Park Slope Reader

sally kohn

Dara Kass On the Pandemic Frontline

By Filed Under: Pandemic Diaries Tagged With: , ,

Dr. Dara Kass gets at least a half-dozen calls every single day from friends and neighbors in Brooklyn and across the country.  She is, for the people who have her phone number, like a “Covid concierge” — there to allay fears with facts and guide tough decision-making with science.  And if you’ve seen her on MSNBC or follow her on Twitter, you may have also been soothed by the balm of her steady voice and sage advice.  

An emergency room physician, a mom with young kids, and someone infected early on during the Covid pandemic — who has had to navigate the same challenges and questions and doubts as the rest of us, but armed with the medical and scientific insights most of the rest of us lack?  Who the heck wouldn’t want her on speed dial?

Kass is a doctor in the Columbia University Medical Center E.R., and also an associate professor of emergency medicine.  She’s been politically active for some time, as an advocate for increasing gender representation and equity in emergency medicine, and as an early and vocal supporter of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and now Andrew Yang’s campaign for New York City mayor.  But it was Covid that made her phone, literally and metaphorically, start ringing off the hook.

“In the beginning of this pandemic, we all thought we’d watch it from far away,” Kass told me over the phone in late February 2021.  But then it started getting closer… from China, to Italy, and then Seattle.  She’s in all these online groups and email chains with emergency medicine doctors and by late February 2020, “all the channels were on fire.”  People were getting infected, hospitals were filling up.  “I was realizing this would hit us like a tidal wave.”

The next part of the story feels very Park Slope.  Kass was walking back with her husband from their ritual Saturday morning Soul Cycle class on March 7, 2020.  She was processing all of the information she was hearing about the disease and what they would do if she got infected.  Suddenly, Kass stopped in her tracks and made a decision.  They would move their kids to live with Kass’ parents in New Jersey on March 13, the day before Kass had her next shift at the E.R.  A few days after that, Kass started experiencing Covid symptoms.  

“I started making all these decisions for my family probably a hot minute before everyone else had to do it for theirs,” Kass says.  “And being very public about the decisions I was making.”  It was early, not much was known about Covid, how it was contracted and spread and the risk to various age groups.  She did what was most prudent at the time — in a way setting up a clear contrast with her foil throughout this pandemic, the Trump Administration.   While Kass and — thanks to her leadership and the leadership of others — many of the rest of us were taking the virus seriously and being as cautious as possible, Trump and his Administration were dismissing the threat and being reckless.  Kass was making the smart decisions for herself and her family, and using her platform to share information about those decisions.  Trump’s decisions was making dumb decisions — that ultimately destroyed us.

“Once we knew more and had an idea of how it was spreading,” says Kass, the Trump Administration could have put out “very specific, consistent guidelines of what people had to do.”  But they didn’t.  That was just one of many failures that compounded the crisis.  “By the time New York was in the thick of it in April, we had an idea of how to stop it… but Trump was saying we’d be back by Easter, that the economy needs to open.”  That’s when it became clear to Kass that the federal government was being what she calls “criminally negligent” in the face of this pandemic.

But did liberal states and cities, like New York, over-correct with extreme lockdowns?  No, insists Kass.  “What appeared to be an overreaction was supposed to be the only reaction.  The goal was to have this be the time to react strongly and shut it down.”  Yet because the national response was so spotty and inconsistent, the shut downs didn’t shut down the virus — ”and we didn’t have a lot of tools left in the toolbox.”

New York, fortunately, turned around.  “We had a horrific March and April,” says Kass.  But by the end of May, E.R. departments were mostly empty, she says.  “We got a reprieve over the summer.  And in the fall, patients didn’t come in as sick as before.”  That’s not because the virus was better but because our preparedness was.  There was better testing, people were coming into the E.R. earlier, there was more information on how to treat them, better medication options.  And doctors and nurses felt more confident, too.  “There’s a trauma about taking care of patients where you don’t understand what’s coming next.”  Living through the first wave, including many health care workers surviving infections themselves, removed a lot of the sense of uncertainty.  

That’s not to say it was easy.  Kass recounts friends who spent weeks in the ICU, another who died by suicide.  Her own symptoms were relatively mild.  She feels fortunate.  Though of course the lasting effects of working frontline during the pandemic may leave scars for generations.  

At least, Kass says with a relieved sigh, things are getting better.  For one, we have a competent president who believes in science and is mobilizing the full weight of the federal government to address this crisis.  And second, we have vaccines.  

