Transcript
Sara Kamali:
Good afternoon, everyone. I hope everyone is having a productive and enjoyable conference thus far. Welcome to the Panel on Housing, Health and Equity: Government as a Site for Intersectional Justice, sponsored by the Applied Religious Studies Committee of the American Academy of Religion.
Sara Kamali:
My name is Sara Kamali. I earned my PhD in religious studies at the university of California, Santa Barbara. My own scholarship and activism centers on intersectional equity. I specifically examine how institutions oppress and minoritize people, as well as maintain systems of privilege for a select few, with the aim of advancing justice for all. I have also been a member of the Applied Religious Studies Committee for the past two years, and I'm on the Steering Committee for the Comparative Approaches to Religious Violence Unit at the AAR.
Sara Kamali:
To headline today's conversation, after my opening statements and my introduction of the esteemed panelists, each of them will present their initial remarks, and then they will be joined in conversation with Dr. Shawn Landres. Towards the end of the session, we will engage in a Q&A with the audience. So, for those of you who would like to participate, please speak into the microphones at the front of the room. Yes, right here, the one microphone at the front of the room.
Sara Kamali:
I would like to point out that today's session is being recorded for posterity and will be uploaded to the AAR SoundCloud channel and podcast. So, please pass the word along for those who are interested in attending but couldn't. As you may know from the committee's name, the purpose of the Applied Religious Studies Committee is to engage with the many career pathways for scholars of religion within the halls of academe and also beyond. This means not only supporting graduate students, in particular, in what is a challenging job market with dwindling tenure track jobs, but also in providing them opportunities to discuss career choices beyond teaching and research.
Sara Kamali:
Ultimately, the ARSC seeks to explore ways that faculty institutions and the AAR itself can enhance support of religious studies scholars looking into and pursuing non-faculty careers. Indeed, religious studies itself continues to be an important academic field of inquiry, despite the self-reported declining levels of religiosity and religious attendance in the United States and around the world.
Sara Kamali:
In 1963, Thomas Clark, a former associate justice of the US Supreme court wrote in the majority opinion of Abington v. Schempp, "It might well be said that one's education is not complete without the study of comparative religion or the history of religion." This still holds true today. Certainly, as the most recent presidential administration has taught us is that religion is not passe, but is as dynamic as perhaps it ever was.
Sara Kamali:
The American political landscape is shaped by religion in ways that don't immediately register as faith-based communities or motivated in part by their religious identities to take action in the world. Those actions can have positive effects, such as social outreach or providing a sense of community, or negative ones, including intolerance of others. The principle concern of religious studies then is to examine how different religious groups imagine the world differently, which ultimately affects how they respond to contemporary concerns.
Sara Kamali:
Local policymakers are increasingly working closely with faith-based community partners in negotiating with multi-religious and multiracial organizing coalitions for progress on thorny issues, from climate change and economic inequality to housing, homelessness, and racial equity. It is these partnerships that have proved to be critical engines of progress in the face of increasing policy paralysis in Washington.
Sara Kamali:
Given the relevance of religion and religious studies to today's political climate and American government, today's distinguished panelists will be discussing the viability of government as a career path to religious study students and contingent faculty. Each of these political leaders have religious studies connections in the background and have made substantial contributions to the public good beyond the academy. They will also be discussing how their religious studies backgrounds have influenced their political lives, ethical considerations and public policy work.
Sara Kamali:
Now, onto the formal introductions of our distinguished panelists. Okay. Congresswoman Lois Capps retired in 2016 after serving nine terms in the US House of Representatives. She earned her MA in religion from Yale University while working as head nurse at Yale New Haven Hospital, and later an MA in education from UC Santa Barbara. The founder of the Santa Barbara County Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting project and former director of the Parent and Child Enrichment Center, Representative Capps brought her health equity concerns to her service in Congress, as well as their commitment to fighting climate change and advancing LGBT equality. Her memoirs, Keeping Faith in Congress: Why Persistence, Compassion, and Teamwork Will Save Our Democracy were published in 2018.
Sara Kamali:
Mayor Sadaf Jaffer is a scholar of South Asian Islamic in Gender studies, and since January 2019, as mayor of Montgomery Township, New Jersey, the nation's first female Muslim mayor, first female Pakistani American mayor, and first female South Asian American mayor. As an academic, she aims to understand modern Muslim societies by looking beyond self-consciously religious circles to shapers a film and literary culture. As a civic leader, she uses her training as an educator to engage her community in understanding and appreciating the deep ethnic and religious diversity that has come to characterize it.
Sara Kamali:
Los Angeles County Supervisor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, one of America's most powerful local elected officials, has led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles, and served as Los Angeles County City Council Member, currently in his third term as a leader of the nation's largest county. His district alone has a population larger than 14 US states. Supervisor Ridley-Thomas received his PhD in social ethics from USC and has brought his commitment to social criticism and social change to his focus on the homelessness crisis, health services and biomedical research, open data and racial equity.
Sara Kamali:
So, please join me in welcoming Congressperson Lois Capps. Okay. So, yes. Just for those of you listening in the future in SoundCloud, we are going to wait for Supervisor Ridley-Thomas to join us. In radio, silence is not welcome, but I suppose on SoundCloud, they're allowed to do.
