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Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 5: Chris and Will Call 'em Out

5/24/2017

Series Introduction

Will H. Moore had a kind of personality that is best described by the phrase: "down for whatever". For those that don't know, this is defined brilliantly by the "urban dictionary" below:

down for whatever
Ready and willing to participate in most any activity. If said by your homie it implies that he is ready to have a good time in any situation.

That was how Will and I interacted with one another. Sometimes, Will would set it off and I would be like "Let's do it!". Sometimes, I would set it off and Will would be like "how do we start?" Some of these efforts never got off the ground, but they were still fascinating to imagine. Some were partially successful and incredible to try. Some failed miserably but were fun to attempt. Some were more successful than we could have possibly imagined and these were just heavenly or the urban/funkier version of that (Mo' Betta Hevnly).

In my new series, I am going to explore Will, Willness (or, Mooreing) and my interaction with him. These adventures are useful to put out there because it is soothing to remember them now and because they not only tell us something about the type of human that he is but also the type of humans, situations and social science that he helped create - these were connected in his mind. Most of these are not on either of our vitaes - we just did them in an effort to start something, try something, create some resource for ourselves and others.

At its core, the adventures represent some bizarre mashup that is part buddy film, part travel story, part Mindwalk and part bromance set over 25 years. To help me tell these stories, I will use film, music, literature and perhaps a drawing or painting or two.

Chris & Will Call 'Em Out

After years of trying, Will and I both finally get to the same institution: Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute. It took some effort. Indeed, it is crazy to think about what you need to do and what needs to happen in order to get two people who want to work together into the same spot.

We were both soured on Maryland regarding how Will was treated in part because we were so close to being at the same institution. Following this, I started to look for and went on leaves at the Russell Sage Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. I finally went to Notre Dame but before I got to work on trying to figure out how I could get Will there, I first had to figure out who was who and what was what. After like a year, I was on the committee to bring in visiting people and I was determined to see it through. This turned out to be a problem as he was unanimously selected.

Even after the invite, Will needed to be able to visit and stay for a year, negotiating with his department and life. He made it work and he quickly dove right in.

Almost within days of his arrival, Will joined our ongoing Workshop on Conflict and Contentious Politics in Kroc and the social movement workshop in sociology. Ever respectful, he asked if it would be ok if he talked to my students, which I of course agreed to. And shortly afterward, he started having one on ones with my students in order to listen to what they were working on and figure out how they could be helped. He was getting some writing done. We held a small conference on innovations in the study of human rights/state repression including the two of us, Emily Ritter (then at Alabama) and David Armstrong (then at Wisconsin). Also, Will and I also started working out with Neil MacDonald as he developed his new cross-training workout routine called (appropriately) “Macfit”. Part of this involved rather rowdy games of 21 which is kind of the basketball version of everyone for themselves with a little dose of my opponent’s opponent is my friend.

Ideas started flowing about stuff we could do while he was there. On one of our weekly dinners, we had talked about some news story and it was hilarious because of some stuff that bothered us both: the way the article portrayed the conflict and the actors. In particular, the piece described the conflict like a sporting event. They identified the sides/teams (the government and the challengers), the reasons (i.e., oil, ethnic hatred, etc.), potentially the score (i.e., how many died recently or how much territory had been gained) and then you were on to the next story/next problem/next game. This was frustrating and somewhat infuriating. First, it seemed to trivialize the situation. Second, it also simplified it to such an extent that it no longer really captured the complexity.

Our response would not surprise most: we decided to talk about it but do it in a slightly different format taking it online. Our hook was our directness and focus. Called “Chris and Will Call ‘em Out”, we would go directly for the throat of the problem: addressing “tropes” (i.e., a common or overused theme or device) employed within the news media used to frame/discuss/report on political conflict/violence, doing this for about an hour or less (depending upon the mood/vibe). As we put forward in our general statement:

We created this podcast to identify as well as critically analyze the common tropes that news media propagate in their coverage of popular challenges to governments and their policies (i.e., protest, riots, insurgency, terror attacks, and so on) as well as the responses of governments to these challenges (i.e., protest policing, counter-insurgency/terrorism and domestic spying). We hope to spur a dialogue among those who study these subjects and the media professionals who cover them.

We do this because the process through which news professionals cover protest, rebellion, government repression, genocide, civil war, terror attacks, etc. severely constrains our ability to understand these processes. By serving as conduits who speak with government representatives, then (sometimes) turn to representatives of "the other, side," and pass along what they are told journalists play a critical role in the social transmission of tropes that harm us as human beings. We seek to expose these tropes and press journalists to abandon them and change their practice of covering these events to better provide human beings with news about protest, rebellion, genocide, torture, civil war, terror attacks, anti-riot behavior, etc. that can play a role in the positive development of human society.

Collectively, we have spent approximately 40 years studying the topic of political conflict and violence - sometimes independently and sometimes collaboratively. To do this, we have relied upon various techniques common to individuals in political science and sociology: the systematic evaluation of information from the media and increasingly NGOs. There are various strengths and limitations involved with using this material and with increased use of these sources in the popular and social scientific domains, we felt it would be useful and fun actually to put forward our opinions as well as insights on the topic. We do this do educate, incite and entertain.

When we thought about doing this, it was clear that we wanted to do it in a way that was intellectually rigorous, engaging and true to our personalities. As a result, we just thought that we would sit down, press record and go at it - something we have done since we met, almost 18 years ago.

We are not frequently of one mind on things (indeed, we may not even be of two minds on some things) but we always have something to say. We leave it up to you to determine whether we are educational, inciting or entertaining.

On this page you will find our taped conversations (episodes), some video excerpts from the episodes, links to the various materials that were consulted for the session or things we just thought were interesting on the topic, the schedule for future episodes and our bios.

         Enjoy

         Christian Davenport
         Will Moore

What did we do? Well, before each session, we each selected readings or angles we wanted to pursue, we read, took notes, pointed the video and pressed record. (While I wanted to share those videos, I am currently not able to because the old Mac program Iweb is holding the video hostage. If you have any advice on getting them out, let me know. As an alternative, I am going to post the session as podcasts.)

All told, we did five sessions: 1) London Riots 2011, 2) Egypt 2011, 3) Syria 2011, 4) Oakland 2012 and 5) Bloody Sunday, Northern Ireland 2012. For each, we provided tropes and links to the stories we consulted. I also remember that we also provided some interesting commentary. For example, in our episode concerning coverage of the Egyptian Coup/Revolution we noted the following:

These are the tropes for the Egyptian Coup (aka Revolution):

* Athletic Competition:
   - Who is playing?
   - Two teams: unitary actors (ignores competition within the "sides")
   - Focus on titular leaders of each "team"

This inadvertently plays into Military's ability to conduct a coup that is "consumed" as a revolution.