“The process of vaccinating people is healing,” says Kass, who has spent time working at vaccination sites.  “Getting vaccinated is great, you feel protected… less nervous,” she says.  But also, “Working at the sites, it’s life affirming… really rewarding.”

Kass thinks that soon New York will have enough supply to have walk-in vaccination spots all over the city.  And she echoes President Biden, who recently predicted that every American who wants a vaccine will be able to get one by the end of May.  What does that mean?  The vaccine was tested to keep people from getting sick from the coronavirus and dying, and it does just that — very effectively.  Beyond that, Kass uses the metaphor of a forest fire.  We don’t yet know how well the vaccine prevents vaccinated people from spreading the virus to others; that wasn’t what it was tested to do.  It likely does that well, says Kass — we’ll know more as more data become available.  But in her forest fire metaphor, “If a tree can’t catch fire, it doesn’t matter as much if other trees are burning all around it.”  And the more trees are fire proof, the more the blaze will be under control.  

Beyond that, I used the opportunity with Kass to try to ask as many of the “Covid concierge” questions I thought might be on the minds of my fellow Park Slopers.  So here, edited for length, is a rapid-fire Q&A with Dara Kass:

If I qualify to be vaccinated, should I nonetheless wait until higher risk people get their turns?

No.  Everyone who is qualified to get vaccinated should get vaccinated as soon as it’s available.  And that helps protect other people.

If my parents are vaccinated, can my kids hug them?

Yes.  Your parents are protected from getting sick and dying.  Which is remarkable.

If I’m vaccinated, can I go on vacation?

Yes.  In fact, if you can find three other vaccinated people, you can all go on vacation together.  You can start to incorporate reasonable risk back into your life.

If I’m vaccinated, do I have to quarantine after a possible exposure?

If it’s two weeks after your second vaccine shot, then no.  

Can I get whatever vaccine is offered to me now and then another one later?

Maybe.  This is an issue for people living in other countries where an inferior vaccine is available now, but they might want to get another when they’re back in the States.  My advice is for now, take whatever vaccine is offered.  It’s likely that, eventually, we’ll have enough supply or booster shots if there’s reason to believe you need or want it.

Can I send my kids to summer camp?

It’s very possible and likely — but will take parents engaging in reasonable quarantining, testing protocols and good strategies for well-controlled environments.  It’s good for kids to run around outside and be healthy.  

Should I feel okay sending my kids to in-person school?

Of course.  In-person school is governed by things that have nothing to do with teacher vaccinations — but spacing requirements, quarantines, etc.  But teachers should be a high priority for eligibility.  I actually think we should have pop-up vaccination sites in schools, meet people where they are.  We’d have everyone done in a month.

Once I’m vaccinated, do I still need to wear a mask?

Yes.  Until we get it under control better, that’s the smarter, no-risk thing to do.  And people are unevenly vaccinated right now.  It’s important we all model mask wearing.

What kind of mask do you recommend most?

The most important thing is that it fits tightly.  An unmasked gap undoes all the protections of whatever fancy mask you use.  If you have a cloth mask, then you should have a disposable surgical mask under it — so the cloth mask generally helps create a tighter fitting seal.

What would you say to people who are worried the vaccines are too new and untested?

So is the virus.  Let’s be honest, we’re in a pandemic.  Every vaccine is new at some point.  But it’s not untested; it’s been tested thoroughly.  I do understand the anxiety about the speed, but I feel more anxiety about the speed of the pandemic.  

Do you think fall will be normal?

Redefine normal.  I think movie theaters will be open but a third of people will be wearing masks, even if they’re vaccinated.  We have to figure out how schools will stay open, etc.  But by Spring 2022, this won’t be the thing we’re talking about.  

Maya Wiley Runs for Mayor of New York City

By Filed Under: Feature, Part of the Solution, Sally Kohn Tagged With: , , ,

“We all see the world from the prism of our experience. The question is: How broad are our experiences? How deep are they?” Maya framed this fundamental question over the phone in the Fall of 2020, just weeks after announcing her groundbreaking – and unconventional – candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City.

Maya Wiley framed this fundamental question over the phone in the Fall of 2020, just weeks after announcing her groundbreaking — and unconventional — candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City. Wiley is a human rights activist and civil rights attorney with a decades-long record of leadership at the forefront of movements for social, economic, and racial justice. She is many other things, too. A black woman. A Brooklyn mom. A child of political icons.  

But what Maya Wiley is definitely NOT is a politician. Which is probably both her greatest asset and her greatest challenge in the mayoral contest.

