About Talia Whyte

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The Future is in the City

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IMG_00000711A couple of weeks ago I went to a fascinating new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts called Megacities Asia.  It is the museum’s largest exhibit so far to focus on contemporary art, which can be vehicles for discussions about current issues.  All the art pieces gave commentary on urban consumption and sustainability – plastic, slum life, kitchenware, bamboo and what does it really mean to be green.  A “megacity” is an urban area with at least 10 million inhabitants, and Asia is home to most of these large cities – Mumbai, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and Delhi.  Most of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050.  Both China and India will have a billion people living in their respective cities by then too.    

American cities are also growing.  Statistically, the millennials are moving into cities at a higher rate than previous generations, as they don’t want to own or drive cars, and want to live in urban areas where there is more diversity and use their money instead on purchasing the latest “iThing.”  This is a major contrast from previous generations, whose idea of the “American dream” was moving to the suburbs to buy a home and a car and raise a family.  With bigger cities come bigger problems.  All growing cities around the world have the same common problem of creating a balanced, sustainable living situation for these new urbanites.  This will require new, innovative solutions to food, housing, health, environment and transportation.

Since I am a lifelong Bostonian who has many thoughts on improving transportation in my city, I thought I would share them here again.  Many of these suggestions can also be used in other cities.

  1. Car Bans: I notice in Madrid that cars are permanently banned in central, mostly congested areas.  The city just extended this banned into residential areas.  People who live in those neighborhoods can still drive their cars, but non-residents driving into those neighborhoods are fined.  If there can’t be a permanent ban, why not just a temporary ban on weekends and holidays?
  2. Incentives: Give people discounts or vouchers for using public transit or bikes.  Personally, I would like a discount on my monthly MBTA pass for being a frequent user.  (But knowing how the T operates, I don’t see this happening anytime soon, unfortunately…)
  3. More Bike Sharing: The Hubway bikes seem to be mostly stationed in central, more touristy parts of the city.  It would be great to have more bike sharing stations spread out in residential areas, especially in transit-starved Mattapan, Roxbury and parts of Dorchester.
  4. More Bike Lanes: It would be nice to have more bike lanes, or in Copenhagen’s case, more bike “superhighways” dedicated to both commuter and recreational cyclists alike.  I went riding on the Minuteman Bikeway recently and thought to myself why doesn’t Boston have more bike paths like this one.
  5. More Pedestrian Zones: More green spaces, upgraded parks and wider sidewalks would be nice.  As a runner, I would like to see more jogging paths and other recreational spaces that are designed to be easier on the knees when the foot strikes the ground, such as asphalt pathways.
  6. Extend Subway Lines and Service: This might be a good time for the city to think about extending rapid transit into areas that really need it, like along bus routes 28 and 32.  And, no, not another Silver Line; a real subway line is needed.  I don’t know how this can be done, but more efficient public transit is needed in those areas.  Also, if residents become more reliant on public transit, the MBTA should consider starting 24-hour service.  (I know it’s a stretch, but we can all dream sometimes!)

My Questions and Concerns about Police Body Cameras

body cameraA week ago I attended this community meeting about a new pilot body camera program the Boston Police Department will be launching this summer.  Clearly, the city is trying to avoid a potential Trayvon Martin/Michael Brown/Freddie Gray situation by starting this much needed program.  BPD plans to have 100 volunteer patrol officers around the city equipped with Body Worn Cameras (BWC) for six months, starting possibly next month.  The goal for the pilot is to test out the technology and see how it impacts crime and interactions with the community.

This is a really interesting issue that brings up more questions and concerns than answers.  I jotted down some points made during the meeting below.  These are not in any particular order; just random thoughts:

Privacy

  1. Is there a right to privacy concern here?  Can police turn on and off the camera at their own discretion, or can the person coming into contact with the police ask to have the camera on or off?
  2. When should the camera be off?  Should confidential information be recorded, and what is considered confidential?
  3. Should cameras be off when the police enter a private residence?  What constitutes as consent?  Two-party consent (In Massachusetts we have a wiretap law that hasn’t been updated since 1968)?  Should an incident involving a young child or domestic abuse in a private residence be recorded?  Who consents for the child, especially if a parent or guardian isn’t available? If it is a domestic dispute, what happens when one partner consents and the other partner doesn’t consent to cameras?
  4. If a camera is on while in the private residence (with consent) and something is recorded that wasn’t intended to be recorded that might be illegal (i.e. a marijuana joint lying around…), can that be used against the consented person criminally?
  5. Police officers should always tell the person they are interacting with that they have a camera on.  Should the camera be on when the officer is making this notification and then turn it off if the person doesn’t consent?
  6. Do officers themselves have a right to privacy?

