Voting?…I Am Gonna Need To See Some ID

What the fuck? I cannot believe the Supreme Court has just ruled to uphold state laws requiring voters to provide a valid photo ID in order to be allowed to vote. According to the majority opinion (Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Stevens, Roberts, and Kennedy) making such demands on voters does not interfere with the voting process. I can imagine this “minor” detail affecting people’s ability to even register to vote. Voter registration drives will now have to concern themselves not only with registering new voters, but also with disseminating information on how folks can get a valid ID in order to vote. I did not have a valid photo ID until well into my 18th birthday and that was because I had to open up a bank account. I can tell you that it was an ordeal, which included two trips to the DMV in Harlem, waiting in line for five hours on each occasion. In addition to the elderly and poor people, whom critics of the ruling cite as being disproportionately impacting, I would like to also add geographic considerations: people living in urban areas. Growing up in NYC, there was no need to have a drivers license. Driving is only something I learned while living in Providence. I'm sure that rural voters also face similar hurdles, if not worse hurdles, considering our current lack of investment in our public transportation infrastructures. Anyway, I registered to vote on the day I turned 18. Looking back it was good to know that the process did not seem as hassle-prone as it looks like it is becoming.

Keepin’ the Capitalism Alive

Recently, this savage detective has been learning a lot about the experiences of prisoners behind bars. For instance, according to one of the inmates, prisoners usually need money after they are arrested to purchase items while behind bars. The anonymous’ source provided me with a receipt of items purchased behind bars. The shopping list reads like items advertised to college students living in college dorms: flip flops, socks, raisin bran cereal, a jar of peanut butter, instant rice, shampoo, conditioner, nail clippers, pilot pens, etc. Oh yeah, and popcorn.

Prisoners can get a pair of Nike sneakers for $59.80. One plantain cost $1.00. Damn, you can buy 8 of those for a dollar uptown!

It is good to know that inmates will still know how to participate in the mainstream economy once they get out from behind bars. But, I ask myself, why do prisoners have to buy stuff? Don’t we spend about $30,000 for every person who is locked up?

A baffled detective.

Does Ed Matter?

I am always hesitant to write postings about education for multiple reasons. For one, I spend my days grappling with state educational policies supportive of college preparation and improving the graduation rates of low-income, first-generation and students of color. Secondly, I believe the tool of education is marginal in bringing about short-term social change, as a change in improving worker’s wages, or guaranteeing citizens free healthcare. In fact, most of the arguments supportive of education are mainly concerned with its potential to bring about long-term social equality, rather than any short-term tangential results. However, I believe there are short-term benefits to education that are vital to the well being (socially, psychically, and economical) of the individual. the education of It is this unique characteristic of education that make it difficult to determine

The limits of these perspectives are evident in two op-eds focused on the “crisis” in education and featured in the New York Times this past week. Although I believe overall educational opportunities are diminishing by the minute, I put crisis in quotations to emphasize how the nature of the educational “crisis” has historically affected inner cities and rural communities disproportionately.

In the first article to appear this week, Bob Herbert rightly acknowledges how the U.S. needs to invest in the educational infrastructure. Herbert’s evidence of the broken U.S. education system is the current high school dropout rate and the growing ignorance among young people. In fact, the test of ignorance comes from students’ lack of rote memorization of U.S. historical facts, such as not knowing that the Bill of Rights guarantees the separation of church and state. I don’t know if this has many short-term implications considering that young people are growing up in a time where these two divisions are blurred. This might be a reflection of our contemporary political climate.

By using knowledge of U.S. historical fact to test the state of our educational system, Herbert is in essence evoking the notion of education as a nation-building project, which forges a common understanding of democratic principles. I believe this is where the short-term potential of education is apparent; in its ability to muster.