Wiley was born in 1964 in Washington, D.C., to politically active parents who met in Syracuse. In many ways, her birth was a testament to the complexities of our nation, then as now. Wiley’s father, George, was a professor of organic chemistry who became a leading figure in the civil rights movement. He rose to national leadership in the Congress of Racial Equality and then founded the National Welfare Rights Organization. As a Black man organizing mostly women of color to agitate for dignity and justice in public assistance, he was an early pioneer of what we now call intersectionality — how gender and race and class compound and connect.  Wiley’s mother, Wretha, was a white woman from a Texas town Maya describes as “all white and very racist when she was growing up” who understood the injustice of exclusion and myopia and left to blaze a different path. I should clarify here that Maya Wiley is my friend from years of movement work together, and I met her mom several times before her passing. I can’t help but think that Maya’s candidacy to be the first Black woman mayor of the City of New York represents their daughter but also their hopes for our nation — that we could be the kind of place, the kind of people, who would choose their daughter to lead. 

Because who Maya Wiley is is central to understanding what kind of mayor she would be. After graduating from Columbia Law School and then clerking in Philadelphia, Wiley moved to Brooklyn in 1991 where she’s lived ever since. She held positions at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ACLU, in addition to being a Senior Advisor on Race and Poverty at the Open Society Foundations, advancing human rights and justice around the globe. But perhaps the defining role in Wiley’s career was the one she created for herself when in 2002 she founded the Center for Social Inclusion, one of the nation’s first action-oriented think tanks focused on dismantling structural racism and inequity. With a tiny bit of seed money and, initially, running the organization without paying herself a salary, Wiley created applied research projects led in partnership with communities of color to develop and document transformative policy solutions in housing, food systems, technology access, and more. Yes, Wiley was also a prominent legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC until recently, a Senior Vice President and professor at The New School. Wiley may not be a conventional candidate but she is keenly aware of how city government works, how to manage within it, and what needs fixing to make us fairer and more just. She obviously has the chops to do the job.  She served as the first Black woman to be Counsel to a New York City Mayor, serving early in  Bill de Blasio’s administration. And after leaving in 2016, Chaired the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board, sending the case of the officer who killed Eric Garner, former Officer Daniel Panteleo, to the NYPD to get him off the force.

But the formative part of Wiley’s career was spent not just talking about bold solutions to our biggest problems — but actually developing them.  When most politicians were still struggling to use words like “intersectional” in a sentence, Wiley was working with grassroots communities and leading innovators to actually put intersectionality into practice — and policy.

And that deep track record from her past shows up in her campaigning today. “I am running because this city can and must do more than recover from Covid,” she told me over the phone when we spoke. “It must reimagine itself as a place where we can all live with dignity. That means a place where we develop without displacement. That means a place where we put the public back in public safety. That means a place where the government is a partner and not a pariah. That means a place where communities of concern get the investments they need in order to become whole.”  

All of which Wiley insists is possible if we stop making bad choices forcing unnecessary trade-offs between helping affluent New Yorkers and Wall Street versus everyone else. “We can be a city that holds onto what we all love about New York,” Wiley says. “We love the fact that New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world. That brings so much culture and innovation and makes us a place everyone wants to be. We have to hold onto that. But we can’t do that unless we reimagine the city as something that can include everyone.” In other words, Wiley argues, we don’t have to choose between fairness for all versus opportunity for some. There’s another way, where we “come together and have a real, honest conversation about what will make us stronger, what will make us more fair and more just… and bring this city back even stronger.” Wiley points to examples where we can make the city government more principled and more efficient and effective, invest in innovative affordable housing strategies and infrastructure investments that benefit us all.

But can we really do both?  Yes, insists Wiley with her characteristic mix of gumption and faith. “That’s why we need a non-traditional leader. Because we always could do both. We just haven’t had that option.”

Women of color in particular, Wiley explains, have never had the luxury of just “sticking with the status quo or reacting to it. We’ve always had to create.” She makes the case for why we need more diverse and inclusive leadership not just based on principle but practice — the real, concrete difference that leaders with broader perspectives bring to the table.