* The American foundational myth:
   - When the people rebel, the system will change (demands for democracy will produce it)

* Explanation focuses upon factors that have been the same for years
    - Discontent, Poor Economy, Rights Abuses

* Physical analogies
    - Sparks that ignite
    - Pots that boil over

* Loaded terms (often Orientalism as defined by Said)
    - Stable country
    - Volatile region
    - "highly fluid, opaque and dangerous situation." (see BBC piece)

Questions that journalists ask

* Who made decisions (not to) repress?
   - This question should always be asked in countries with a history of government repression--regardless of whether there is repression or repression does not occur on a given day--of government officials, dissidents, and any "experts" who are interviewed. In addition to the inherent interest, It will help illuminate the extent to which the government "speaks with one voice" or is becoming factionalized.

* Why was the military able to "sit on the sidelines"?
   - When tens of thousands (or more) people are on the street in a repressive regime, the government is split and reporters should explore what portions of the government are unwilling to crack down?

Reporters can do Internet-based background research (e.g., US State Department Human Rights Reports, as well as those by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) to learn quickly whether the police, military, or other state agencies are responsible/complicit in repression. Doing so will help them vet the quality of the responses they receive when they ask questions of government officials, dissidents (leaders and people in the street), as well as "Egypt experts."

* Who were the thugs (those on horse and camel who beat the protestors)?

The sessions themselves were classic Will (and Chris). We had fun, discussed the practices of the media, the incredibly pervasive and enduring tropes that found their way into stories about conflict/contention and what was missed. We went article by article, crossing over to themes and then to weird stuff that just kind of jumped out of the pieces.

We began the sessions with discussing the background of the case. We then mentioned what sources we looked at – by name and dates. We then moved to tropes.

For example, in the Northern Ireland Bloody Sunday episode, Will started off noting that the writing was really great in the articles he looked at (e.g., Springfield Union). This stood out because we rarely (if ever) liked the quality of the writing. Interestingly, the sources that Will read were relatively trope free. There was a little “Athletic competition” (two sides going back and forth) but there were none of the others that consistently seemed to pop up: e.g., no physical or biological analogies.

I then kicked in noting that there was "athletic competition" between Republican vs Loyalists but there was simultaneously some disaggregation of Republican/Catholic group (e.g., IRA snipers).

Will then prompted me for a little bit of backstory of “Bloody Sunday” beginning with mentioning the U2 song (probably the gateway drug for most on the topic). He mentioned my Northern Ireland Research Initiative project and asked for a quick overview.

I spoke of something that someone told me in Belfast: “to understand the troubles, you need to understand a thousand year history”. Since we were not going to do that, I started with the 1920s – move to independence of Northern Ireland from the British government following occupation, the dueling conceptions of what should happen with the territory (independence or stay) and some background on the two “sides” (overlaid with religious organization): Catholics/Republicans vs. Protestant/Loyalists. I ended this with mentioning the 1968 civil rights turn.

Will then kicked in with a discussion of the geographic and political importance of Londonderry and the Bogside in particular. His background reading was impressive. He noted the desire for representation and civil liberties, the non-violent challenge, the more militant stance put forward by others, the internment of 600 IRA members and the protest about that internment that led to Bloody Sunday.

Will noted that the British banned parades and protests (which was consistent throughout the colonies). But, folks went against the ban with parades on Sunday to protest mass arrest/throughout Ulster/NI. It was said that Londonderry was “tense”. In fact, an older man and a child were shot in a confrontation/riot a week before folks were arrested in Belfast.

The Brits set up an armed barricade with barbed wire, right on the spot where there had been clashes. The demonstration on Sunday was not stopped at the beginning but rather there was an attempt made later. There is an attempt to disperse the crowd, rocks are thrown and shots are fired.

When the event is over: 13 people are dead and shot in the back. That is Bloody Sunday.

Tropes in these stories were clear. I went into the two sides: the army (cohesive unit) there to disrupt illegal act and the civil rights association’s “illegal” action.

Will added that there was a spin off this with youth/rock throwers who are instigators and some mention of IRA snipers (in british papers)

We were taken with the dated nature of the coverage – the objective, balanced, coverage and how careful the sources were. We reflected on how the relevant events would have been covered in the US, agreeing that they would not have been written as well.

I mentioned the biased way that the brinks robbery and black nationalists were discussed and Will talked about Kent State coverage.

We noted that it was very informative who was quoted. For example, the British Military was never quoted in Republican/Catholic sources.

Will noted that the military was frequently quoted in the Protestant/Loyalist sources that he consulted.

The exchange in the session continued, but what was interesting to me was the depth with which we went down the coverage of conflict "rabbit hole" with attention not just to what was done but also what were the implications of the coverage being what it was. Both of us were committed to understanding how the information that was available informed our understanding of what we could know (something addressed within my Media Bias, Perspective and State Repression book informally known as the "Rashomon Effect" book). We don't do this enough as a discipline and the necessity for doing this seems especially clear in the current context. We are in many ways formed by how and in what manner we create/distribute/consume/interpret news about what is taking place around us. Chris & Will Call 'em Out was focused on the news media but something like it should try to take on social as well as traditional media on a more consistent basis.

At the same time, what is really heartwarming to hear/see when looking over the sessions, was that we simply had a really great time exploring the topic and riffing about the news and contention in my living room for a couple of months. There were a hundred gems in each conversation, a few potentially publishable ideas and some infectious laughter.

Coming next: Chris and Will go to the G8/NATO meeting

Links to Stories for Episode #5 (Bloody Sunday)

"The division deepens", The Guardian, February 1, 1972

"For kids in Londonderry: The name of the game is.... War", Boston Globe, March 12, 1972

"Northern Ireland: Afternath to a Bloody Sunday" Los Angeles Times, February 2, 1972.

"Ulster on Brink of Civil War: Dilemma for Britain", The Times of India, February 10, 1972

"Bloody Sunday blames on C.R. Organisers: British Army criticized for launching arrest operation", The Irish Times, April 20, 1972.

"Miss Devlin lands 3 haymakers on Britain's home secretary", Boston Globe, February 1, 1972

"Cardinal asks Heath to hold Public Inquiry: Widespread Protests over Derry Shooting", The Irish Times, January 31, 1972.

"Commander defends shooting by trooops", The Irish Times, January 31, 1972.