Sara Kamali:
So, the question was, what is the population of LA County? It is 10 million. Okay. So, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Supervisor Ridley-Thomas.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Well, thanks very much. I'm pleased to be here. And thank you very much, Dr. Kamali, for that stellar introduction that I heard every word off. This presentation is on the ethics of traffic. I can spend quite a bit of time on that subject today. I'll try to blaze through these remarks as quickly as I can, and thank Mayor Jaffer and Congresswoman Capps for aiding me in my hour of need here. And to Dr Landres, thank you for pushing me away through. 30 years ago, I was deeply engaged in the work of social ethics from an academic perspective, and the focus I had was on social criticism and social change.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Most of us know what that largely entails, a subset of moral philosophy that launched in the 19th century and tried to look at the ethical dimensions of social science and public policy. And I've been trying to work that out over the span of my public career. So, ever since I was elected to public office, I've been acting as a social ethicist and a servant leader trying to interject notions of norms and warrants, values, claims, and rights, and pursuit of the common good.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
That's essentially what I've done and what I do. How many people here still see themselves as social ethicists by profession or otherwise, formally? And to the extent that that is the case, you know what we tried to do. We try to look at public policy. We look at social systems. We try to understand, more importantly, analyze and prescribe what ought to be done in the face of systems that demean or diminish the quality of life of anyone.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
So, ethicists tend to want to know what to do and how it ought to be done. Theologians, specifically, systematicians want to know how to think or believe. And somehow we need to learn how to integrate those two, and we know that there are distinctions of consequence. The individual that may have had most impact, some of you will appreciate on the field of social ethics, in terms of those who came through that tradition over the last half century, probably was Martin Luther King Jr. Himself. More dissertations written on Dr. King than any other figure that you can point to.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
He said it himself that had he known what he was doing when he left the Morehouse and went through Crozier and then ultimately to Boston, had he had known more, he would have probably focused on social ethics rather than systematics. And that gave some of us an opportunity to pick up where he thought he was leaving off, at least in terms of his academic work.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Let me say then how we think of this. The focus of my work has been to critique the status quo and to push for systemic social change. Now, if you're in the public sector and hold an elected office, that typically is going to mean that you're pushing for reform. That is essentially the language of change and of progress in the context of governance.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
One of the areas that we are spending the most time on is on the question of homelessness. We can't get around it even if we want it to. May I share with you just a little data, because good social ethicists rely on data. In the County of Los Angeles, as prosperous as it is, and a state of California as wealthy as California is, all of what that looks like in the context of a nation that is premier in so many ways, we have what I want to describe as a moral crisis that will not abate unless we bring the analytical tools to bear in which we've been trained.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
So, I believe that this is a civic legacy that will be front and center in the eyes of generations to come, and over half million people in this country experience homelessness every single night. California happens to be the epicenter of that, with 130, meaning almost a quarter of the nation's homeless population. LA County, roughly 40% of the state's homeless population. And every single night, 58,000 people. Let me say it in these terms, 58,000 reasons compel us to do more on the issue of alleviating and ultimately eradicating this set of circumstances, which I want to say, denies robs people of their dignity and their worth, and where they find themselves with regularity, is not meant for human habitation.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Los Angeles, the skylines that provides stark illustration in terms of income and wealth in our region. Los Angeles, on the one hand, extraordinary wealth at the helm and abject poverty. Los Angeles, an example of what discordance can be evident in our space, and yet we have a need to address it. This conference, this topic of intersectionality is one that gets our attention.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
You know the name of Kimberle Crenshaw. In 1989, she came forward towards the notion of intersectionality and was looking at race, class, gender, and other characteristics that intersect one another and overlap. A legal scholar by training at UCLA and at Columbia, she's at both institutions, and a very fine scholar, with a lot of respect for her.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Then there's Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, a political scientists at the University of Southern California, both of whom worked through this discussion in terms of an intersectional approach to research on subjects like welfare reform, criminal justice reform with, in their cases, agenda analysis, homelessness as a policy, challenge as a society of intersectionality, a point of convergence for a range of fields, religion, politics, sociology, medicine, economic, and dare I say ethics.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
So, the solutions to homelessness will inevitably draw on a range of disciplines and practices. And from a social ethics framework, policymakers, theologians, doctors, economists must be willing to step forth and collaborate and ask fundamental questions, questions that go to the question of the issue of what is right, what is ethically correct. Some say they'll have to ask the question, who has the right to land, labor, and lodging? Who has the right to a roof, right to a door? But the very language of rights is the domain of ethical discourse.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
And we ask the more fundamental question of whose responsibility is it to square up with these rights? Well, if we think about the allocation of resources, just for a moment, when I became a supervisor some decade ago, a decade or so ago, the funds for homelessness were evenly equally divided by five supervisorial districts. And these are essentially political jurisdictions. You made reference to the fact there are roughly 10 million people in the County of Los Angeles and 2 million people represented by one supervisor, sampling a bit laissez-faire about dividing resources equally without acknowledgement of decades for the neglect and disinvestment in some of those regions.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
So, if you treat everything equally, I can assure you're exacerbating the circumstances with those who have left, least to which to appeal. John Rawls had a notion in mind in the Theory of Justice, trying to do funding methodology that uplifts equity, in my mind would limit the influence of luck on residents in terms of their wellbeing and effectively displace the norm that affixes the quality of life to birthplace, to social status and to family history.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Know enough now to know that if you want to make a statement about the predictability of life expectancy, just map the zip code. We know a whole lot more than we knew before. We know it now. And then, in February of 2014, I just thought I'd author a motion that would, for the first time, allocate resources for homelessness based on geographic need. We just decided to step forward in terms of divide by five and say that that was not working well for the least of these in our environment.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
