not immune from this practice. One New Yorker reporters,∂ There’s a junior high school [where] almost all the kids are either of Arabic [sic] descent or Latino. There [were] days when you’d see all these little kids lined up, with their legs spread, holding [onto] the wall, and the cops are going through their pockets and stuff. It’s

just like a terrible, disgusting, horrible thing to see.125∂ Furthermore, police often engage in abusive and inappropriate behaviors via the stop-and-frisk including forcibly stripping individuals down to their underclothing in public, “inappropriate touching, physical violence and threats, extortion of sex, sexual harassment and other humiliating and degrading treatment . ”126 Objecting to

inappropriate touching can lead to a charge of resisting arrest.12∂ What is most striking about this practice is that residents of

particular communities have had to modify their everyday activities in order to lessen the risk associated with police encounters.128 New Yorkers of color describe refraining from wearing stereotypical “ethnic” clothing and hair styles to make themselves less likely to be accosted by the police.129 They also describe taking public transportation and avoiding walking altogether to avoid encounters with law enforcement on the street.130 Others describe how young people have to stay indoors and cannot play outside.131 Adults feel like they cannot sit on the porch or go to the store or

interact with their neighbors.132∂ The police have particularly focused on public housing sites for heightened surveillance,133 but the city of New York also has a special program, Operation Clean Halls, which involves private buildings.134 Under this program, owners of private buildings sign contracts with the New York Police Department, which allows the police to

patrol these buildings.135 African-Americans and Latinos are disproportionately stopped by police as part of this program.136∂ In order to avoid the accusation of trespassing, many New Yorkers report always carrying identification or a piece of mail verifying that they live in a particular building.137 Some report that residents of a building may even have to produce a lease in order to avoid arrest.138 For many, they daily must endure police inquiries of, “Do you live here?”139

New Yorkers report that they also carry pay stubs to prove that they have a legitimate source of income.140∂ In Chicago, police cars patrol public housing projects and when they stop, every young African-American man in the area automatically places his hands against the car and spreads his legs to be searched .141 This automatic reflex to “assume the position” happens in poor communities of color across the nation,142 and it underscores how constant police presence and surveillance have become woven into the everyday fabric of poor, urban life. It

is not surprising, therefore, that residents in these communities describe this constant presence as a type of “military occupation”143 or “outside prison.”144∂ A variation of the stop-and-frisk is the

“stop-and-sniff.” New York police officers will stop individuals drinking from cups in public.145 They then ask to sniff the contents of the individual’s cup to see if it contains alcohol.146 If it smells like alcohol, they are issued a summons for public drinking.147 The penalty for the offense is small at twentyfive dollars per ticket, but the real purpose for these stops is to have an excuse to check to see if an individual has any outstanding warrants.148 As is the case with stop-and-frisk practices, residents are

angry and resentful when police officers demand to sniff the contents of their cups.149 Furthermore, one judge found that 85% of the summonses that were issued during one month in Brooklyn were to AfricanAmericans and Latinos.150∂

Just as is the case with stops-and-frisks, motor vehicle stops are a numbers game.151 As a result, tens of thousands

of innocent individuals are pulled over every year as part of the war on drugs.152 Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of these individuals are African-American and Latino.153 Indeed, many are familiar with the terms “driving while black” or “driving while brown,” which refer to the disproportionate effects of traffic stops on African-Americans and Latinos.154 Some New Yorkers report that they avoid driving altogether and opt for public transportation in order to avoid these confrontations.155

Institutions cardCalls to interrogate anti-blackness do nothing to stop real-world violence only practical politics can solveFRIEDERSDORF 5/22

(Conor,Atlantic, “Police Brutality and 'The Role That Whiteness Plays'”—5/22/2015 http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/police-brutality-and-the-role-that-whiteness-plays/393713/?utm_source=SFTwitter)