"Britain to Reopen its inquiry of '72 in Ulster Killings: Scar of Bloody Sunday", New York Times, January 30, 1998

"'Derry Tense on Eve of March" Associated Press, Springfield Sunday Republican, January 30, 1972.

"13 Irish Deaths Called Murder." Associated Press, The Times Picuyane, January 31, 1972.

"13 Killed in Ireland as British Hit Rally" Associated Press, January 31, 1972.

"Troops Kill 13 in Londonderry" New York Times News Service, The Springfield Union, January 31, 1972.

"Belfast Rioting Spreads" United Press International, February 1, 1972.

"Aftermath of Bombing in Northern Ireland" Associated Press, The Times Picayune, February 1, 1972.

"Maulding Feels Bernadette Ire" Arthur L. Gavson, Associated Press, The Times Picayune, February 1, 1972.

"Ulster's Bloody Sunday: An Hour of Death, Panic, Tears" Donal O'Higgins, Associated Press, The Evening Times, Trenton, February 1, 1972.

"Ulster at a Boil Over 13 Killings" Associated Press, The Plains Dealer, February 1, 1972.

"Most Victims in Ulster Said Shot in Back" The Springfield Union, February 2, 1972.

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Cross-posting: The Will H. Moore Celebratory Revisitation of the Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop, Episode 12

5/21/2017

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See the video here

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Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 4: Refugees and Movement of the People

5/12/2017

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Refugees and Movement of the People

I was always partial to the story of the Three Musketeers – nothing quite like a good buddy film with some cool characters, some rebelliousness and some swashbuckling. My interest and opinion only improved when I later realized that the author was part black – just something about the idea of someone connected to Africa having that imagination. Almost on par with Deep Space Nine emerging out of the imagination of an African American in the 1950s. But, I digress.

Like the Three Musketeers, Will, Steve and myself kind of found each other in stages. First, I met Steve. As I recalled after his passing:

i first met steve in 1992 or 1993. he was on an apsa panel and wanting to make a name for myself, i read everyone's paper and went to the session to get some academic credentials (attacking, pointing out weaknesses and the sort). after the presentation (chomping at the bit), i waited for the discussant to finish, raised my hand and then let loose.

as i spoke, all looked at me as i went on without breathing. all looked accept steve; he took notes. afterwards, i started to leave and steve walked up to me, introduced himself and asked if he could clarify a few points that he was not sure if he had written down correctly (sly devil). i was still heated from the exchange but the manner in which he approached me was disarming. we sat down and went through the various points that i had raised.

after we finished, shook hands and exchanged contact information, i realized that he had delicately revealed his disagreement with almost every single point that i raised. in approaching me in the manner that he did, however, he prompted me to revisit the various points that i had raised and further improved my understanding not only of human rights and how to study it but how to deal with other human beings: honestly, directly, with kindness and with respect.

That was Steve’s way.

I recounted how I met Will earlier but trying to remember how Will and Steve met, I came across something that Will wrote after Steve passed:

I remember when my copy of the 1994 APSR issue containing the Poe & Tate article arrived. I read it with great interest. A year or two later Christian Davenport told me that I needed to have dinner with Steve Poe at an upcoming meeting. Not only was Steve an excellent scholar and an important person to meet professionally, Christian explained, he was a remarkably delightful human being that anyone would want to get to know. I gladly accepted the invitation.

It was a fun dinner. Steve's wit, charm and, above all, kindness and passion, were revealed almost immediately. Christian was right: he and I were in the company of a damn fine human being. Of all the people I have had the pleasure to meet in my life, I count Steve among the members of a very small set of genuinely kind, decent, AND smart folks.

That evening Steve changed my attitude toward Ketchup with a story about its production that he picked up from a summer job working at such a factory. I won't repeat the story here, but Steve had both Christian and I grimacing and laughing out loud with that tale.

Steve's commitment to science was top flight. He cared about knowledge and its production, and in addition to leading by example he sought to evangelize in the tradition of Ben Most, one of his advisor's at Iowa. The evening that I met him Steve spoke about the impact Ben had on his intellectual development and how much he missed Ben. I am sure Steve's students feel much the same way.

I would like to close with a personal remembrance. I was in Denton visiting UNT for one reason or another and Steve had met me at the airport. We were driving back to the hotel and he started telling me about a tennis match he had played with his oldest daughter, then a high school student. The story had to do with the mixture of pride AND frustration he had felt when she beat him for the first time. Though I never experienced it first hand, Steve reported--and others corroborated--that he was a tenacious competitor. Indeed, at the dinner when we met he asked whether Christian or I would like to find a spot where we could play some pickup basketball.

That was how we all met; this is how the Musketeers of Repression were assembled – now, it is not really important who was who. The characters in that story all represent parts of people that we admire, fear, enjoy and despise – often at the same time. That said, I was the “baby of the bunch” (like Master Gee talked about in “Rapper’s Delight”) so draw your own conclusions as well as your sword after you make them.

Regardless, from that point forward, we maintained a triadic interaction of fellowship, scholarship and friendship. In our different ways and for different reasons we all wanted to advance the study of state repression. Steve approached the topic from the prism of human rights, drawing upon his belief as a Quaker regarding peace(fullness). Will approached the topic from the prism of his humanity and keen sense of empathy as well as responsibility. I came at the topic from the perspective of political domination (aka Kropotkin and the anarchist tradition) and contentious politics (largely rooted in sociology) largely rooted in my distrust in political institutions as an African American. We read everything that the other wrote, provided comments and convened for meetings at conferences (often staying an extra day or two beyond presentations in order to hang out). I imagine that we must have looked a little odd hanging out: the choir boy/Quaker (slightly disheveled but joyous), the hippie (also slightly disheveled but not quite as joyous – at least not as obviously) and the man in black who also happened to be black (not even close to disheveled nor even remotely joyous except when convening with the other two musketeers).

Later, we began to interact with each other’s students. Indeed, this is how I met one of my current colleagues and friends (Chris Fariss). Steve had brought him to a Midwest Meeting and I remember thinking, "who the hell would bring an undergrad to this thing" but the answer was very clear: Steve would. And, right after Chris started speaking, you knew that he was where he needed to be. He was a natural and Steve knew it.

We Should Do Something Together

At one meeting, the three of us began to talk about what we thought needed doing in the political conflict/violence field. By this time (2002/3), there was a little momentum on doing research on state repression/human rights and thus our default position had shifted a little. After some back and forth, we concluded that there was very little about the aftereffect of political conflict/violence. Largely (as a community) we had been focused on onset, variation and type/tactic but we rarely reflected on what happened afterward.