Edward B. Fiske’s op-ed piece Friday morning provides a summary of the lasting legacy of a nation at risk is the advent of ed-reform upon ed-reform. Of course, the thought that education reforms are relatively new phenomena is false. The entire 20th century witnessed the expansion of compulsory education in the U.S., and multiple thoughts as to the purpose of education and which populations are to be served by the system.
I appreciate Fiske’s piece for what Herbert’s article ignores, namely that rote memorization is not indicative of the quality of an education system. This is exactly what is our current experience under NCLB.

Both authors differ in how they treat our current economic downturn in relationship to educational opportunities. Herbert relies on the threat of international economic competition to garner reader empathy and action. Subsequently, it plays on American \ fears of losing its economic dominance in the world. Erroneously, I would say that
Herbert is mistaken. A college degree is not crucial for a middle class lifestyle, but that a master’s degree is the only guarantee of it.

It's not a house party in Providence, but...

It was a few years ago Janet and I learned that Junot Diaz had made appearances at certain house parties thrown by Brown students in Providence, but had never made any sort of public appearance on the campus.  Naturally, then, when I heard the Pulitzer news, I couldn't help but wonder if he'd returned to his old stomping grounds to celebrate.  In fact, I was going to post something snarky about it here, but life got busy and, well, then I came across an excerpt from an email he wrote to Gregory Cowles at the Times.

So, while Dominican intellectuals everywhere celebrate this victory by yelling even louder at their professors to include all two Dominican-written books on their Latino lit syllabi (Drown being the other), Junot wandered back from the banks of the Hackensack to his bucolic Perth Amboy home to sit with a baby on his lap and reminisce with his mother.  Who knew he had it in him to be so whimsical?  

And who knew he could write an entire paragraph without cussing?

Terror in Da 'Hood

Would you be comfortable with Boston University creating a lab to study the ebola virus in your neighborhood? Neither are the residents of Roxbury in Boston, who have been fighting BU on this environmental justice issue.

The savage detectives, appalled about the prospect of having to evacuate the city, or to remain quarantined in our apartments while the rest of the city goes to shit, have decided to join the residents in their long-time struggle. Although we reside in Cambridge and Somerville, it is not comforting to know that all of the city’s evacuation signs lead to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s home in Hyde Park. Despite his crucial location in the event of a disaster (which has happened in many other cities), Mayor Menino has repeatedly refused to meet with anti-biolab representatives.

We believe that this biolab would represent much of what is most fucked up about U.S. society right now: the testing and manufacturing of illegal biochemical weapons for our next disgusting immoral imperial war; funneling federal dollars to one of the most reactionary, anti-intellectual universities around and its biotech partners (as a side benefit, the WMD showcase will add yet another layer of meaning to ex-president and neocon John Silber’s “straight shooting” motto); and of course, endangering the lives of residents of the already underserved community of Roxbury, and to a lesser degree all of our lives.

Also, has BU translated any of its informational materials into Spanish? Haitian Creole? Vietnamese?
(Hint: NO)

Watch (or talk to us) for updates about a nationwide environmental justice conference, a ballot question in November, a zombie march, and other actions. We urge you to get involved, particularly those of you who already harbor revenge fantasies.

in solidarity,
dos detectives salvajes
p.s. Read the article in the Boston Phoenix!!

The Savage Book Corner: Oscar Update

Did the “Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao” win a Pulitzer Prize today? Damn, there must have been a shortage of really good books written this year. I am tempted to cite my review of the book, but self-promotion within my own blog is a little excessive.

Where Did She Go?

Dear loyal fans 8=)

Pardon for being M.I.A. over the past month. Family duties beckoned and so I have been camping out in NYC over the past three weekends!!!

I send a warm welcome to Amanda! I look forward to your “dispatches from the 6”: social commentaries about current events, book events, political and sports scandals that emerge from my home state, etc. I am curious to learn more about what the “6” has to offer since, I have to say, it is a much nicer train than the A, 1 or 9 trains. Is it because it stops at City Hall? Huh!

The invisible detective. (Guess who?)