Last week, Gawker interviewed Robin DiAngelo, a professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University. She discussed aspects of her thinking on whiteness, which are set forth at length in her book, What Does it Mean to be White? I’ve ordered the book.¶ Meanwhile, her remarks on police brutality piqued my interest. Some of what Professor DiAngelo said is grounded in solid empirical evidence: blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately victimized by misbehaving police officers; there are neighborhoods where police help maintain racial and class boundaries. And if our culture, which she calls “the water we swim in,” contained fewer parts racism per million, I suspect that police brutality would be less common.¶ But a core part of her analysis is very much at odds with conclusions that I’ve drawn after years of writing against police misconduct and pondering how to reduce it.¶ First, consider her remarks with an open mind.¶ Interviewer Donovan X. Ramsey asked, “What have been your thoughts on the national conversation happening around police brutality and the role that whiteness plays into it?”¶ She answered as follows:¶ We have to change the water officers swim in. We can bring in different tools, even officers of color, but if we don’t change the water that they swim in, that we all swim in. The water is the unexamined whiteness, the everyday whiteness. Unexamined whiteness is right now probably the most hostile for people of color. There are the extreme incidents of violent and explicit racism that we take note of, but the everyday racism is also so toxic.¶ I think our everyday coded language around “good neighborhoods” and “bad neighborhoods” is what allows for tremendous violence to happen... When you label a neighborhood “bad” and avoid it, then you don’t know and don’t see what goes on there. And there’s no human face to interrupt that narrative. So, we see outrage around figures like Michael Brown because suddenly there’s a face. But, for the most part, we don’t know and we don’t care as long as the police keep “them” from “us,” so our schools can be better and we can feel safe at the top of the hierarchy. I think we use the police to maintain those boundaries.¶ While Professor Di Angelo and I are both eager to pursue a course that would decrease police brutality and both agree that its intersection with racism is a significant part of the problem, the notion of would-be reformers focusing scarce energy on

changing “the water that we all swim in” strikes me as a misguided approach.¶ Here’s my thinking:¶ While it would be

fantastic to reduce racism in America, and while policing might then improve along with

other aspects of life, no one knows how to achieve that goal . But we do know how to mandate body cameras that have been shown to reduce use-of-force; how to put disciplinary decisions in the hands of civilian review boards rather than police unions and the municipal officials that they bankroll; that proper rules for Taser use can lead to less loss of life; that arrestees with medical problems can be taken to the hospital instead of being refused care; and that whistleblowers can be protected, not persecuted. The urgent need is for civic pressure to

enact concrete, specific reforms . Best practices, however defined, are so far from being in place in the typical police

department that focusing on amorphous cultural change is dubious triage at best.¶ Even if racism disappeared tomorrow, police brutality and misbehavior would persist , because racism is just one of many factors that can contribute to it. There are lots of examples of white police officers brutalizing white people. There are cities, like Ferguson, Missouri, where police departments run by white people brutalize a city disproportionately populated by black people; but there are also cities like Baltimore where black officials oversee a racially diverse police department where brutality is regularly perpetrated by white and black officers. And while black police officers are not always immune to

anti-black prejudice, one need only study a place like Tijuana, where Mexican cops routinely brutalize Mexican people, to see that police brutality is often driven by something other than America’s racial atmosphere.¶ Policies

like Stop and Frisk or the War on Drugs are going to victimize people in the neighborhoods where they are focused even if policymakers have no racist intent and police officers on the ground are angels. And repealing those policies is a far more realistic project than “changing the water we all swim in” in the hopes that the attendant enlightenment would lead to… repealing those policies. ¶ Even if broad cultural change was a manageable project, is the water that “we all swim in” the relevant ecosystem? I inhabit a bunch of different subcultures. But nothing I do in any of them seems to have much influence on the subculture of police officers in cities that have a police brutality problem. Policing reforms are needed precisely because we don’t