After talking for a bit, we acknowledged that we had each done some of this already. Steve looked at the aftereffect of human rights violation on aid. Will and I looked at the aftereffect of dissent on repression (with me leading and Will following) as well as the aftereffect of repression on dissent (with Will leading and my following). There were still many aftereffects to be considered. One, in particular, stuck with us: refugees and internally displaced people. While we all had different reasons for thinking about this (e.g., I thought of the great black migration north from the American south following a wave of lynching), Will had been inspired by his mom (Bobbie Lord) who had a phenomenal experience and story in the Qatrom refugees camp in Albania 1999. It was clear that something needed to be done.

We thought about what to do and we got a good start. From our abstract:

In this study we explain why persons flee their homes to become refugees. Our theory suggests that persons will tend to flee when the integrity of their person is threatened. Further, we argue that they will flee toward countries where they expect conditions to be better. To capture both the push and pull dimensions of our argument, we develop a measure of refugee movement that considers both refugees’ places of origin and their destinations. We conduct statistical analyses using fixed effects least squares, on a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set, consisting of data from 129 countries for the years 1964-1989. Our findings support the conclusion that threats to personal integrity are of primary importance in leading refugees to move. Measures of state threats to personal integrity, dissident threats to personal integrity, and joint state--dissident threats each have statistically significant and substantively important effects on refugee production. Contrary to one of our hypotheses, however, we find that countries making moves toward democracy tend to have greater number of refugees, once other factors are considered. We conclude the analysis by considering the utility of our theory for producing early warnings of refugee movements.

The initial version got rejected at JOP and AJPS – for some reasonable reasons. After some complaining and hating on the process, we got to revising to send it to another journal. Will took the lead on the revision and hit us back when he was ready:

Steve and Chris,

            Attached is the revised version of our refugee paper.

            I have tried to address the critiques laid out by our reviewers.
            Here is a list of things I have tried to do.

            1. Develop a foil. We avoided criticizing Schmeidl, and I have
            abandoned that strategy, making her work the focus of a
            critique of the work in this field in general. I laud her work,
but identify some weaknesses, and how we overcome them (as
            well as avoiding weaknesses in other's studies). I also have
            chopped all of the 'as Schmeidl argued...' lines. I think those
            really undermined our paper.

            2. Downplay the Theory claims. I have largely eliminated the
            word 'theory' from our study. This was minor editing to scale
            down the claims. Several readers were put off by the 'we have a
theory, and nobody else does' tenor of previous drafts (that is,
            admittedly, a bit strong, but I think we did have some of that
            tenor, and it was my fault). I think we are much less likely to
            turn those folks off, but I don't think I have sold out. See what
            you think.

            3. I have developed a new argument about the impact of change
            toward democracy, and revised the text so that we present competing
hypotheses (might be +, might be -).

            There are other more minor revisions as well.

            Please re-read all of the reviews we have received (esp. the
            4th one from AJPS, which I thought was the best), and then
            my revisions. I think some of the issues raised are issues
            that we will not resolve with this paper. Further, I am moving
            on with the new data and am losing interest in this one. I also
just got an R&R from APSR on another project, and want to
spend time on both that and the new refugee analyses. So, I
am handing this off and don't want to see it again. In other
words, do what you will with it, just don't send it back to me! :-)

            As for outlets, I am partial to either JCR or II. I think we want
to publish this piece ASAP b/c Shellman and I will have a
new paper that will make it moot sometime next spring
            (perhaps by Jan). I think Russett is likely to like it, and I
            think it could go there.

            But, I figure Poe has yet to call a journal, so it's his turn.
But be sure to refer to the above--it's your baby now: you
            guys decide what to do with it.

            Cool?

This time we tried International Interaction where we got an R&R and after some minor tweaking, we were good to go. I had the lead on the final revision and wrote the following to the editor:

Prof. James Lee Ray
Department of Political Science
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, TN 37235

Dear Jim:

Below you will find our long-awaited revised manuscript, “Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Forced Migration, 1964-1989”, written by myself, Will Moore and Steve Poe. Additionally, you will find autobiographical statements for each author.

As instructed (within your cover letter of March 24, 2001), we have been especially attentive to reviewer 1, who provided rather detailed (but not necessarily critical) commentary. Since the two other reviewers were in favor of publishing the manuscript, we have ignored their comments (at least for the current paper; the comments from these individuals will help immensely with the other work on this topic that we are engaged in). While the manuscript is much clearer after this revision, we do not find that much of the content has been changed. We arrived at this conclusion after first reading the review, rewriting the manuscript, re-reading the review and then realizing that we had gone too far overboard in the earlier version. The more reasonable revision is what we submit to you here.

Within our responses as well as our revised text, you will see that we have been extremely careful in addressing the issues raised by the one reviewer. In many respects, however, we feel that this individual is very much a fan of Susanne Schmeidl’s work and that anything that does not follow her particular research is not going to be well received. In an earlier version of the manuscript, we were fairly complementary of Prof. Schmeidl’s work; so much so in fact that we were asked to strongly justify the validity of our research by revealing how it moved beyond this work. It is somewhat ironic that we would later be criticized for not being complementary of this research (luck of the draw, I suppose).

In our defense, the current research effort clearly moves beyond Schmeidl’s work. Indeed, it improves on several areas. We do not discuss all of these within the current manuscript but we do feel that it is necessary to address them within our response to you in order to provide some context for our investigation, the reviewer’s comments and our resubmission.

First, similar to the rest of the literature, Schmeidl limits her study to international refugees and does not include the internally displaced within her analyses. Schmeidl has studied internally displaced persons in other work – less rigorously than her refugee study, and she excludes them from her 1997 article because she is not interested in them. While such attention is understandable given the sheer magnitude of refugees globally and the significance of this group as one in need of study, this still ignores an important group of individuals that has not yet received systematic attention. We attempt to improve upon this and explore the reasons why individuals would leave their homes (generalizing across cases that exist both within as well as between nations; “forced migration” in the broadest sense).

Second, we contend that two of the measures for domestic conflict used by Schmeidl, can be improved upon (a point also made by Schmeidl in her 1995 work). For example, the Freedom House measure for political liberties that was used for state repression has frequently been criticized because it is unclear how coding is conducted. The appropriateness of the measure is also questioned to the extent that we would not expect individuals to leave their homes when political bans or curfews were being imposed (indicators of repression discussed within the measures that she uses). Rather, we would expect individuals to leave their homes when their lives were physically being threatened with violence. Additionally, the Minorities at Risk data suffers from a selection bias as it only considers groups that are persecuted for and/or that are mobilizing around their ethnicity. This ignores other types of dissent that do not explicitly concern ethnicity (e.g., labor, ideology and so forth) – even that undertaken by ethnic groups, and, as a result, it would tend to ignore a large amount of contentious behavior that might be relevant to the decision to flee.