Limitations

  1. Cameras don’t follow the police officer’s eyes and see what they see all the time.
  2. Cameras have poor visibility in the dark.
  3. Cameras can never replace an in-depth investigation.

Storage

  1. During the pilot, both cloud-based and local storage options are being considered.  How long will the authorities keep a video?  Who has access to the video?  
  2. How much will this cost the taxpayers?
  3. Should videos of nonviolent, minor offenses be immediately deleted? Who is authorized to delete that video?
  4. How do you make sure there is adequate security for videos, and that they don’t get into the wrong hands?
  5. Can videos, especially ones that record controversial, high profile interactions, be made available for the public to view? How would it be distributed?   
  6. Will videos only be used for police training purposes?
  7. Can videos be subpoenaed?  Are they subject to public records laws?

ACLU

  1. The local ACLU chapter is requesting that officers be disciplined for violating camera rules. What are the disciplinary rules?
  2. They are also requesting that officers never record First Amendment activities – speech, protest, religion, assembly and press. What if a crime takes place during said First Amendment activities, like a physical assault takes place during a protest?
  3. They are requesting that cameras not be used for intelligence surveillance, biometric analysis, and facial recognition, especially with protesters or other First Amendment activities.  But what if a crime is taken place when there is a need for surveillance?

Administration

  1. How do you make sure videos are used to hold officers accountable for their actions?
  2. If the pilot goes well, the initiative could go full steam ahead in 2017 and all officers, except those working undercover, will be required to wear cameras.  How will undercover cops be held accountable?
  3. Will there be extra vigilance with cameras on alleged “bad” cops?
  4. Will officers be required to file reports before viewing videos so their reports won’t be biased?
  5. During the pilot, who is allowed to volunteer?  Apparently, cameras will be evenly distributed all over the city and in different operations.  Someone at the meeting suggested having 90 officers be volunteers and 10 of them be mandatory for the officers with the worst records, which is a good idea.
  6. Can videos be monitored in real time? Can administrators view videos as an interaction is happening?  What type of police interaction would constitute the need for such monitoring?

The Future

  1. Where does the future of police body cameras go from here?  Someone at the meeting who said they were a teacher wouldn’t mind if classrooms had cameras to record incidents with unruly students, which opens up a whole other can of worms.  Should security guards in schools and other public buildings have body cameras?

As one person at the meeting said, “The cameras are coming; it is just a matter of implementing them.”  The best thing about body cameras is that it opens up the door to seeing what is really happening beyond shootings and killing, and effectively dealing with those issues.  But it also creates more concerns about how society is slowly turning into a hyper-surveillance police state.  I am very interested in knowing what many of you in other states and even other countries that have more experience with this issue think.  Please leave comments below or email me.  I would love to hear what you think!

Would Jackie Robinson Be A Republican Today?

Jackie RobinsonA couple of weeks ago, PBS aired the latest Ken Burns documentary on baseball legend Jackie Robinson.  What stood out to me when I was watching this was his civil rights and political activism after retiring from baseball, and how similar the discussion was in the 1960s about the black vote and the Democratic party is to the conversation today in this year’s presidential election.

Soon after his retirement from the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson became a columnist for the New York Post, where he wrote mostly about non-sports related topics like lynchings in the South, school integration, and even the perceived racism in the Red Sox organization for being the last baseball team to not have a black player.

Politically he considered himself an independent who had torn support for FDR’s New Deal and and the Party of Lincoln.  Robinson was a supporter of the two-party system and looked at the issues and not the party affiliation.  He thought it was bad for African-Americans to vote in lock stock for Democrats all the time because they lost leverage on issues concerning them.  From the end of the Civil War up until the 1940s, most African-Americans were Republicans.

He first leaped into politics with the 1960 presidential election when he declared his support for Richard Nixon.  While his civil rights record wasn’t all that great, Robinson saw potential for Nixon to do better by African-Americans.  On the other hand, John F. Kennedy didn’t really take the civil rights movement seriously either and picked Texas governor Lyndon B. Johnson to be his running mate to appease white southerners.       