And then, I followed up with another motion that said, "Let's do some street outreach teams to animate and activate what we hope to do." And we followed that with a major effort in 2016, all on the fundamental principle that equity and a full redistribution of resources might be an aspiration that was worth pursuing. I know that this is a case. Public policy social ethicists have to become more conversant in terms of the issues related to data.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Moral discourse has its place, and all to inform what we do, but if we don't have data, then we are shortchanging ourselves in terms of the policy prescriptions that would be appropriate. I often say, "Don't get mad. Get data, and let that do what it does." So, the Public Policy Institute of California says that homelessness is the number one issue across the state of California. We can't get around that. I did a poll of focus groups of various ethnicities that reinforced that.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Recently, we came back to do more. The LA Times and the Los Angeles Business Council even said it's more intense than the previous polls to which I made reference. And they keep coming. Now, the social ethicist has to be informed by data, real life circumstances. And I have to tell you that if we are constructing policy, we need to be in real time. In other words, if we appeal to a prophetic tradition in any shape, form, or fashion, if you are in any way inclined to take note of biblical ethics, it is the urgency of now. So then, if we want to honor the dignity and worth of every person, it would seem to me that we want to make sure that they are properly and adequately housed with the resources that they deserve.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
But when we learned that that approach is too costly and taking too long, and therefore, in the realities that we experience, we find more people on the streets of our respective communities, it seems that we have to have a midcourse correction. And those who wanted to say no shelters, no bridge homes and the like, mostly and almost exclusively affordable housing, then I want to say to you that this then is the point at which our values ought to kick in and we have to abandon ideology, and face the reality that more people are becoming homeless every day of the week.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
When we find that in Los Angeles, two to three people every day are dying directly attributable to the fact that they are homeless, according to our county coroner and medical examiner, it then says to us that we need to take stock of what we are contending with and make the appropriate adjustments. Now, the data is strong in terms of what's happening there, with the population of people who are dying on our streets. And I want to make it clear that that's twice the number of people who die as a result of homicide.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
The average death age of that death was 51 among the homeless population versus a 73 among the general population, a 20-year gap. If you're homeless, you're going to die two decades earlier. I think we have to be fact driven. Well, this is a crisis. No two ways about it. The governor of the state of California, Gavin Newsom appreciates it to be, and says, "Look, I'm going to pull together this governing council on homelessness. That's advisory to me. Three things you need to do, in street homelessness, build more housing, and get more people into treatment." Those suffering from addiction and/or substance use warrants our consideration.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
Well, a lot can be done on the prevention front. A lot is being done. Unfortunately, what we have to come to grips with is, we underestimated the force of the economic inequities among us. And that has made for our most untenable, that is a tenuous set of circumstances for those who already find themselves on the edge. Homelessness is what a fundamental expression, a manifestation of impoverishment as it presents or represents itself in our time.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
When I first became an elected official nearly 30 years ago, we did not have this level of crisis. It is simply beyond what is acceptable by any standard of measurement. Therefore, we have an obligation to address it and not continue to discuss it in terms of a crisis, and then not act like it is a crisis. Those of you who are the Greek scholars in the room know the crisis as implications for a point in which a decision has to be made.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
You have to step forward, act decisively, make the decisions that need to be made, draw deep, and face the crossroads that requires meaningful innovation. I know that this requires a comprehensive crisis response. Leaders don't yell crisis without essentially building a path to address that crisis. That's what public service is about. And those who are trained as ethicists need then to help the public sector find the language that inspires people, that challenges people, that lifts people to a higher level of wanting to do right by those who are yet homeless.
Mark Ridley-Thomas:
As a little college on a red clay hill in Atlanta, I had a president who was an extraordinary individual, the first African-Americans to obtain the PhD from the University of Chicago, and did that with the kind of presence and prominence. So, Benjamin Elijah Mays-
Supervisor Ridley-Thomas:
Benjamin Elijah Mays, Martin Luther King's mentor, sociologist of religion, and it would take someone who would be a Baptist preacher to reach out and appreciate someone who didn't have God as an objective reference in his life, and he turned back a full century and leaned into Louis Untermeyer, and chapel regularly afford those students an opportunity to benefit from poetry.
Supervisor Ridley-Thomas:
"God, though this life is but a wraith, although we know not what we use, although we grope with little faith, give me the heart to fight and lose. Ever insurgent let me be, make me more daring then devout. From sleek contentment keep me free and fill me with buoyant doubt. Open my eyes to visions girt, with beauty and with wonder lit, but always let me see the dirt and all the spawn and die in it. Open my ears to music. Let me thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums, but never let me dare forget the bitter ballots of the slums."
Supervisor Ridley-Thomas:
He concludes by saying, "From compromise and things half done, keep me stern and stubborn pride, and when at last the fight is won, God keep me still unsatisfied," and that's essentially what the social ethicist has to be about in his or her journey. Unsatisfied, fundamentally committed to the transformation of society. Being renewed by those values and those strengths that can make a difference in the quality of life of every creature created in the image and likeness of God. Thank you very kindly.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, Supervisor Ridley-Thomas for those insightful and eloquent words. Now, please join me in welcoming Congressperson Lois Capps.
Lois Capps:
Thank you for your introduction, Dr. [Zarah Kamali 00:00:31:14] and I know it's an honor to have the cleanup guy. Sean Landers is going to focus our conversation together after. The fact that both of them come from my community, the University of California in Santa Barbara is not lost on me and you came in just the nick of time Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to set us off on a courageous call and we'll be thinking on and hopefully responding in more than just nice thoughts to what you're talking about. It's the epitome here in this beautiful and horrendous city, both at the same time, but the fingers of homelessness stretch out across our nation in small and medium and large size communities. So I'm honored to respond to you and also make my own remarks and I know I'm going to be followed by a mayor [inaudible 00:32:26] of the township in New Jersey across the country, but with many important similarities.