We improve upon this work by utilizing a measure that concerns protest activity undertaken by all individuals within society as well as a measure that concerns repressive activity concerning personal integrity violations – an indicator that captures behavior which is much more relevant to the decision to flee.

Third, and last, as the data on refugees that is used by Schmeidl has a distribution from zero to some positive integer (displaying a Poisson, negative binomial or similar distribution), it is necessary to utilize some form of estimation other than OLS regression. To do otherwise produces biased parameter estimates.   Schmeidl did not utilize this estimation technique and thus the study itself is flawed. This work should be treated as such and should no be used as an appropriate standard by which others should be held. We are not sure about whether or not the reviewer is aware of such issues, given the fact that they thought we were using a “Poisson regression” (which we were not doing) as opposed to discussing Poisson distributions (which we were doing). This distinction has now been clarified, but it is important to note that such deficiencies with Schmeidl and the existing literature exist as one attempts to evaluate what we have accomplished within the work submitted to your journal. Our study does not suffer from the limitations of this other work. We offer a more micro-based theoretical orientation that is more directly connected with the phenomenon of interest and, utilizing an appropriate and sound research design, our findings are robust.

With the changes that have been made to the manuscript, we hope that it will now be deemed acceptable for International Interactions. If you require any additional information, please feel free to contact me at my address, email or phone number.

Sincerely,

Christian Davenport

After the piece was accepted, we moved on to think about a book on the topic (something that we had come up with a few months into the article project). I had some data on Kosovo flight and was looking for an excuse to try and pull together the information on black flight from the South. Will wanted to further push us on thinking about individual-level decision making. Steve was interested in pushing the human rights literature to consider diverse cases seriously and to advance the interest in the topic.

Increasingly, however, life intervened. Steve had taken over the International Studies Quarterly and got busy. Will drilled down on the refugee project with Steve Shellman (summarized in this great political violence at a glance piece) in order to explore some spinoffs from our collective project. A little later life intervened in an even bigger way: Steve Poe passed and that just kind of took the sail out of the project. It wasn’t the same with Will and I alone and as Will reminded me Schoolhouse Rock didn’t sing about two being a magic number. Ever the comedian is the Will. As I reminded Will though: As Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock would say: "It takes two to make a thing go right. It takes two to make it out of sight. Hit it!"

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Cross-Posting from the Conflict Consortium: The Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop Revisitation in honor of Will H. Moore: Episode 9

5/11/2017

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Series Intro

While the project mourns the loss of its Co-Founder, Co-Director, friend and colleague (Will H. Moore) as well as contemplates the way forward, we wish to revisit one of the things that Will did best and loved to do: interact with scholars about their work.

Like with many things, it all started with a conversation about how we thought our existing way of "doing" political science was missing something. We thought that conferences were kind of broken and, as a result, the opportunity when scholars were brought together was being lost: e.g., you never got enough time to present, you never got enough feedback, you often had strangers and people who knew nothing about your topic put on your panel so that the conference could sell as many memberships as possible and you were largely caught within the networks that your home institution put you into and in order to get out of this (as a junior person) you would kind of have to put yourself out there - vulnerable, exposed, subject to the vagaries of personality types that populate the profession (scary thought). Upon thinking about this, we were like: that sucks and it does not need to be that way. In that spirit, we launched the Conflict Consortium which was kind of a shot across the bow, a wake-up call, a series of questions and a series of attempts to make things better. Some things took off well. Some did not.

The Virtual Workshop is something that we both thought did what it was supposed to do. As we stated at the beginning:

The Conflict Consortium (CC) Virtual Workshop (VW) is an opportunity for junior CC members (Assistant Professors & PhD students) to get feedback on their working paper. It is a 90 minute session that runs in accord with Charles Tilly's Seminar Rules of Engagement [ungated PDF], which we summarize below, and will take place via Google Hangout (or a similar platform). The co-convenors, Christian Davenport and Will H. Moore recruit 3-5 additional scholars to participate and provide the feedback.

Others seemed to share our opinion that we were on to something. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and we are very pleased that our CCVW has inspired others to create virtual workshops.

Legislative Studies Virtual Workshop (LSVW)
Online Peace Science Colloquium (OPSC)
Virtual IPES
Virtual Workshop on Authoritarian Regimes (VWAR)

We hope you might consider creating one for your scholarly community. Please steal our idea!

Once a week, we will post a new session. There you can see, Will, myself and the participants bringing it (time after time) in the most caring, interactive and useful way imaginable. Indeed, it is very heartwarming to see the exchange - on many levels, as it shows political science as it could be, not frequently how it is. Now, unfortunately, we were not up and running with the recording initially and thus there are some sessions that were not videotaped. While Will would normally apologize for this (on our behalf), I will do this for him. It is kind of like starting Star Wars at Episode IV though. We just kind of jump in and perhaps at some date we will find some way to take you back in time.

For now: Enjoy The Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop, Episode 9: 19 March Omar Garcia-Ponce (PhD Candidate, NYU): "How Political Violence Shapes Trust in the State: Evidence from Zimbabwe" (co-authored with Benjamin Pasquale);
Discussants: David Backer, Hanna Birnir, Stephen Chaudoin, Jim Fearon, Abbey Steele

Watch the video here or below

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Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 3: 911, The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib and Studying Torture

5/8/2017

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911, The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib and Studying Torture

So, the twin towers were hit and then they went down – taking thousands of lives and millions of viewers with them. Like many, I sat transfixed at what was taking place. At the time, I was at the University of Maryland, living in Washington DC. Like a few, I actually had relatives and friends who were blocks away. I tried to call them but everything was down. There was no getting in touch though.

Knowing I was not only from New York but also had connections to the lower east side, Will was among the first to contact me.

“Yo CD – your people ok?” He hit me with abruptly.

“Dude, I have no clue what is going on. Can’t get through to anyone.”

“Alright, alright,” he said. “Let me know when you know and if you need anything. It’s a shitstorm right now, so it might take a minute for everything to settle and communication to come back online.”

“Yeah, man, I hear you. Thanks for checking in.”

“Peace,” and he was out.