know how to change that subculture. That is partly because most would-be reformers don’t swim in it.¶ I wonder if there is an even deeper flaw in the “change the water” approach: to attempt it would seem to require a large coalition that agrees on hotly contested questions about the nature of race in America and how it intersects with policing. I do not think as diverse a country as ours will ever come to agreement on those subjects. Even the small subset of people eager to reform policing don’t agree on them. ¶ Take the assertion that “the water we all swim in” is “unexamined whiteness.” There are many Americans who’ve spent very little time thinking about whiteness. On the other hand, nearly everyone in my age and educational cohort attended colleges where whiteness was explicitly interrogated by multiple professors and administrators; read all sorts of journalism that examines whiteness (for starters, you’re presently reading a magazine that chose The End of White America as a cover story); grew up listening to Jay-Z, Eminem and Prairie Home Companion; helped make stars of Chris Rock and Louis C.K.; and watch popular TV shows including The Wire, The Sopranos, and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Our concepts of whiteness are so varied that some of us must be wrong about parts of it. Even so, whiteness is far from unexamined in our subculture.¶ Now let’s imagine someone in a different age and educational cohort. He’s a decade younger than me. At 25, he recently started patrolling Harlem as an NYPD officer. Before that, he was in the NYPD academy; before that he was in the U.S. army sitting in meetings with Pashtun elders and patrolling Afghan towns; he attended a Los Angeles high school that was 30 percent white, 33 percent Asian, 25 percent Hispanic, and ten percent black. He played football and tennis there. So the water through which he has swum isn’t accurately described by “the unexamined whiteness, the everyday whiteness.” His world has never been predominantly white, and while his views on race might be enlightened, bigoted or neither, his whiteness is very likely to have been examined regularly.¶ He surely understands many things better than Professor DiAngelo, or me, or anyone older than 30, or people who’ve never seen identity operate outside the United States.¶ Perhaps he doesn’t understand some nuance of race in America that reflection in an academic setting would reveal. Maybe his parents were able to co-sign on the mortgage for his first condo with home-equity they earned from a house that appreciated during the boom years in a neighborhood where their black peers weren’t able to move in the 1970s. Like Professor DiAngelo, I think there is value in knowledge like that. It isn’t clear to me how or why that knowledge would

make him a better policeman or why it would make a different person reconsider their views on policing.¶ For what does the degree to which one has examined whiteness really tell us anyway? Calls to interrogate or examine race often seem to presume that this will produce views on race more closely aligned with those of the person advocating the reflection. But some of the most virulent racism in America comes from people who are deeply obsessed with their whiteness . It’s their favorite thing to

examine. They spend their days trying to prove the genetic superiority of the white race or persuading themselves that whites are better than whatever immigrant group they’re intent on excluding. They examined themselves and found others wanting. ¶ In comparison to them, we would surely prefer white Americans who’ve spent little if any time reflecting on their racial identity, but who nevertheless abhor police misconduct, speak up against racism when they encounter it, raise their children to abhor racial prejudice, and vote for candidates in

part based on the policing reforms that they promise. Those people are improving society, not adding to its problems. If a person like that asked me whether they should spend a spare 5 hours in their weekly routine volunteering at a community center for disadvantaged youth, canvassing their neighborhood for a ballot measure to reform drug sentencing, or examining their whiteness with as much intellectual rigor as possible, I would advise them that the last option would do the least to improve the world. ¶ Again, I don’t mean to say that such reflection has no value. Another example: a moment of racial self-reflection might inspire the white owner of a small company to recognize that implicit bias may be unfairly disadvantaging job applicants with traditionally black names, spurring him to implement name-blind resume reviews.¶ Yet an individual who is totally averse to reflecting on her own whiteness might come to that same insight about the need for name-blind resume reviews in a

different way. Reflecting on what it really means to treat people as individuals might do the trick.¶ Zooming out, it seems to me that there is no one correct theory of race in the United States, at least not one that even the most

brilliant individual could comprehend. And if someone wants to be the best human being that they can be, there is no one answer about how much time and intensity they should dedicate to reflecting on their racial identity. That might depend on the racial makeup of their community and their vocation and how much empathy for others they get intuitively and whether racial prejudice was socialized into them during their upbringing and whether they learn better via facts or experiences and a million other factors.¶ Decreasing police brutality is an urgent issue. It may be the one I write about more than

any other. I do not imagine the particular reform priorities I’ve put forth in some articles and implied in others are infallible. But the right approach cannot be tantamount to , First, a majority should accept my ur- theory of race in America, and only once they’re thus enlightened will the conditions be right for reforms. No one is saying exactly that, but it’s part of the subtext of more writing on the subject than I’d like, sometimes from people whose ur-theory of race in America I largely share. ¶ Many of Professor

DiAngelo’s thoughts are engaging and valuable, whether or not one agrees with them. But let’s not pretend that any highly contested humanities theory on race in America is a plausible foundation for policing reform, no matter how insightful it seems to a slice of the ideological spectrum, which is free to pursue it in parallel but should not attempt to put it at the center of this issue. A successful reform coalition must encompass people with wildly different views on race in America, joining to stop behavior that they agree is bad by urging specific reforms.