I really want to be able to ask a hundred contrarian questions without alienating my allies.
I want to be involved locally too. I'm trying to stop the private jet expansion and build a dog park. The latter is caught up in sewer financing. But it's hard to know how best to be effective without becoming the lead organizer.
There was a dog park in Lincoln where the dog shit polluted a whole lake downstream. I guess even if the dogs shit on the shore, it washes down.
1. You're in the right place. Well, 100 is a lot. Space them out to be safe.
This is maybe kind of relevant for me as I just learned they want to put in a Dollar General near me. On NextDoor, people are organizing to resist it and I can't even make myself care that they are using "not enough parking" as one of the reasons.
This is kind of a medium town, if you don't count the whole metro area.
4: all right, here goes!
Question #1: Is it a good use of limited resources to get tons of people to show up, week after week, and fight for the city council to issue a ceasefire resolution for Gaza?
that one may be rhetorical. The problem is that the activists are definitely right, but the old guard on city council isn't wrong when they think, "why the fuck would I want to open that can of worms here?"
I'm curious now how common this is a mathematician personality trait. I love having all the information, and hate hate hate when I have to make a decision with low-information (which is every day of being a new director of graduate studies). This is a huge difference between math and physics, in math you can always just ask for the definition and you literally know everything, and physicists are constantly being like "right, that was the oversimplified version, in fact we also need to assume a, b, and c" and then 5 minutes later do that again. So frustrating!
I definitely know several mathemticians who are hard-core completists (e.g. if you own one album by an artist you own all of them), even more than me.
That's how Taylor Swift makes big money.
There is a Dollar General in one of the small towns near me and they have a huge parking lot that is mostly empty, and which also requires a giant runoff retention pond. Its along a major road with no sidewalks but I always see people walking there from downtown, which has plenty of room for a retail establishment - particularly a budget one - but which is otherwise dead. This is what happens when community planning is controlled by Republicans.
Question #1: Is it a good use of limited resources to get tons of people to show up, week after week, and fight for the city council to issue a ceasefire resolution for Gaza?
Funny, this is what went down at our council meeting last night.
It seems like a mistake that councils aren't just listening to what people have to say, taking a vote, and moving on. Instead they come up with spurious reasons to deny pro-ceasefire people the ability to even air their views, which only validates their feelings of oppression and escalates the situation. Now a friend of mine has an arrest record.
We need to retvrn to the ancient wisdom of staying in your own lane. City councils do not need to have opinions on Gaza, since Gaza isn't in the city and nothing the city does impacts Gaza in any way. City councils should consider city business.
7.1 No. I just flew in from overseas and I need to take care of some things before I can elaborate.
It seems like a mistake that councils aren't just listening to what people have to say, taking a vote, and moving on. Instead they come up with spurious reasons to deny pro-ceasefire people the ability to even air their views, which only validates their feelings of oppression and escalates the situation. Now a friend of mine has an arrest record.
Yeah, we went through this locally a few months ago. I forget the details and how it ultimately ended up, but initially the pushback from the elected officials drew the whole thing out much longer than it needed to go. I don't particularly dispute that pushing these resolutions is a suboptimal use of everyone's time and energy, but engaging in a long, drawn-out fight about it is an even bigger waste regardless of how it ends up.
I think if councils were going to act relatively quickly it would be a smallish but real benefit - may influence the Congressional representative for the district, for example, or even the Senator.
If it's been concerted organizing to fill up comment at 3+ councils and there's no sign they'll act, then yeah, I think the scale tips and it's no longer a great use of resources.
City councils should consider city business.
Well, sure, but when a city council will hear an appeal for Ukraine but not Palestine, it becomes a problem. I'm not a fan of issue resolutions in general, but if we are going to have them they need to be applied fairly. In our case, the mayor rather overstepped his bounds when he claimed our established precedent was not to discuss such matters, but the council was quite happy to line up behind that rather than taking the risk of actually having that discussion.