And that was all we talked about regarding 9/11 for quite some time. He checked back in regarding my family and friends. I initially forgot to hit him back after I found out that my family was ok (windows blown out of the apartment and shocked at the physical/psychological loss of the building but they were out of town at the time and thus safe but shaken). I did lose one friend and, interestingly, a cousin (Marc) was onsite as a member of NYPD getting people to safety – my hip hop hero; he was also with the break dancing group the Rock Steady Crew when he was younger.

After my mourning (or perhaps during my mourning for my friend and my city), my focus shifted to the rapidity with which the US Patriot Act got put together on October 26, 2001 and passed. The suspension of air traffic made sense as well as the militarization of US airports but the Patriot Act did not make as much sense to me. As I mentioned elsewhere:

From most accounts, the legislation presented a major reversal in American state repressive power. Simultaneously, it relaxed restrictions on wiretaps, searches of personal records (for example, medical, library, and financial), and seizures of financial resources; it created a new crime – “domestic terrorism” – with which a wide variety of dissidents could be charged (any actors that threatened the U.S. government with intimidation and coercion); it effectively suspended the writ of habeas corpus in a variety of circumstances; it allowed the CIA and the FBI to employ a wide range of overt as well as covert powers against both foreign and domestic targets with little to no oversight; it facilitated the seemingly limitless accumulation and sharing of information across diverse government organizations; and, it created an environment within which coercive agents felt they could operate freely without fear of repercussion. In a relatively brief period, the federal government had reestablished and extended powers that Americans had not seen for decades – powers that were swept away by Attorney General Edward Levi following the series of break-ins, impromptu disclosures, scandals, hearings, apologies, and forced retirements stretching from local police departments around the country to the office of the President during the late 1960s and through the 1970s (Davenport).[i]

As I also noted,

The U.S. government’s activities were in many respects constrained. Restrictions on civil liberties were drawn with consideration of the highly institutionalized nature of U.S. democracy. For example, Ashcroft’s first attempt, the Mobilization against Terrorism Act (MATA) – an ambitious plan with even fewer restrictions and oversight than the Patriot Act – was not well received, and, indeed, the Patriot Act was constructed as a compromise to head off resistance. Additionally, acknowledging America’s historical concern with centralized coercive power, the government established “sunsets” for several important provisions (contained within Title II of the Patriot Act) whereby specific elements of the government’s power would expire unless renewed… Furthermore, the range of possible repressive responses was severely curtailed: nowhere in public statements or other records was there precise discussion of provisions for violent activity; congress granted the executive the right to use “all necessary force” but this was not addressed in detail (Davenport).

This would change though. When re-upped and renegotiated a few years later, things got a little worse.

The (new) effort was again ambitious… If passed, the act would bar Justice Department disclosure of information about alleged terrorism-related detainees; virtually eliminate public access to industry “worst case scenario” documents prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency; create a “suspected terrorist DNA database that could include citizens as well as noncitizens and allow government inclusion of people merely suspected of “association” with “suspected” terrorists; codify the presumption of pretrial detention for citizens or noncitizens suspected of terrorist activity; and allow the U.S. government to “expatriate” … citizens associated with terrorist groups, an association that might be so broadly defined as to include participating in legal activities of a designated terrorist group, such as demonstrations…. The Patriot Act II would also allow secret detention of citizens and noncitizens suspected of terrorism for up to fifteen days without informing courts or lawyers; permit wiretapping of citizens and noncitizens for fifteen days entirely on the authority of the attorney general and without requiring court approval; terminate court-approved or court-mandated restrictions on police surveillance and spying on political activists that date from the abuses committed by the FBI and local police departments in the 1960s; and impose the death penalty for a range of protests that “involve acts or acts dangerous to human life,” a broad definition that might encompass, for example, Greenpeace operations if a death resulted from such protest (Sidel, 31)

At this point, there was a little more discussion but these efforts were drowned out in a sea of fear, confusion and acquiescence. I could not figure out why people were not upset at the loss of their rights. This led me in different directions.

In one effort, I had tried to work with Audrey Chapman at AAAS to pull together a research project on torture – a tactic that had been given some attention in 2004/5. Our project on torture was comprised of numerous components.

First, we proposed to compile all existing databases on the topic that cover all countries of the globe. This includes those that explicitly and exclusively focus on torture (e.g., CIRI) as well as those that include torture as one of its areas of interest (e.g., the Political Terror Scale). Additionally, we proposed to compile all databases that concern individual countries (across space and time) and those that concern individual events within countries (again, across space and time). This, again, included data that explicitly and exclusively focuses on torture as well as those that include torture as one of its areas of interest. Such triangulation would allow us to investigate causal determinants as well as specific causal mechanisms across as well as within countries, contexts and events in as detailed a manner as possible.

Second, we proposed to engage in original data collection regarding who did what to whom, when and under what political-economic conditions using previously unutilized and underutilized source information:

Amnesty International country reports;
Amnesty International Special IT reports (which did not cover the whole world equally);
UN Committee Against Torture (which did not cover the whole world equally);
US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practice;
Human Rights Watch (which did not cover the whole world equally);
reports of the UN Special Rapporteur against Torture; and,
reports of the UN Human Rights Committee.

As torture has generally been ignored by quantitatively-oriented social scientists, it was necessary to identify and code information that has been created by organizations that have focused upon this topic. We had contacted numerous organizations and had been granted access to their material.

Third, we proposed to engage in systematic analysis of the data compiled in the first two components. Our primary research questions concern the following: 1) under what circumstances is torture likely to emerge, 2) how do these causal determinants differ from other forms of human rights violation (e.g., restrictions on political and civil liberties and mass killing), 3) what are the relationships between the diverse forms of human rights violation (e.g., are they distinct from one another and are they connected sequentially) and 4) under what circumstances is torture ended.

Existing research on human rights violations led us to focus on the type of political system that exists, the condition of the economy as well as the type of political dissent encountered at the time. By specifically examining the influence of these factors on torture, we will be able to gauge the generalizability of this claim across types of repression. Our second question will more specifically allow us to assess the similarities and differences across the different types of repression. The third question prompts us to consider the degree to which distinct forms of repression occur at the same time or in sequence. Finally, the fourth question leads us to understand the circumstances under which torture is withdrawn as a repressive strategy.

We submitted a proposal to NSF but (as generally happens) got rejected. As far as rejections go, it was actually not that bad. That said, none of us were in the mood for rejection or for moving through the changes that the reviewers suggested in order to get it funded. There was also some complexity with running a project with AAAS which hindered our interest in continuing. Sometimes you are just not in the mood.