“I don’t embody every other,” Wiley explains, “but there’s a recognition when you are forced by society, the way we’ve structured society, to have to see many different experiences. Not everybody is forced to do that, but if you are black and female and have been fortunate enough to see what it’s like to be in a segregated, overcrowded, underfunded public school and to see what it’s like in a private school with small classrooms… to have the privilege of living in a black neighborhood where folks could barely get by and living uptown where people are living in mini-mansions… you have a sense of what other experiences are like.”  Which, to Wiley, is the point. We have constructed a society in which some of us, especially those of us often represented in positions of leadership, are distinctly less likely and even insulated from the experiences of others in our society. Electing Black women leaders isn’t just important because it makes our government look more like the people it represents but because diverse leaders can actually understand the lives and needs of all our communities.  When we talk about leadership and say “experience matters,” we also have to broaden our understanding of experience. Actually having lived the plights of ordinary New Yorkers should be a political prerequisite for any leader professing solutions for those plights. 

Which also may be the doorway to a different type of leadership altogether.  Wiley isn’t just positing herself as some sort of singularly unique and therefore singularly able savior, in the vein of ego-centric messiah-like political figures before her. She wants to bring her intersectional experiences and ideas into governing but she doesn’t want to stop there; she also wants to reimagine governing to be inherently more inclusive, participatory, and transparent. To this end, as part of her campaign, Wiley is organizing “People’s Assemblies” that bring wide ranges of New Yorkers together to discuss their priorities and needs and challenges and concerns — ”no matter which candidate they support,” Wiley notes — and come up with shared solutions. “So we’re not just telling folks, ‘Here’s what we’ll do for you.’  We’re starting a democratic practice of coming together and having these conversations.”  

In the first of these People’s Assemblies on the subject of gun violence, participants ranged from an Afro-Latina woman who grew up in public housing and a white man who was a former cop. The conversation — just the fact of them coming together and talking, and the shared struggles and solutions they and others were able to connect over — was, as Wiley describes it, “fantastic.” Several more People’s Assemblies will be organized by the campaign in the coming weeks and months.

“We’re not just asking for votes, we’re asking for community, we’re asking for folks to be in conversation,” Wiley adds. In this sense, Maya Wiley isn’t just a transformational candidate, she’s also running a transformational campaign.  

Which in so many ways makes sense given Wiley’s community organizing roots. In 2014, as Wiley was preparing to work in the de Blasio Administration — where she would ultimately experience how the transformative potential of city government could be wasted under an ineffective, visionless mayor — Wiley spoke to then Politico-reporter Maggie Haberman about the move. “You could have gone and made a million dollars,” Haberman noted, asking why Wiley wanted to work in city government instead.

In response, Wiley shared a memory from her father. “[A] friend of his once asked him, when do you stop, George And his answer was, ‘When no one else is hungry. And his friend said, Well, that’s never going to be the case. And he said, Well then you never stop.’”

Let’s hope Maya Wiley never stops fighting to bring her transformative experiences and ideas — and the experiences and ideas of all New Yorkers — to the fore. If that fight ultimately takes her to City Hall, we’ll be a better city and a better community because of it.

The Reader Interview with Sally Kohn on Election 2016 and Beyond

By Filed Under: The Reader Interview Tagged With: , , ,

“Equality is Not a Zero-Sum Game”

On a muggy day in in late Summer, I sat down with Sally Kohn, columnist and CNN commentator. I picked her brain about the presidential election, Dog Whistle politics—rhetoric that uses coded language to convey a message to specific segments of the population—and Kohn’s idea of emotional correctness, as presented in her 2013 Ted Talk. For Kohn, emotional correctness refers to “a daily spiritual practice” that consists of trying “to find compassion for the people I not only disagree with, but who are fundamentally lacking in compassion for me and my side.”  By Mirielle Clifford

Kohn is currently working on a book that’s informed by that notion of emotional correctness. Throughout our conversation, Kohn showed how the choice to examine the systems at play, instead of simply blaming individuals for actions we may not agree with, can lead to a much more productive understanding of our current political landscape.

How do you think this election will be remembered? 

Either as the beginning of the end, or the beginning of the beginning. It’s very hard to say, in this universe of political thinkers and talkers. Everybody always says, ‘this is the most important election of our lifetimes.’ We’ve all heard this before. This actually does feel like an important one, in an existential way, in terms of the future of both parties’ ideologies which are being wrangled with in really interesting ways, and in terms of the future of American values and identity. Belonging and inclusion or exclusion are being wrestled with in fundamental ways. Fundamental precepts of democracy, voice, respect, and civility are facing unprecedented turmoil in this election.

Which way does it go from here? I think it’ll keep getting worse in some of these regards, but it could be the moment where, historically we’ll look back and say, this is when it started to turn. The profound ugliness, elitism, and exclusion of the racial bias-fueling politics of the right for the last forty years probably won’t end after November. But this could be the moment we look back and say the wool was pulled off the disguised wolf and America saw it for what it was. I hope that’s the case, but I’m not sure.