Lois Capps:
I'm going to talk about my story a little bit to get us going because who was I in Congress and two of your colleagues Supervisor Hilda Solis, my comadre in Congress, and also Janice Hahn. We belonged to a prayer circle together. So you've got a good supervisory board here in this community to deal with the issues that you discuss. I ran for the United States Congress in 1998 long time ago. It was a special election following the sudden death of my husband Walter Capps. Walter had been elected to Congress not even two years before, following a 30 year career as a religious studies professor at the university we've referred to, the University of California in Santa Barbara. He was himself a longtime member of this organization, the American Academy of Religion, and a colleague in his department with one we're going to memorialize tomorrow, Wade Clark Roof, and in fact neighbors of ours in our community.
Lois Capps:
The truth is that I ran for the vacant seat in Congress because no one else stepped up or would step up. Walter had barely won himself on his second try for a seat long held by the other party. He served less than a year and I had campaigned by his side after my career as a public health nurse in our school district. So I was very familiar with knocking on doors and meeting with people on their terms. In that special election I won. Barely, but I won. Along the campaign trail I was often met with comments and even editorials like, "You're running for Congress? Why are you running for ..." In those days it was you're just a woman and you're just a nurse. Well, that stiffened my spine a bit and I learned to remind folks that they no doubt care a great deal about their healthcare and also the education and the health of their children.
Lois Capps:
That's the world in which I spent many years of my life in our community, involved with both education and healthcare policy and its implementation. So with your permission, I want to bring up two topics for our discussion today to add to the mix. The first is that basic tenant called representational democracy as outlined in our U.S. Constitution. Yes, it's true as was said in our introduction to this session. We do have a policy paralysis in Washington D.C. at the moment, but hopefully it is temporary. Surely it's not due to a structural flaw in our constitution, and such a paralysis can always be addressed by the next election, which some of us wish to do in 2020. Indeed, the real genius of our democracy is outlined in the constitution, which we all studied in eighth grade civics or whenever we did U.S. history and civics in high school.
Lois Capps:
We have the judicial branch, we had the administrative branch, and we have that legislative branch. The legislature is often unappreciated, especially in the House of Representatives where individual constituents and neighborhoods can actually interact with their particular representative who then becomes charged to go back to Washington D.C. and take their hopes and dreams and their needs and hash it out with his or her colleagues in the House of Representatives. The people's house it's called, and as each state has two senators, remember this fact, and now though in the House of Representatives, it's based on population. So we have a distinct community to bring into the fold, if you wish. So the duty of each of the 435 house members where I served with Hilda and Janice and many others was to bring the hopes and dreams, as I mentioned, of our constituents to the Capitol and to help create progress.
Lois Capps:
That word is referred to in our description of today in the journal, American Academy of Religion program. Progress on the thorny issues from climate change and economic inequality to housing, homelessness, and racial inequality. It's been eloquently featured in our supervisor's remarks about this apex of what homelessness means in our world today. During my time in Congress, there were some of us who were also asked to share the how-tos of our way of government with emerging democracies around the world. So I was appointed by our then speaker to a bipartisan team of members of the house and we were called the House Democracy Partnership. We would travel to countries such as Macedonia, Nigeria, Peru, Timor-Leste, I had to look that one up on the map, and many others where dictators had been overthrown and parliaments were being developed. It's hard to know how to really be a representative government. We're still working on it too.
Lois Capps:
To these new friends we made across the world, I would say, "We in the United States have the world's oldest democracy. That means that we've made more mistakes than anyone else and another genius of democracy is that we can correct our mistakes, we can learn from them and we can make the corrective actions." Hopefully that's something we're engaged in about this thorny issue of people without places to call home. I'm convinced that even though there may be policy paralysis currently in Washington D.C., the responsibility outlined in the constitution and the possibility for corrective action is as close as the next election and our opportunity and responsibility to vote. We can never take that for granted, but we do, so many of us, in our country. There is a definite role for appropriate guidance and influence in all of these matters by faith based communities.
Lois Capps:
This can happen locally through communication as constituents with our individual representatives. Office visits, letters and emails and sometimes local demonstrations are also effective means. National faith-based organizations and coalitions can and do certainly influence policy by joining forces in a non-sectarian way to lobby members of Congress in their offices and to participate in congressional hearings regarding aspects of concern in the area of human rights. I do admit that biases exist in Congress, as in the wider community, regarding the role that religion and faith based communities should or do play in their deliberations. I'm sure similar bias exist by some and faith-based communities regarding the appropriate role they ought to play in local, regional, and national government. The relationship between church and state has never been clear cut or easy, and the AAR can and does play an important role.
Lois Capps:
The separation between church and state, which we affirm is easier said than done. The standard that religion or faith has no relationship to government is just as unrealistic and unwise as to believe that one's personal sectarian beliefs must hold sway. This is an ongoing discussion in our society. Perhaps we'll carry on that discussion this afternoon. The cynical attitude many have regarding the federal government expressed in shrugging one shoulders or not voting is the worst responsible, an abdication of responsibility and handing over power to absolutists black and white responses that many are eager to put forward. Now, the second topic I want to address for our discussion today is the Affordable Care Act, or as it was known, Obamacare. Here in California, it has been implemented from the very beginning and we know it as Covered California. I was a member of a major committee in the House of Representatives where we debated this legislation in a very bipartisan way for over a year, hammered it out and then voted on it with a very partisan, one sided vote.
Lois Capps:
This process, messy as it is, seems to be how democracies often work. As someone remarked once, "It's like sausage, you don't want to watch it being made. You just want to enjoy the result." Because the Affordable Care Act was designed to be implemented state by state, its progress has been very uneven and of course the legislation is not perfect. No law ever is. That, in fact, is another genius of democracy. It's always a work in progress and needs to be improved on a continuous basis, but cutting the number of uninsured in California following implementation as we have done is surely a measure of some progress. During our current presidential campaign, we've all noticed that debates about access and affordability of healthcare seem to be hot topics of the day, and so the discussion continues. With respect to topics suggested for our discussion, I've long recognized the strong connection between health issues and climate change as well as homelessness and inequality. They're all interrelated.