At the same time, I started writing a piece called “The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib: Understanding State Torture and Political Democracy” with David Armstrong which was very interested and comparatively much more exciting than writing a grant. As stated in the abstract:

The events of Abu Ghraib exposed politicians, journalists, military and law enforcement personnel, NGOs, activists and everyday citizens to the potential brutality of state repression. Observing these events, many were left stunned that a liberal democracy would perpetrate such horrific acts against individuals in its care and this behavior was viewed as aberrant or idiosyncratic. Using data from 146 countries, covering the years 1980-1999, we investigate the extent to which different regimes use torture both in times of peace and in times where domestic tranquility is threatened. We find that rather than aberrant, state-sponsored torture like that in Abu Ghraib is perfectly consistent with previous experience. When confronted with political threats, democracies are as likely as autocracies to employ torture.

We had been presenting this paper at a bunch of different venues and got a somewhat mixed to favorable response. Some thought it was really interesting but some just kind of found it troubling to believe that a democracy could engage in repression like an autocracy.

This is where Will came back in.

Will heard us give a presentation of the paper and he extensively commented on it. We included the paper with his comments because it is classic Will: critical (which is standard in the discipline), helpful (which is not), clear (not as common as we would like) and chuck full of good ideas (which is also not that common). He bought our overall argument and was quite excited about it actually but thought that we needed to clean some stuff up. He essentially thought that we needed to ground the work more in my 1995 article (which he always told me that he loved), a piece by Wanchekon and Healy as well as some things he was working on regarding free press and judicial indepencence. Additionally, he thought we needed to engage in a bit more exploration of alternative data. For example, he did not understand how CIRI coded torture nor if he bought it. He thought that we were exploring too many variables for both repression and democracy. The modeling we used was a bit unorthodox (i.e., Dynamic Ordered Probit) – not wrong mind you but he thought there might be another/clearer way to do it. He also thought that our use of Polity was limited as our analysis tended to rely on a variable number of cases across some questionable regime designations.

We thought he was right and decided to bring him into the project. This led to a few changes. First, we settled on a smaller set of democracy variables. After a mammoth version of the paper where we used seemingly every measure on the planet for both concepts, we settled on three aspects of democracy (voice and veto from my then forthcoming book "State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace" as well as free press from something that Will began to push for). For torture, we used CIRI but none of us was especially happy with the choice although deemed better than the Hathaway measure.

The paper was much better in many respects because of this intervention but it was not received uniformly well. One problem seemed to be that folks just had a hard time accepting that democracies could engage in repression and that they could do so in a way at all comparable to an autocracy. We just cut too strongly against what people believed. A second hangup seemed to be that we had a few moving parts. We were disaggregating but bringing together different aspects of political democracy into a community that was generally using one measure (Polity) to measure democracy which combined a great many things as well as left some elements out. Too many notes.

We also got a little wordy because we had too many cooks and a lot to say. Consider the following:

Table 1 records the change in the predicted probability given a change from an autocratic to a democratic state in the ACLP dataset, with the 95% confidence interval in parentheses below the entry. The results in the table lead us to reject hypothesis one, though not because voice reduces the likelihood of torture. Indeed, all of the confidence intervals include zero which means we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no change. Stated more substantively, the presence of elections and a successful transfer of power across parties fails to reduce the probability that a state uses torture, regardless of whether or not it was using torture in the preceding year, and regardless of the presence (absence) of violent dissent. This null results holds whether we examine the most friendly state, the typical state, or the most hostile state as a baseline. (OMG! How dense is that?)
This is an important result. Previous results reporting that democracy reduces the incidence of torture (Hathaway 2002) fail to distinguish voice from veto or free speech. Further, work that does make such distinctions but studies aggregated indicators of state repression have often found that voice reduces repression (Davenport 1999, Davenport and Armstrong 2004, Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005, Davenport 2007b). Two other studies, however, report results that challenge those findings (Davenport 1997, Richards 1999), and we further refine that challenge by showing that elections and the successful transfer of power across parties have no effect on the probability that a state uses torture. The work of Wantchekon and Healy (1999), Walzer (2004) and Levey (2007) provides cause to expect this, and when we combine it with the argument that dissidents who use violence are unlikely to vote (much less be members of the winning coalition), we have an explanation that can account for the absence of such a relationship. (Talk about burying the lead. We killed it, set it on fire, buried it, dug it back up, spat on it and then buried it again.)

The paper got better but frustrated after a few revisions, submissions and rejections (somewhat less kind than the earlier version), we parted ways on this project. The parts did well.

Dave and I had published our AJPS piece “Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976-1996” which allowed us to get at some of the arguments that we wanted to address. Specifically, we wanted to highlight that before democracy can have an impact on repression, a great many ducks need to be in a row. There was no “murder in the middle” (a catchy title for an article and something that people kept investigating that was empirically unsupported); rather, there was murder up to the top (of the scale). I also wrote my book, "State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace", which allowed me to lay out the argument (redux) and empirics behind my idea that democracy could influence repression but not when behavioral challenges emerged. Under these circumstances, there was nothing peaceful about democracy.

Will went to explore his criticism of CIRI and how they measured torture with Courtenay Conrad and Jillienne Haglund. Brilliantly, they went back to one of the primary sources (Amnesty International) and shook everything up by arguing that what Amnesty was providing was not information about actual human rights violations (which is how most of us viewed them); rather, they provided accusations regarding possible human rights abuses. This was a huge shift in what people thought they had - the reverberations of which we are still figuring out. It also made everyone (including Courtenay, Jillienne and Will) be careful about what they said that we were studying when we used these materials. Will and Courtenay grounded the discussion in their article more precisely in a decision-theoretic logic where the leader was placed more centrally. My collaborative effort with Will and Dave was less focused on this as we were grappling with principal-agent dynamics but had not completely worked that out yet. Within the NSF project that emerged from this riff, however, Courtenay and Will disaggregated the state into its components parts – trying to be more precise about exactly who was doing what. This would later inform my DyoRep: Dyadic Analysis of Repression project.

Ever-interwined. Ever-inspired, we moved on.

Next: Refugees and Movement of the People

[i] Important limitations established by Attorney General Janet Reno were overturned as well.