You wrote for CNN that “so many Americans see the advancements of others as a strike against themselves.” Why do you think that is?

How much time do we have? This could be the entirety of the interview, trying to understand this. I’m careful not to say that people who support Donald Trump, or who are against affirmative action, or who think we need a wall between the United States and Mexico are racist. First, I think “racist” is a loaded word that shuts down the conversation. Second, it locates the whole conversation in the personal, while what we’re going through as a country is bigger than that.

This is about forty plus years of politics—largely fed by the right, but not exclusively—responding to the progressive successes of the New Deal in helping to build the white middle class. These politicians thought, ‘we can’t attack those policies on their face because they’re so effective, but we don’t like them. What are we going to do?’ When the Civil Rights movement came along, and Lyndon B. Johnson tried to expand these New Deal policies, which specifically excluded African Americans, the Right saw an opportunity to exploit and fan white racial resentment, to turn it against public policy the Right didn’t like.

So you had Nixon, Reagan, and this practice called the “Southern strategy,” but which was really a national strategy, of Dog Whistle racial politics. ‘We’re not going to say Black people are inferior, or endorse segregation; we’re going to move away from that. But we’ll talk about law and order, welfare cheats, and cadillac-driving Welfare Queens.’ If you’re Bill Clinton, you’ll talk about Super Predators.  They tried to feed into the notion, or create the notion, that by making our country more equal, by creating opportunity for people of color and Black people in particular, that you’re taking something away from white people. Your schools will get bad, your neighborhood will get dangerous, your property values will decrease, you won’t be able to get that job.

It fascinates me when I hear white liberals say off-handedly when they don’t get a job—‘Oh, they probably gave it to a person of color.’ No, they probably gave it to a white person. We know the statistics. If there are five job openings, and one goes to a person of color, the inclination as a white person is to say, ‘Oh, the person of color took my job,’ as opposed to the four other white people. The assumption is that you, as a white person, and the other white people, were entitled to the job, but the person of color only got the job because of affirmative action. White people reading this, even the good Clinton-supporting or Sanders-supporting liberals, can hear a kernel of truth—they’ve thought these things, too. Certainly it’s something to be held accountable for as an individual, but it’s not just about individual bias. It’s also about these social, political, and economic systems that have encouraged white people to think of equality as a zero-sum game.

There’s a great, unattributed quote: ‘When you’ve only ever known privilege, equality feels like oppression.’ That’s true.

This is also how you end up with an economic system where working class and middle class white folks vote for elite economics, which is mind-boggling unless you understand this notion of racial hierarchy and racial supremacy, which is very much in place today.

Can’t actually figure out what to do about it. If you point it out, half the country will say, ‘Sally, you’re the racist for bringing it up.’ It’s like blaming the person who pulls the fire alarm for starting the fire. But you can’t solve a problem if you don’t talk about it.

In your Ted Talk, you talk about emotional correctness. I think we could all use more of that every day, but do you have advice for someone who may have a hard time cultivating that emotional correctness because there’s so much at stake? I’m imagining a member of the Black Lives Matter movement who feels that ending police brutality is a matter of life or death for them, and then you have people vilifying them for questioning the police’s tactics.

I’m working on a book that’s informed by the idea of emotional correctness, the Ted Talk, and how we can be less uncivil and mean to each other in small ways and in massive ways, in terms of actual hate and violence. Part of my work with the book is me interrogating these questions, like, how much of this is naivete? There are times when incivility could be seen as being in furtherance of justice, but I maintain that there aren’t. That’s where I am the moment, and have been for a while.

If we look at the history of social justice movements, long before Black Lives Matter, there have been these tensions, the tensions between Martin Luther King’s idea that ‘Hate cannot solve hate; only love can do that,’ and Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and a very understandable desire to fight fire with fire, literally and metaphorically.

I personally, spiritually, and ethically fall on the side of peace, love, kindness, and civility as the antidote to hate, violence, and cruelty.

For me, the answer is try to lead by example with my own life and share those ideas, but that’s a far cry from proscribing that everyone should act that way in every single situation. It’s a personal choice. Now, there are some interesting and real tensions in social justice movements that I support, like Black Lives Matter or immigrant rights. There are dimensions of these movements that are more on one end of that spectrum than the other. That’s both an individual decision to make and a movement-wide struggle which is sort of healthy. For me, I try to find compassion for the people I not only disagree with, but who are fundamentally lacking in compassion for me and my side. So far I’ve found that effective.