So, instead, my friend gets arrested and now has 60K views on her instagram of the video where she's getting cuffed, which is _not great_ for our city's reputation, Bob.
Yeah, we passed some bland statement about antisemitism during the Trump years, when hate crimes were ramping up. Seems like we could easily pass a bland statement about peace and releasing hostages.
Question #2: Is there a lefty version of best practices for how a police department should handle an internal investigation after killing a citizen? Things like:
- releasing identifying info about the cop?
- Cop being on administrative leave vs. staying at their job?
- should the family get to see the video footage? should their lawyer get to see the footage?
I have opinions about these things, but it would be nice to be able to cite an authoritative trustworthy source.
This is a huge difference between math and physics, in math you can always just ask for the definition and you literally know everything, and physicists are constantly being like "right, that was the oversimplified version, in fact we also need to assume a, b, and c" and then 5 minutes later do that again. So frustrating!
This is exactly what I hated about physics so much! I have an extremely vivid memory of a problem about a chain sliding off the side of a table, and you were supposed to figure out something by integrating how much mass was being acted on by gravity as time passed. Except I couldn't get past the picture, which showed a big chunky iron linked chain, and I was picturing it sliding and going ca-chunk, ca-chunk, ca-chunk as each link passed over the edge, and I really couldn't understand why this thing had enough momentum to start sliding in the first place. It seemed like an impossibly difficult problem until I learned later that it was a circular cow all along.
Right, my point exactly was that city councils shouldn't be passing resolutions about Ukraine. General policy to stay in your lane. See also environmental groups making statements about Ukraine or Gaza, leave that to the foreign policy groups!
It's just not very clear what else local activists can do about the US supporting Israel. We've gotten extremely good at ignoring protests and rallies, when it's not on a college campus. Coty Councils are the closest elected officials who you can kinda force to engage with you.
One of the things we've got locally that seems almost certainly incorrect but tedious to correct people on is the insistence that the city is funding the Israeli military - presumably blurring the line between "share of federal taxes from city residents/businesses" and "city budget".
YES. omg, here too. They keep saying that.
I'm trying to get the city to fund both Hamas and the IDF.
The city is giving the money to Starbucks, and then Starbucks gives it to the IDF, obviously.
27 is very true. Local government is, in practice, the only level of government that most ordinary people really have access to. I feel like there is an important role in hearing out people's complaints, even if nothing can be done about them.
I'm in Havre Montana for the state Democratic convention. Actually two conventions -- yesterday and this morning the state platform convention, and today delegate selection for Chicago. I'm a delegate to the latter (the Montana delegate selection convention, not Chicago!) and, because our delegates were not here yet yesterday, I was asked to fill in at the platform convention. I was certain that we'd have something on Gaza, and I was kind of looking forward to that.
On the one hand the amateur nature of local party politics is charming. On the other hand, it's absolutely maddening. The composition of these things changes quite a bit over time, and we have some new folks who are terrible wordsmiths, and totally incompetent at recognizing it. Our additions to the American Indians plank were deeply embarrassing -- and certainly not vetted by anyone representing any Native nation. The anti-trapping provision was similarly poorly written, but at least that got voted down.
On Gaza, what we had was this proposed addition to our international relations action agenda: Limit foreign aid to humanitarian aid only for countries that violate international law. The author was fairly inarticulate, and had no response to the questions about what is international law, and by what standard we are supposed to know it's been violated. She's a straight up pacifist, and thought it should apply to Ukraine as well. I guess I don't have a problem with the concept in general, although I do think we should provide aid to Ukraine, even if some of its actions might be said to violate international law, but I also don't have a problem with our not adding this to our platform right now.
During the trapping debate, I got to refer to what our former party ED liked to say: we're not writing legislation here; we're providing content for Republican press releases. This is true, but it's also important to convey values and solidarity to members of the coalition. But if members of the coalition want something meaningful in the platform, they have to think it through, and show up to advocate. In an effective manner.