Martin Luther King may have had a significant role in solidifying the black vote for Democrats for years to come when he was arrested and sentenced to a chain gang at a Georgia prison for four months for a trumped up traffic violation two weeks before the election.  Robinson asked Nixon to help get King out of jail, but Nixon refused.  Meanwhile, Kennedy called Coretta Scott King to comfort her and his brother Robert made the arrangements to get King out of jail.  The phone call was spearheaded by Kennedy’s civil rights aide Harris Wofford (who is making news for other reasons this week). After this, black voters returned the favor to Kennedy by helping him get elected in a race that was decided by only 100,000 votes.

Robinson was punished for his Nixon support when his column was permanently cancelled in the then liberal New York Post.

In 1964 Robinson got back into presidential politics by supporting the then Republican Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who was socially liberal and fiscally moderate.  White Republicans turned to support the more conservative Barry Goldwater, who was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and openly supported his racist supporters in his presidential campaign.  

Robinson protested Goldwater, saying he was a bigot and was setting the country backwards.  

“I’m an American Negro first, than a member of any party,” Robinson said.

During the 1964 GOP convention, Robinson and other black Republicans were harassed on the convention floor.  Many members of the KKK were also at the convention to support Goldwater.  While Goldwater got the Republican nomination, he was ultimately beaten by LBJ.  

Even since then, Republicans have struggled to regain a significant black voter base.  The GOP has embarked on several “minority outreach” initiatives over the years.  But all that work to bring back black voters to the Republican party may have been set back by 50 years with the rise of Donald Trump, who is using Goldwater tactics in his own campaign.

Nonetheless, Robinson was right about blacks only voting for one party all the time.  Sure, the GOP needs to do better to get our vote, but so do the Democrats.  Because of this longtime support, Democrats have now taken for granted the black vote.  The way Hillary Clinton has handled the controversy around her husband’s 1994 crime bill has bothered many black people, with the thinking that the Democrats would be handling it differently if they knew they could lose the black vote because of it.  And let’s not forget Clinton’s continuously offensive hot sauce, CP Time pandering to black people.  But it won’t even matter because she will mostly likely still get the majority black vote.

I too try to look at the issues before party affiliation.  I mostly support the Democrats because their policies are more inline with my perspective, not necessary because of party loyalty.  I’m not a staunch Hillary supporter; I just think she is the lesser of the five evils currently running for president and she would be ready to lead on day one because of her experience.  I think it is also important to be an informed voter, and that is why I have watched most of the Republican and Democratic debates, town halls, rallies and forums so I can make an informed decision in November.

As for Jackie Robinson, I don’t know what his party affiliation would have been today.  But after viewing the documentary, I got the impression that if Robinson hadn’t died suddenly from a heart attack in 1972, he would have ran for a political office himself.  He would certainly be calling out Trump on his bigoted ways, unlike Ben Carson.  If he became a politician, he would have definitely have had a significant influence on black voters today, regardless of political affiliation, and that would have been interesting.  

Making Thoughtful Global Educational Connections Through Technology

suvansri-creatingmeaningfulglobalconnections-authorMuch of the divisiveness going on today, especially in the U.S. presidential campaigning, is due in large part to ignorance.  Whether we are talking about intolerance towards Muslims, Latin American immigrants, Syrian refugees or young black males, much of the fear of the “other” seems to really come from a place of not knowing a lot about people who are different and understanding their perspectives.

This is why I am big proponent of using literature as a way to educate people about differences.  However, technology takes learning to a higher level of interaction.

I was really excited to read this story about an American middle school class that has reinvented what a pen pal is in 2016.  After having her class read I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, Connecticut educator Bridget Suvansri had her students collaborated one-on-one with middle-school peers at an independent school in Karachi, Pakistan via video message exchange.  Facilitated by the educational technology firm Level Up Village, the American and Pakistani students were able to discuss issues such as cultural stereotypes, common misconceptions, leadership and role models, community service, and life in both Pakistan and the United States.

The exchange was meaningful because all the students developed more empathy for each other.  The most interesting part of this is that the Pakistani students have most likely not read Yousafza’s book, due to her controversial rise to fame.  However, both the American and Pakistani students were able to discuss the themes in her book, namely unequal access to education in Pakistan.  

Most importantly, all the students have learned that they have more in common than they thought before this program began.  This is what respecting diversity should look like!  

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