I’ve been talking to people who have left movements of hate, like former white supremacists. One common thread in their transition out is that someone they would never have expected it from showed them compassion, like an African-American woman showing compassion to a white supremacist. I take that as a good sign.

Emotional correctness is a daily challenge. To me, it’s a daily spiritual practice. I could pick up my Twitter feed and find fifteen tweets that it would be so fun and gratifying to tweet rude, nasty responses to. It would probably feel great—I don’t know, I haven’t done it—but only for a few minutes.

I have a seven-year-old, and one thing you try to teach your kids is not just delayed gratification, but that you can make choices that aren’t just satisfying in the short-term but that are good for you, your family, and everyone around you in the long-term. I feel that way not just about social media but about being a public voice in general. Yes, you can say the thing that would be gratifying and cathartic in the short-term, that would get you the most clicks and the most airtime, but are you actually doing good for society and your own soul in the long-term? I don’t think so.

How do you explain thorny or even painful political topics to your daughter?

She’s only seven. By the time this comes out she’ll be eight. She’s very excited. She’ll also have pierced ears, so look out, Park Slope, when you see that bling walking down the street.

I realized this the other day when I did a CNN interview on Skype in my in-law’s basement, which one can do. Everybody wanted to watch it, because my in-laws wanted to see their basement on TV. We all watched it, including my daughter and her little aunt and uncle who are around her age. We were talking about some god awful thing Trump had said. I felt ashamed watching it, though not for anything I’d said. I pride myself on helping my child to be informed, engaged with the world, and thoughtful, in age-appropriate ways. This was one of the moments where I thought, I’m not sure if I want her to know this, that people are saying these things, and someone running for President is saying these things.

It’s a hard time to talk to kids about politics. The same thing goes with what’s happening around race and racial bias in this country. People, including well-meaning liberals, think the way to talk to their kids about race is to teach them to be color-blind. That’s not practical, first of all; it’s not the world we live in. Secondly, the elevation of color-blindness as a solution to racial injustice in this country is a right-wing adaptation intended to serve their agenda. As in, race can’t be a factor in affirmative action or public policy.

The same way we talk to our daughter about gender is the same way we talk about race. She picks up gender cues all the time—pink is for girls, blue is for boys; boys are good at this, girls are good at that. When we see these things in movies or in books, we say, ‘you know, the thing I don’t like about this is…’ and we help her deconstruct her environment, and think thoughtfully about the world as it is and the world as it should be, as opposed to letting her live within her metaphorically and literally lily-white bubble.

There’s an interesting conversation around police. As a white parent with a white kid in a somewhat diverse but still fairly privileged community, especially for New York City, my instinct is to teach my kid, if you’re ever in trouble, you can go to the police. But I don’t want to instill the notion in my child that ‘the police are always a good thing, so if someone is critiquing the police, then they’re necessarily wrong.’

We have to help our children understand from the very beginning that their perspective isn’t the only one in the world, which is incidentally really hard to do with little narcissists, which all seven-year-olds are. Like all of us, when I was a kid and didn’t finish the food on my plate, I was told, ‘there are starving kids in Ethiopia.’ It was very distant, but there are starving kids in New York, too, and we try to help her see that. There are things we’re fortunate to be able to expose her to, through travel, through having a diverse group of friends, through going to a racially and economically diverse school, but also in the way we talk to her, to help help her situate herself and deconstruct the world around her. That’s what makes a good citizen.

But she’s only seven. How do you explain Donald Trump to a seven-year-old?  How do you tell her, ‘you can’t talk this way. Even though Donald Trump said it, you can’t say it.’ My kid thinks that being President must be the greatest thing in the world, and you would have to be a pretty special person—a great role model—to run for President. The Right has made the same critique about rappers. Fine, some valid points, but what about your presidential candidate?

Some people say that you shouldn’t vote for ‘the lesser of two evils,’ but should vote your conscience, even if that means abstaining. What would you say about that in this election?

I’m going to say this as clearly and as non-judgmentally as I can—if you do not do everything you can to get Hillary Clinton elected this November, I think you have some soul-searching to do. This includes not just voting yourself, but spending your time, money, and talent to elect Clinton and defeat Donald Trump.

I’m a lifelong left-wing progressive. I agree our two-party system is broken, that the Democratic Party is too beholden to corporate interests, too hawkish, that a lot of these dynamics around Dog Whistle politics harken back to Bill Clinton. I’m not naive about the past and present structural issues in the Democratic Party, and the challenges and blindspots of Hillary Clinton in particular.