The activists showing up at city council meetings have a 0% chance of influencing what is going on in Gaza. They have a 1% chance of influencing what is going on in DC.
(Especially city council meetings in Texas!)
35: What goes on in DC has a chance to influence, though. So call it 0.1%. Rounds to 0, sure.
I think if we actually passed a resolution - which we won't - it would have a 95% chance of pissing off Abbott, which is both good and bad. Probably more bad than good, because he's vindictive.
I see normalizing descent on American policy toward Israel as more of a long-term play. It might not help Gazans in their current situation, but there is value in demonstrating to politicians that towing the AIPAC line isn't going to be universally popular anymore. In another generation we might have vastly different Middle East policy, but we can't just count on that happening through demographic change - there needs to be activists putting in the work to make it happen.
Dissent. Sorry about that.
Sorry about the rat cage, but we have standards.
I went to a retreat yesterday about honoring the native stewards of the land. The presenters were members of non Federally recognized Eastern tribes. Their major activism has been with the UNH campus and on dam removal (small dams that were used for mills.). They've had some success bringing back fish. It sounds like there have been some fake groups in the East as well, but I'd love to know who to ally myself with. Does anyone know of any good books about the natives of the Northeast? They've all clearly experienced trauma, so I don't want to get into a debate with these people, and there also seem to be a lot of disputes between native people.
But this is basically 2 people who are doing all of the activism for a very small tribe of busy people who don't have a reservation, and I'm not sure what is helpful and what is just in the way.
Many years ago, I worked with a group that was seeking federal recognition -- they were part of a larger federally recognized tribe, but felt distinct enough to be separately recognized. It's a generational project, and I think the main drivers left the scene sometime after I did, but it'll always resurface, because the separateness is historically valid. Even if not politically viable. This was in the Southwest.
Anyway, there are fairly extensive federal regulations on this, and maybe the important thing to keep in mind is that it's not about individuals, but a continuous community. Applicants have to: (a) demonstrate that it has been identified as an American Indian entity on a substantially continuous basis since 1900; (b) show that a predominant portion of the petitioning group comprises a distinct community and has existed as a community from historical times until the present; (c) demonstrate that it has maintained political influence or authority over its members as an autonomous entity from historical times until the present; (d) provide a copy of the group's present governing document including its membership criteria; (e) demonstrate that its membership consists of individuals who descend from the historical Indian tribe or from historical Indian tribes that combined and functioned as a single autonomous political entity and provide a current membership list; (f) show that the membership of the petitioning group is composed principally of persons who are not members of any acknowledged North American Indian tribe; and (g) demonstrate that neither the petitioner nor its members are the subject of congressional legislation that has expressly terminated or forbidden the Federal relationship.
Completely outside this process, Congress can just recognize. It recently recognized the Little Shell here in Montana, after many years of struggle. What put it over the top was our Republican senator thinking that there were votes to be had in Indian Country, so he dropped his opposition. And they got Trump to sign off on it.
State recognition is going to be its own thing, but the criteria the feds look at are pretty decent.
I suppose the same sort of fiat recognition is possible at the state level, so that'd be like getting any sort of bill passed: convince someone to sponsor a bill, then carry it in committee, then convince the leadership to bring it to the floor, and then a majority to vote for it. At each level politicians are wondering what's in it for them, and what oxen will be gored. 'No oxen will be gored' is inherently suspect.
A public campaign can help with this, but may not be necessary, if some legislators get won over. We have an expert on NH politics in our little continuous community. You know Mass well enough to know that there are going to be like 5 people who can either make a thing happen legislatively or make a thing not happen. (That's my poorly informed prejudice.) I don't know anything about Maine.