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My Brother's Keeper (or, How Will H. Moore Got me to go to Prison and love it)

5/3/2017

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When I heard about Will H. Moore’s passing, I was struck like someone kicked me in the stomach. Life had been interrupted and people were still trying to talk to me and expect me to do things. I began to close down but realized that I was expected to go participate in an event at Jessup Prison a few days from finding out facilitated by my friend and former colleague Marc Howard and his Prison and Justice Initiative which I will write about more completely in another post. I was about to cancel but I knew Will would have wanted me to go. I know this because he thought it was cool the last time that I went. He thought that everyone deserved the opportunity to learn and engaging with folks in prison was especially deserving. While I missed my brother and wanted to mourn him, some other brothers needed some attention and I decided to turn away from grief toward communion (not in the religious sense of the word but in the spiritual one).

Now, before you go thinking that I was being selfless, let’s be clear. I remember how amazing I felt after going to Jessup last year and I needed some of that to deal with Will. Last time I was there, I felt like I was home. Not because I thought that I should be in prison. Actually, I think I have come to believe that no one should be in prison – especially black males. Rather, because I felt like I was talking to several dozen of my brothers, friends, neighbors, cousins, nephews, uncles, fathers and grandfathers. There were so many generations of black men that I engaged with at one time, that I felt warmed from that part of the experience and as an educator at the university level I have not been in this type of environment that frequently. That they embraced me, heard me, engaged with the work, challenged me but enjoyed the journey and learned a little something from the whole interaction was simply the worldly version of heavenly. We were inches, seconds, a decision or two from one another and I think that all of us felt that by the end. Sometimes it just takes 50 brothers to help you deal with the loss of one.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t contemplate every now and then what they did when outside prison or realize that someone might be trying to play you by being nice but I do know that we have to be better as a species than simply removing individuals from society and warehousing/working/exploiting/breaking them. We have to be or at least we should be.

The last reason for going was a bit less personal. I felt that these men had suffered a great deal by having part of their freedom and humanity taken from them and I was not going to be one other thing that had gone wrong. I am sure that they had endured the loss of friends, relatives, associates and others and they were not allowed to feel or express that in prison. In this context, the least I could do is contain my grief until after I had gone. As a result, I got my ass on the plane and went to Jessup.

This trip was a bit different this time because I was familiar with this particular set up. For example, I was not shocked/surprised by the African guards (mostly female) policing the mostly African American prisoners. I was disturbed by this though. The idea of black folk living on the backs of other imprisoned black folk just seemed an insult to an already festering injury. The bizarreness of this situation was simply one part of a complex jacked up situation however. I was also not shocked/surprised by the route that we took to get into the prison – through gates, through fences, through walls.

I was shocked/surprised at how I felt when I saw the brothers. I came to view them as I imagined Malcolm would (the Malcolm). In my mind, our approach was something analogous to an Indiana Jones movie. We went through the maze of the panopticon and the hundreds of ways that you could be killed, to get to the jewels. And then we arrived.

Not the actual prison

As we came into the room, there was no raucous welcoming or a rush to say hello. We knew where we were and how things were done. At the same time, as I made eye contact with them I felt their approval, their welcoming and that was as meaningful an embrace as I have ever felt. At well spaced intervals, a few of the brothers that I had met before came up to me to say hello and welcome me back. They seemed pleased that I could make time for them but this was so far from the reality of the situation: I needed to come back and see them and had wanted to do so for a year. When given the invitation, I said yes within seconds. At each handshake, each nod, I felt welcomed and seen. The brother had returned as he said he would and that counted for something.

The last time I spoke about my research in India and Untouchability but this time I spoke about my research on Rwanda during 1994. In the last year or so I turned my attention back to this troubled country. After the trauma of seeing the dead and living dead, after being asked to leave the country and after being called a "genocide denier" because I made the claim that many of the dead (not all) were not Tutsi but were Hutu, I left the topic. With some critical distance and an opening to change the narrative because of repeated repressive/violent activities of Kagame, I was now coming back with a vengeance working on numerous articles and two books. I wanted to share this with them first as they asked for something that I cared about.

But as I spoke, my mind went less to Rwanda than to these men. This is not because I was not into it, which I was, and it was not because they were not into it, which (gauging from the detailed and often difficult questions) they were as well. Rather, it was because I began to see the brothers in a different light – literally. In my mind, these were not prisoners. They were the prize. They were the thing that was most not least valued, most needed. Imagine a few dozen Basquiat-like crowns appearing above the heads of the brothers sitting there – shining and gold, and then you have an idea of what I saw.

As the men asked their questions and revealed a depth of insight and wisdom that defied the context, I realized that these men personified the strength of conviction not the convicted. These men have done one of the most difficult things that could be done: they have attempted to change, embrace education and through that embrace life.

So, I hear some of y’all out there: “you naïve fool. They were playing you. Trying to get out for good behavior. Are talking mess in the Easy E kind of way?” Well, naysayers, some of these men aren’t getting out, so keep quiet. And for the others, how do you know what resides in their hearts? Let’s see what is there. Lets rehumanize them and through that ourselves by engaging with them and embracing them. Let us test ourselves and exchange words with them. It is easy to discard the discarded and stigmatized, just as it is easy to discard the awkward and ill-fitting (like our dear Will H. Moore). Let us take the harder but better position where we embrace rather than shun.

Further, if we do not believe in change and that someone can shift their position/status, then that is perhaps the most un-American thing that I have ever heard. What is America if it is not change. Were Americans destined to forever be the colony of the British? Were the poor destined to forever be poor? Were African Americans destined to forever be enslaved? Minus the racist who would respond affirmatively to the last, the answer to these questions is a resounding no! What kind of American story would there be if the poor were actually believed to forever be poor? There would be revolution in a second.

Rather, it is the potential for change that keeps us moving forward and hopeful. And, with that, it seems that we need to confront as well as challenge the institutions, activities, beliefs and individuals who wish to be in the removing humans from humanity as well as warehousing/exploiting/abusing humans business. We need to confront these things as if our lives depends on it because I would argue that it does. In short, we need to accept that we are our brothers keepers and that when we lose one of these brothers we need to weep for that loss but in the same breath step back up and try to save the next one/few/hundred/thousand.

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Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 5: Chris and Will Call 'em Out

Chris & Will Call 'Em Out

Cross-posting: The Will H. Moore Celebratory Revisitation of the Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop, Episode 12

Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 4: Refugees and Movement of the People

Refugees and Movement of the People

Cross-Posting from the Conflict Consortium: The Conflict Consortium Virtual Workshop Revisitation in honor of Will H. Moore: Episode 9

Adventures with/in Will H. Moore, Part 3: 911, The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib and Studying Torture

911, The Puzzle of Abu Ghraib and Studying Torture

My Brother's Keeper (or, How Will H. Moore Got me to go to Prison and love it)

Analog - The Anti-Blog

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