That said, elections are about choices. If we had a multi-party system, which I really wish we did, it would go a long way to address issues like the current hyper-partisanship. But when you have two parties, you have a choice. You pick one or pick the other. Any action you take is picking one or the other. I’ve admired Jill Stein for a long time. I find what she’s doing now unconscionable. Donald Trump isn’t Jeb Bush. If this was Jeb Bush, and we said, ‘Ok, it’s time to teach the Democratic Party a lesson. We’re going to use this as a teachable moment to transform the party for the future, and so it’ll stop taking these issues and these voters for granted.’ I’m down. But this isn’t that time.

And thinking like that assumes that the only way to have power or influence in this two-party system is by withholding votes. Look at the influence that Bernie Sanders had on the party platform; it’s the most progressive platform in history for either party. You can say, ‘look, you’ve  had influence by being at the table, and you can continue to do so.’ If Clinton wins, constituencies that weren’t involved in helping her get elected will have less input. When we talk about a broken political system, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, ‘who helps?’ We’re never going to have as much influence as big money, but if you didn’t help, if you weren’t there, you have no influence. Clinton has already moved to the left in this election, but the larger point is, you can engage in that struggle, but you can’t win it. I’ve talked to people on the left who insist they’re not going to vote for Hillary. Some of those people have the luxury to do that because Trump’s policies won’t affect them. They’re not immigrants who will be deported or whose families will be broken up, they’re not Muslims who will be treated with suspicion and whose loved ones won’t be able to come into the country.

Also, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can support Hillary Clinton. I don’t think she’s the lesser of two evils. When you look at what she stands for and what Sanders and Jill Stein stand for, there’s 80% or 90% overlap. There are real, serious issues around which we should still be struggling, but to cast those disagreements as overly broad is disingenuous and in the case of this election, very dangerous.

I get emotional about it. I was a Hillary Clinton critic, I remain a critic, I was a Sanders supporter. But you don’t go and elect a protofascist hatemonger and call yourself a Leftie. Clinton wants to raise taxes on the rich; Trump wants to give away $7 billion in tax giveaways to millionaires and billionaires. Clinton believes in public education, while I think Donald Trump wants to get rid of the Department of Education. These are fundamental things. The edges of the conversation are essential, but I think the core of agreement between Sanders, Stein, and Clinton is profound, vast, and not to be overlooked.

What was it like to be at the Democratic National Convention?

It was very helpful, inspiring, and positive. I learned things about Hillary Clinton I didn’t know. Her record fighting school segregation early on, the work she’s done for foster kids in New York City, her deep commitment to children with disabilities, and to 9/11 victims’ families, survivors, and first-responders. I used to question whether Clinton was a progressive. The Convention challenged me, in that I don’t think she’s a progressive on certain issues, but on other issues, she is. It’s dangerous if we become too dogmatic. And she’s the first presidential candidate to talk about getting rid of the Hyde Amendment and expanding access to abortion. In my book, that’s progressive. So the Convention made my image of Hillary Clinton more complex.

It was also incredibly inspiring to me, in the juxtaposition with the Republican National Convention, which was not only frightening because of Trump’s rhetoric, but also decisively white. That reflects choices made by the Republican Party post-1964, to be the party of white people, and they’re succeeding. Going to the DNC helped me appreciate that the Democratic Party is a diverse, pluralistic party that’s largely led by women of color, in terms of the Convention and now the DNC itself with Donna Brazile. Appreciating the social and political significance of that made me proud to be a democrat.

Did the anti-Clinton mood wane?

Yes. People needed to get it out of their system. Bernie did a good job going group to group, talking to folks. A larger percentage of Sanders supporters now support Hillary than her supporters supported Obama in 2008. It continues to strike me that some of these Bernie-or-bust people were very pro-Obama, and Hillary is running to the left of Obama, or at least his governance for the last seven years.

Has your work as a community organizer influenced your current work in media?

Yes. Organizing is about communicating ideas to people, helping make ideas accessible and understood. That carries over.

What do you think is the most pressing issue for Park Slope residents to be involved in? 