Lois Capps:
I worked on legislation in Congress to promote positive ways that we can adapt to and mitigate the health effects of climate change. For example, my profession of nursing has a strong role to play, and as a final note to my remarks, retiring from Congress in 2016 has meant for me coming full circle. I've returned to my community full time and focused on an effort locally we're calling, for lack of a better term at the moment, the Lois and Walter Capps project. Its purpose is to bring people together, for conversation. For example, over a potluck supper block party, taking over a downtown street. We call it the Common Table. Just spreading it out and inviting folks to come and engage in conversation with a stranger.
Lois Capps:
Or we have a coffee with a black guy or a coffee with a Muslima or a street art fair. We've done all of these things in the hope of bringing community together. I'll close with this thought. As he campaigned for Congress many, many years ago, my husband Walter Capps was fond of repeating this phrase that I'll close with, which became his slogan or mantra. He would say, "Democracy is after all born and reborn in conversation." Thank you.
Speaker 1:
Thank you Congressperson Capps for those very hopeful, hopeful remarks. Last but certainly not least, I would like to welcome Mayor Sadaf Jaffar to that podium.
Sadaf Jaffar:
Good afternoon, everyone. It's truly a pleasure to be part of this distinguished panel to discuss the intersection of two very important parts of my life, namely scholarship and politics. First, let me share a bit of my story. Growing up in Chicago as part of a Shia Muslim family and community, my religious upbringing helped me think deeply about issues of injustice in the world and committing myself to be someone who would try to make positive change. In the Shia Muslim tradition, much of our moral education comes from recounting the martyrdom of the grandson of the prophet Muhammad in [inaudible 00:46:32] along with his family. This archetype of injustice and inter-communal strife left a deep impression on me. I always wanted to be on the side of those fighting against the oppressors.
Sadaf Jaffar:
My family was relatively well informed about politics. We listened to NPR on the radio and my dad used to hold mock presidential debates between myself and my younger brother as a way to entertain himself. So I'm lucky also that my parents took me on many travels, including to visit family in Pakistan and Yemen. These experiences taught me that life could be very different than my experience growing up in the United States. Having this sort of a perspective is a strength that immigrant communities often bring to broader American society. I thought I wanted to go into a career in diplomacy and indeed did intern at the state department and with the Marine Corps during and after college. Yet my courses on Islamic studies during my undergraduate program at Georgetown School of Foreign Service piqued my interest in the breadth of materials and subjectivities in Muslim societies. In the immediate post 9/11 years, I was drawn to the power of primary sources to dispel stereotypes and fixed narratives about Muslim societies.
Sadaf Jaffar:
I cannot overstate the importance of my undergraduate faculty mentors at Georgetown provided me with the support and encouragement that I needed and being in California as I'm very happy to be at this time of year, I also have to thank the UCLA summer programs for undergraduate research where I learned the nuts and bolts of a first generation graduate student. With the support of my faculty mentors, I moved to India for two years to study Urdu on a Berkeley Urdu language fellowship. I then pursued a PhD in the Indo-Muslim culture program of the Department of Near Eastern languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Currently as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, I teach and conduct research in Islamic, South Asian and Asian American studies. My current book project, Secularism and Sexuality in Indian Muslim Thought, Ismat Chughtai's Urdu Literary Progressivism, examines an Urdu writer and Indian Muslim cultural critic named Ismat Chughtai and her formation of what I term an Indo Muslim secular through Urdu literature and Bombay cinema from the 1940s the 1980s.
Sadaf Jaffar:
As one of the most prominent Indian Muslim writers of her generation, Chughtai reached a broad audience across South Asia and beyond. Her writing provides a significant and unexplored perspective on the relationship between Islam, sexuality and South Asian secularism. Just as an aside of a connection between my scholarship and my political work, Ismat Chughtai is very well known for being tried for obscenity in 1946 for a short story called Lihaaf that had a sexual relationship between two women, and if you can think of a woman writing this in 1946. Anywhere in the world, actually it was published in 1942, but I always remind myself that if she could explore these topics at that time under threat of being tried for obscenity, then I really shouldn't be scared of whatever it is that I'm trying to accomplish.
Sadaf Jaffar:
Despite my early interest in public service, electoral politics hadn't really been on my radar beyond campaigning for president Obama in 2008 and 2012. Yet towards the end of my PhD program, I started to get the sense that people like myself who believed in diplomacy rather than war, placed a priority on human rights and didn't paint entire nations and religions as enemies needed to be political decision makers. This is particularly important for those scholars who work on Islam because of the skewed understanding of Islam that guides certain policies towards Muslim communities. I watch, as many do, with unease as Arabic terms like Sharia take up a life of their own as a boogeyman in contemporary American discourses, which are then turned on individual Muslims and communities.
Sadaf Jaffar:
So as I was thinking about this, one of my practices is no matter what my crazy idea is, I just start talking about it with people. As they were asking me, "Wow, you're heading towards the end of your PhD, what are you going to do?" "I'm thinking about running for office," which really threw people off, but a friend of mine told me about the Emerge program, which is for women from the democratic party who are interested in running for office and it was just starting in New Jersey at that time and I participated as a part of the inaugural class of 2014. I credit my Emerge training for giving me the confidence, knowledge and network that made running for office possible. With the polarization of the Trump campaign and administration, I felt I had to run when the mayor of my town reacted to the Muslim ban by saying, "Just think about Montgomery. Don't worry about anything outside Montgomery."