I think a lot of them don't quite qualify based on the Federal rules. This particular group seems mostly interested in support for archaeological research and land stewardship, and they were in NH mostly. I guess NH was claiming that there were no natives there or something ridiculous. I believe there is one MA-only recognized tribe. There was some other tribe that dug up a bunch of remains and these folks were pretty upset that they did it without prayers or song. The Episcopal diocese in NH seems to be a partner, and they are working at changing the UNH campus to have more fruit trees and fewer lawns, but Dartmouth has been less responsive.
One of the women had a great-grandfather of European descent who had abandoned the family and then gone and married another Native woman in the midwest, but then his abandoned wife had to give up all of the kids for adoption and there was a lot of mess. Most of what they are interested in doing seems pretty good, but I really don't know enough about their claims to judge them and how authentic they are. They did talk about Improved Order of Red Men people coming and claiming to be Indians and that that was causing a mess.
I am personally very anti gaming and casino but I don't feel it's my place to tell sovereign tribes what to do, but if people really are bootstrapping themselves onto tribes just to make a quick buck, I don't want to be an activist for that. But people who are trying to partner with University researchers to learn more about the land and to protect the water who have some native heritage but not enough to be recognized as a tribe, I'm mostly happy to help.
Thanks for the link. I think one of the issues is that the people moved seasonally, so they have a slightly harder time proving things.
I did not know about the Improved order of Red Men. I'm surprised they complicated the question of who was "legitimately" Native in any real way, since according to Wikipedia they were explicitly whites-only until 1974. I do know Tammany Hall was originally a similar such cosplaying fraternal society, eventually evolving into a political machine in a few places.
49: I think they took pictures of themselves in a historic Lakota garb. Meanwhile, alleged Abenaki people were wearing western clothes and selling baskets and were probably mixed race in the 19th century and were criticized as being fake.
Many people feel that the Vermont-recognized tribes are actually cultural appropriators who were making stuff up.
So, I'd like to be supportive of the indigenous people but I feel like I'm not competent to judge who is for real.
There's a whole big pretendian culture in Canada, because people want to be exempt from the hunting and fishing regulations that apply to non-Native people. Or want jobs that are set aside for Native people. IHMHB, there were people claiming to be Indigenous based on an ancestor of mine, a woman who was born about 1605, who definitely married French immigrant. It's (a) completely ridiculous biologically and culturally to make this claim and (b) provably false, because the supposed evidence points to different people. The folks in that story I linked seem to be legit, but journalists can be easy to manipulate, and it's a sensitive enough question that people with genuine concerns will stand down often times. So I don't really know.
There isn't really a federal BQ floor, I don't think, because some groups, like some of the Cherokee tribes, have very loose standards. But in a smaller community, like these Abenaki bands, you're either going to have trouble having much of a BQ, or you're going to have a shit-ton of endogamy. Or both.
I'm not saying these folks are Buffy St-Marie, but that's a cautionary tale worthy of consideration. Or Sacheen Littlefeather.
This book is the most recent I've read on Native Americans in the northeast, all though it is specific to the Monadnock Region, where I live. Still, it starts with a rundown of some really interesting recent archeological finds and in later chapters brings things to the present day. And it has very pretty color pictures.
Carlos Cardona is probably the most well-known NH political figure on Native issues, although he himself is Taíno, with roots in Puerto Rico.
Thanks CCarp and Spike. Yes, and I think people might pretend in order to have an identity without being crooks, particularly if there is family trauma. Being an activist can give you a sense of purpose.
50: The second link shows up in my browser as read, and it looks familiar. In general, I tend to side with the more critical, gatekeeping voices, although there are exceptions (I'm not touching the debates over Afro-indigeneous communities in the southeast with a ten foot pole). So I think I would personally not support the splinter Abenaki groups you link to, although it doesn't seem like the ecological restoration work is likely to do any harm in itself? Teo is often good with recommendations for what kind of activism is useful and well-directed.