There’s something about the complacency of liberalism, that everyone in Park Slope should be thinking about. There’s the notion that ‘we live in a progressive bubble, so we’re good.’ Demographically, it’s a diverse community, but there’s a fair amount of hierarchy and segregation in Park Slope. Are people thinking about the overwhelming whiteness of PS 321 and the implications of that? Are they thinking about their nannies and housekeepers, how much they’re being paid, and whether they’re getting paid sick days? As liberal Park Slope people, we say, ‘Of course we support raising wages and paid sick days,’ but are we doing that for the people who work for us who, in this neighborhood, are largely women of color? Systems of inequality and patterns of bias are about systems and structures, but they’re also about us. I’m not saying, put on a hair shirt. Don’t walk around feeling guilty and suffering. But everyone can ask what they can do in their own lives, not to mention their own companies and investments. We can ask ourselves, am I investing in companies with diverse leadership in terms of people of color and women? In every facet of our personal and professional life, can we all look at how we can do 20% better? What kind of difference would that make? Especially for people with privilege and power, which people in Park Slope tend to have.

What is your favorite part of living in Park Slope?

I love running into friends, knowing people on our block, having neighbors we hang out with. I do love off-leash hour. I wish it were an hour later on weekends. I love small businesses. I love the walkability. A lot of what I love is about city life in general, but there is a really lovely sense of community and belonging that’s delightful.

As the weather cools but the presidential election heats up this fall, we can hope that the values of community, belonging, inclusion, and civility are given their due.

Dog Aspirational, With Lingering Doubts

By Filed Under: Park Slope Life Tagged With: ,

 

Well, it’s been decided that my daughter will indeed get a dog. Which means we’ll all get a dog, since we all know the idea that the dog will be “her responsibility” is a fiction at any age, but certainly at six. So now it’s just a matter of when and what.

I find that big life decisions are best made in two phases. Take, for instance, having a child in the first place. This is the purpose of gestation. You first decide you want to have a child, and then you wait a while — however long it takes to get pregnant and then grow and deliver a baby, or to adopt or use a surrogate or what have you. The waiting period is strategic. It’s the world’s way of helping you come to terms with the reality of your decision and start to grasp its full implications. I remember in the movie Baby Boom when the Diane Keaton character is suddenly, unexpectedly given the baby of a distant, deceased relative, and her life falls into complete chaos. Of course, even if you had months or years warning, having a child leads to complete chaos. But less, I think.

And so I’m imagining that anticipating the having of a dog will help prepare the way for the real thing. I’ve noticed myself now thinking things like, “I guess now would be a fine time to walk the dog if we had the dog,” and “That looks like a sturdy brand of carpet cleaner for when we have the dog.” This is like how world-class runners prepare for a race by visualizing the route over and over again in their heads. I’m picturing the carpet stains.

But at the same time, I’m also making excuses. Especially when it comes to when we actually cross that threshold from fiction into reality. We can’t get a dog now, I think. It’s summer. It’s too hot. And we already have vacation plans that are dog-less. That beach rental doesn’t allow dogs, and it would be negligent to leave it alone so soon. Which leaves the fall. But that’s back to school, hectic enough. And piles of leaves mean ticks, right? Winter? No way! Too cold, wet paws, plus I hear that salt on the sidewalks really hurts them. So spring it is! It seems far enough away to not be anytime soon.

As for the kind of dog, this is a matter of much contention. First there’s age. Do we want a puppy or a more seasoned, broken in year-or-so-old dog? From what I gather, each has distinct advantages. Older dogs are already mellowed out and, apparently, sometimes come housebroken. Hence no stains, or fewer anyway. But what the hell is the point of getting a dog if you don’t get a puppy? Sure, they’re difficult, but they’re also adorable as all get out and they’re cuddly and they smell good. My six-year-old has stopped smelling good. It would be nice to have something good smelling in the house. At least until it stains the carpet.

Lastly, we’re up in the air as to breed. Me, I want a mutt from the pound. That seems to me the most socially responsible option as well as the best statistical bet, combining the best of several breeds into one better-than-average result. My daughter wants an Irish Wolf Hound. This, in case you didn’t know, it a dog the size of a small convertible. It is literally bigger than her bedroom. And it is not cuddly, though it doesn’t require much exercise which is a definite plus. But to me, Wolf Hounds look sort of the dogs that might accompany the grim reaper and I worry that in the middle of the night, catching its passing shadow might cause me to have a heart attack. I don’t want to have a heart attack.

Meanwhile my partner wants a Bernedoodle. This is a Bernese Mountain Dog crossed with a Poodle. They are absolutely as cute and cuddly as they are expensive, which is to say very. Plus there’s a not small part of me that worries that if I start by giving into a designer dog, next thing my partner will want a designer handbag or something, and we can’t really afford that either.

All of which leaves us, I suppose, in the category of “Dog Aspirational, With Lingering Doubts.” Suggestions welcome.