Sadaf Jaffar:
With regard to affordable housing, my predecessors also often discuss it as something that our town needed to be protected from. During campaign season, my opponent produced flyers stating that my ideas were dangerous and extreme, which is clearly a dog whistle to my background. Despite the attacks, I was elected to my town's local government, the township committee in 2017. In 2018 my party won two more seats and took over the majority. I was sworn in as mayor in January of this year and actually just a few weeks ago we took over the other seats, so we have completely flipped our town in the matter of three years. Part of my reason for pursuing this opportunity was that I wanted people in my circles, whether they are other scholars, women, Muslims or South Asians, to know that running for office is an option open to them.
Sadaf Jaffar:
I certainly had never known anyone personally who had run for office and I wanted to be that example and say, "There's nothing stopping you." When I won my election, I was interviewed by a student at the Princeton student newspaper and she asked me, "As a woman of color and academia and politics, those are two ... kind of seem like tough fields to be in." I said that in some ways I think politics is actually easier to break into because if you have the votes, you win. It's not this opaque sort of process and system where you don't really know where you might stand.
Sadaf Jaffar:
I also want to highlight, and this is the reason why I mentioned them, that in both my academic and scholarly experiences, formal training and networking programs and mentorship programs were essential. Research shows this consistently for minorities groups at an order for them to break into these fields where they haven't been able to be before, they haven't had the experience, we need more of these formal training and mentorship and networking programs. I really applaud this session as a way of introducing these ideas to other scholars. I know that some in this room might work at such programs and thank you for the interventions that you're making.
Sadaf Jaffar:
For my part, I've worked with a group of women in New Jersey to establish a nonprofit called iSAW, inspiring South Asian American women to get more South Asian American women involved and interested in public service. This doesn't mean there aren't challenges. Though many people point to my example as the first Muslim woman mayor as one of hope about opportunities in our political system for people from diverse backgrounds, I've also been harassed by people who hate and fear Muslims. Fear and derision of Islam punctuates the hateful messages that I've personally received, like one that warns my suburban constituents that, "Sharia law will be arriving faster than you think."
Sadaf Jaffar:
Another message takes a violent turn, wishing me death and claiming that Muslims quote, "Need to be removed from the planet by any means necessary." As we've seen with the murders of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, fear and misinformation are radicalizing people to hate Islam to the point of violence. There is no doubt that the past few years have been difficult for immigrant and Muslim communities in the United States. One of the things that I would like you all to consider is that many of us, including other scholars, tend to be very focused on national and international issues and then we neglect the local. I would ask that we change that. Our communities can only be strengthened from the ground up.
Sadaf Jaffar:
People often ask me if my academic research has an impact on my government service. In a general sense, having a background in research makes me more likely to provide evidence-based solutions for my community, but I also have examples where my research on Islam and Muslim communities has been directly relevant. During the first few months I served on the township committee, there was an anti-Muslim bias crime where pork was left on a Muslim family's car. The response of the-
Speaker 2:
... left on a Muslim family's car. The response of the mayor at the time was initially weak. He said, "Well, you can't fix stupid, but unless it happens again, we don't really know the motivation of the people who did this." I insisted that the crime be taken seriously and provided research on how pork is used to target Muslims and how Islamophobia is a type of racism. I also started a discussion group called Montgomery Mosaic that is affiliated with the national [inaudible 00:56:29] in our town movement. We meet monthly to discuss topics like anti-black racism and anti Latinx violence, as well as having events like intercultural holiday parties. We've also made sure to host events at all of the various important community organizations in town. The first two were held at a local synagogue. The second two at a Dutch reform church and then the next two at a Catholic church.
Speaker 2:
We also hosted an interfaith prayer service, an iftar, at one of the churches this past Ramadan, which saw over 150 attendees. It is my hope that these efforts informed by my religious studies background will help be a step in healing some of the fraying social fabric that we're seeing. I'd like to close with a poem by the Kashmiri American poet, Agha Shahid Ali that motivates me in my political and scholarly work. I think bringing literature more into the public sphere is also a service that those of us who have a background in the humanities can do because it gives people pause to reflect on what's happening rather than going so quickly. We inaugurated a affordable housing project in our township and I read a poem about the concept of home and the developer said they'd never had anyone refer to any poetry in such a context before. But I think it's important to do that because then it's not just so much the nitty gritty, but why is it that we're doing this? So in that vein, this is a poem entitled Farewell by the Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali.
Speaker 2:
"At a certain point I lost track of you. They make a desolation and call it peace. When you left, even the stones were buried. The defenseless would have no weapons. When the ibex rubs itself against the rocks, who collects its fallen fleece from the slopes? Oh Weaver, who seems perfectly vanished, who weighs the hairs on the jeweler's balance? They make a desolation and call it peace. Who is the guardian tonight of the gates of paradise? My memory is again in the way of your history, army convoys all night like desert caravans and the smoking, oil of dimmed headlights, time dissolved, all winter, it's crushed funnel. We can't ask them, are you done with the world? In the lake the arms of temples and mosques are locked in each other's reflections. Have you soaked saffron to pour on them when they are found like the centuries later in this country I've stitched in your shadow? In this country, we step out with doors in our arms. Children run out with windows in their arms. You drag it behind you in lit corridors. If the switch is pulled, you'll be torn from everything.