I had a post about this a couple of years ago, and since that time I've revised my position on the Metis Nation of Ontario: I think the Powley decision is fundamentally wrong and, having learned more about the Sault Ste. Marie community from which my mom's family descends, it's just not part of the Metis nation despite being closely related to many Metis communities by blood. It was an Ojibwe/Anishinaabe community in transition, with a lot of intermarriage with white settlers and departures from the community for good (including my disenrolled great-great-grandfather, whose father outlived him and remained on the rolls until he literally dropped dead in the middle of a tribal election), throughout the 19th century. Fast forward 120 years or so, and the tribal community is still there, but it also has a lot of distant white relatives with beautiful moccasins in their attics. The post title is still 100% correct.
I find the first link in 50 to be quite compelling.
Vermont genealogy isn't as easy as Quebec genealogy, but its a lot easier than most of the either country. It actually should not be hard to find out who was who in 1850, at which point sterilization programs in the 1910s and 1920s are meaningless. And then to go back from 1850 in a bunch of family lines. There was some immigration from Quebec prior to that point, but you can see it pretty clearly in the records.
In this part of the country, when you say French Canadian, a lot of people think you're saying mixed race. It's often simply and readily demonstrably untrue.
Teo is often good with recommendations for what kind of activism is useful and well-directed.
Thanks! I don't know much about this issue though. The ethnohistory of the New England tribes is very very complicated and of course they bore much of the brunt of colonial depopulation, so tracing any connections down to the present is exceptionally difficult. Additionally, a lot of tribes in this area lost their federal and/or state recognition in the 19th century for blatantly land-grabby reasons (the Narragansetts in Rhode Island are a particularly egregious case), so there's a lot of groups for which it's reasonable to assume that someone somewhere is a legit descendant entity but it's extremely hard to prove.
Northern New England (compared to southern) has the additional complication that population densities were always pretty low and groups were pretty mobile, as BG noted in 48. It's really really hard to determine if any given group claiming indigenous status in that region is legit or not. I would say the best approach is to look at the environmental/archaeological priorities on their own merits independent of the identity of the groups agitating for them. This is still tricky because your own values won't necessarily align with those of a putatively indigenous population (and this comes up a lot in areas like the West where indigenous cultures are more intact), but in the absence of definitive evidence regarding identity it's really the best you can do.
So, to give some specific examples, if a putative unrecognized tribe is agitating for dam removal (which many unquestionably legitimate tribes in the PNW have also been working on in recent years), you can look at the ecological benefits of the dam removal on their own merits and decide whether to support them accordingly.
On the other hand, if a putative tribe is agitating that it, and it alone, should have authority over archaeological excavations and the disposition of recovered artifacts in a given area, that should prompt more skepticism if its claim to legitimacy is questionable. Could still be legit! But here we're talking about (potentially) competing social values without necessarily having any external scientific check, so the burden of proof needs to be higher.
And of course in the second scenario the "do no harm" alternative is obviously to not excavate at all, which is what legitimate tribes often do advocate for in practice, so if someone is pushing "excavate but we're in charge" that's suspicious. I haven't read through all the details so I don't know if that's actually the case with any of these New England situations.
You can excavate things other than graves that will tell you a lot, midden, knapping sites, etc., that shouldn't be problematic and that can still tell you a lot.
They were actually talking about excavating with folks at UNH. They are trying to date when corn and squash were first cultivated in this area.
59: Sure, but you don't know for sure if a given site has graves or not until you actually dig. If your priority is to absolutely minimize the chance of desecrating a grave, the safest option is not to dig. (Sounds like that's not what's going on in this case though.)
You can get the electricity people to mark all the underground obstacles before you dig. Maybe if you ask nicely, they'll mark the graves too.
62 I'm going off my knowledge of Middle Eastern and especially Arabian archaeology where you can tell if it's a grave and whether it's early Islamic, Christian, Hellenistic or Bronze Age just from the surface appearance. Of course the geology is very different in North America.
Like, if there's a cross on the surface, it's probably Christian.
Yeah, American archaeology is a totally different world in that way. Usually you don't really know anything until you start digging.