Speaker 2:
At a certain point, I lost track of you. You needed me. You needed to perfect me. In your absence you polished me into the enemy. Your history gets in the way of my memory. I'm everything you lost. You can't forgive me. I'm everything you've lost, your perfect enemy. Your memory gets in the way of my memory. I being rowed through paradise in a river of hell. Exquisite ghost, it is night. The paddle is a heart, it breaks the porcelain waves. It is still night. The paddle is a lotus. I am rowed as it withers toward the breeze, which is soft as if it had pity on me. If only somehow you could have been mine, what wouldn't have happened in the world? I'm everything you lost. You won't forgive me. My memory keeps getting in the way of your history. There's nothing to forgive. You can't forgive me. I hid the pain even from myself. I revealed my pain only to myself. There was everything to forgive. You can't forgive me. If only somehow you could have been mine, what would have not been possible in the world?"
Speaker 2:
To me this symbolizes so many of the conflicts we see, of history and memory and conflicting memories and conflicting histories and we need the backgrounds that all of us bring to solve these issues. I would close with my belief that if we work to bridge the distances of prejudice, anything is possible in this world. Thank you.
Saara:
Thank you so much Mayor Jaffer for those beautiful, compelling and timely remarks. Thank you. Thank you also for sharing that poem. As the distinguished panelists come up to the front of the room, they will be joined in conversation with Dr. [Sean Landrus 00:04:55] . So if everybody would like to take a seat. Dr Sean Landrus earned his doctorate in religious studies at the University of California Santa Barbara under the late Wade Clark Roof. His current research interests include religion and charitable giving, civic leadership and public sector innovation. Dr Landrus is in his third term as chair of the Los Angeles County Quality and Productivity Commission and is also vice chair of the City of Santa Monica Planning Commission. He is a former program unit chair and member of the AR Program Committee and is rotating off of the Applied Religious Studies Committee at the end of this year. So I'm like to welcome Dr. Sean Landrus and also another round of applause for everybody's comments.
Dr. Sean Landrus:
Thank you, [Saara 00:05:49]. It's a real privilege for this panel to take place at the AR and I know that we have a hardy group here and we'll be hearing from many ... I know that many, many more people will be downloading this on SoundCloud for a variety of reasons. One of them is that as Saara mentioned, and she and I serve on the Applied Religious Studies Committee together, moving from the academic track to other tracks is increasingly a practice in today's world and I think it's incredibly valuable that that's happening. I want to acknowledge that, for example, supervisor Ridley-Thomas's homelessness fellow is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and has brought her moral lens to the work of his office and I think that's only for the good. I think it's only for the good that we bring those dimensions to the work that happens in government. Unlike these folks who've served in elected office, I'm a volunteer. I'm an appointee, but so much of what they've raised has influenced my own journey in both academia and religious studies.
Dr. Sean Landrus:
I think to bring some of their comments together as we move into questions, I'm just remembering my teacher, Walter Capps. I was his last graduate student and we spent a lot of time together in the months before he was elected and we studied the work of Václav Havel together. Of course, Havel was someone who spoke to the very core issues that Supervisor Ridley-Thomas raised in terms of the role of a social ethicist in raising a mirror to society and asking the question of what does it mean to live in truth? What does it mean to stand for the progress of history against those who would stop it, who would freeze it? It raises a profound moral mirror to the question of those who would say, "Not in my backyard." To think then of this question of what it means to be in conversation, which of course the social ethicist is in conversation, but those are what has, I think, categorized my own experience as a volunteer in government, which is precisely to link the three comments, the three remarks, which is dialogue and data.
Dr. Sean Landrus:
Dialogue is the commitment to be in relationship, to create that face to face, to create the intimacy necessary to hold one another accountable. Right? I am accountable to you and we are accountable to one another. Data is of course our accountability to the truth and both of those things I hear in every remark today and I think that's what we can bring. Whether we come from the religious studies side or we come from the ethics side or we come from the theology side, that's where we intersect. That's where the intersection of justice is. I will say that in my work promoting something as technical or esoteric as innovation, right, in government. Supervisor Ridley-Thomas, two years ago you said to me in a passing remark, but it was not passing for me, "Equity is efficiency."
Dr. Sean Landrus:
Equity is efficiency. We can't innovate effectively unless we are innovating with people for people in a fair way, in a just way and in a true way that is supported by not only the relationships but the data. So with that I'm going to sit down, but I'm going to frame our questions. I think that one of the first questions that I'd like to ask, and maybe we'll just stay with this theme of religious studies graduate students moving into politics and government, is what advice you would offer to them. We heard a little bit from Mayor Jaffer about her experience coming out of the academy into government, but Supervisor Ridley-Thomas, you've actually engaged religious studies grads in your work and Congressman Capps, you've been in the encounter for many, many years. What advice would you give to graduate students who were thinking about this path?
Speaker 3:
Just do it.
Speaker 2:
I would say that start very local. That's the most likely place where you can make inroads and people are often looking for candidates. I was speaking before the panel started about how I was actually campaigning for someone who was running for Congress and I was approached to run for office in my local township because no Democrats had run for four years. The Republican incumbents had been running unopposed and it wasn't because there wasn't the potential to win. There weren't candidates and the local party had fallen apart. I think that that's the case in a lot of places. So I would suggest getting involved locally, volunteering for boards and commissions, volunteering for other people's campaigns that will just let people know that you're around and everyone's looking for a hardworking, smart people.
Speaker 3:
Sean, you're a good example because that's what you're doing right now.
Speaker 4:
I think if you're contemplating entering into the public square, I would just not being reluctant to insert moral discourse in one's advocacy. I think there's a place for it and I think current public debate is bereft of moral content. I don't mean that we need to preach or proselytize or evangelize, but I do mean that we ought to have some level of moral rectitude in the discourse of the day. Otherwise, what the finally are we doing? I found that to be the case around homelessness initially and it was more vacuous than I would've preferred. The language of civic consciousness almost felt a little bit more like civil religion. I think we can do a little better than that without being chauvinistic, and while I say that, I think this notion of intersectionality is hugely important.
Speaker 4:
So you make reference, Sean, to those who are higher. Whereas first of all, I try to hire everybody who is smarter than I am and that helps a lot. So you make reference to Nicole and her background in divinity, but then there's [Dukshika 01:09:39] who has a background in urban planning, and then there's [Ibert 01:09:46] who has a background in political science and law, Dukshika in literature and English. So Nicole from Harvard, Dukshika from MIT and Ibert from Michigan by way of Morehouse. Don't forget Morehouse, Morehouse animates detonation with thought leaders who share Ibert's demographic. So I think we should be really intent on pulling together people to work together who otherwise wouldn't have these experiences and we ought to aim them in a fashion that speaks to the public good, the common good in ways that perhaps they wouldn't experience otherwise. That's certainly my experience.
Speaker 4:
When you're elected, you get tossed into an arena with people who you may not know or like. Shall I say that again? You're obliged to work it out. You've got to count to three, in my case, and Congresswoman Capps, you have to count to majority in the context of Congress and make it happen and get the democratic caucus moving. Madam Mayor, you don't have to count anymore because you've just taken over the whole thing. It's all done. You just need to show up and say, "Let's vote." So I think this is a wonderful laboratory. It's the difference between the academy and the laboratory. This is the laboratory, we call it the public square. You've got the land. Pastor Harshaw and I were long time colleagues and so forth. He was talking about our course and the philosophical discourse that he engaged in. I think it was a [inaudible 00:01:12:07], all that airplane talk that they get engaged in, but you've got to land the plane when you are accountable to people for the improvement of the quality of their lives.
Dr. Sean Landrus:
So we have some folks in the room, I imagine, who are in the classroom, who are teaching in the classroom. Right? Let's talk about landing the plane. My teacher, Wade Clark Roof, my late teacher, we'll be speaking about him tomorrow. My teacher, Mark [Jergensmeyer 00:16:43], who's speaking later this afternoon. I'm just giving Santa Barbara grads, Santa Barbara folks, but my Columbia professor, Randy Balmer, these are folks who have modeled landing the plane. They bring what's happening in the classroom into the world. Thinking back 24 years when we were talking about how to prevent another Waco, right? When the interaction between the academy and public life was saying to government, "Look, if you'd only listen to us, lives could have been saved."
Dr. Sean Landrus:
Fast forward 25 years, homelessness is a crisis of a scale. It is ongoing. It is persistent. Healthcare is a crisis that ... the insecurity crisis, whether you feel insecure in your relationships with your neighbors, which is I think what Mayor Jaffer was referring to or insecure whether you can pay your rent or pay your doctor, what do the teachers need to know? If we're saying now to students, "Go do it," what would you like to see ... how would you like to see graduate education changed? What preparation do you want to see given to graduates? What do you wish you have been taught? You're the most recent.
Speaker 2:
Well, I mean, I think this is an issue that we've been discussing, which is the value of anything not in the traditional ... not a traditional academic role. Finding value in service that we can do to our communities that isn't just primarily research and teaching, but also serving in elected office. I found that people are very supportive, but I do wonder about what people think about it. I'm a postdoc so I'm applying for academic jobs and will people think I'm weird because we're not supposed to be interested in anything except our research?
Speaker 2:
So I think there's like a culture issue. Then also taking responsibility. I mentioned in my remarks that ... I think. That we as scholars have had the privilege of a significant amount of education and we have skills that would be of service to our broader communities. So it's almost depriving society of that if we don't take up the responsibility to be the ones who have that, who are trying to provide moral leadership and solve really thorny issues that are life and death issues for people. So how do we ... and not to devalue those who don't want to do that, but how do we make space for both of those things? I'm not sure how to do it, but I think more options of fellowships and opportunities.
Speaker 2:
I don't know. I'm just trying to think. Most people did think it was quite weird when I did the Emerge program as a PhD student and they said, and this was in 2014, so they said to me at that time, "Well, you're in academia, why would you want to get involved in politics? It's so dirty and messy." So I had to explain to them that of the elected officials that I'd met, most of them were fine people and they were trying to do the best that they could. If we have that cynicism, then our society is only going to go down because if we think only the worst people should go into politics, then only the worst people will go into politics. We might be seeing a little bit of evidence of that, but we need to see it as an honorable track and to support in any way that we can those who have it in them to give it a try.
Speaker 3:
May I just refer back to ... Well, it's the classical town gown relationship, isn't it? The Ivy League or ... Well not [inaudible 01:17:02] ... Well, yes, Ivy covered tower on the hill, separate from the plebeians down below as a contrast. I guess it would be an example of first person narrative that my husband used as an academic in the height of the chasm which was the Vietnam War. He brought the war into the classroom in the form of the warriors who didn't choose to go fight. They were drafted and came back and were spit upon and hiding in the hills above our community. He taught a course that no department wanted, but it was on the war in Vietnam and its effect on the American culture.
Speaker 3:
He invited the veterans to teach the course. They came and told their story of what it was like to be an 18 year old and drafted and the next day you're over in Southeast Asia and coming home. For many of those veterans, the class was the first time they had ever told anyone, even their family members, of what that did to them. So it's not a wall between the two. We've got to make the interchange, one to the other, more seamless.
Speaker 4:
I share that point of view. I think Madam Mayor, you referred to it as ... in some instances people are a little cynical about public life and those who occupy the space. I would hasten to add sometimes not without good reason, but before you get to cynicism, I think I view a level of elitism that envelops the academy. It is as if this is somehow beneath what the academics should do, beneath what people with certain kind of training should do. I wish to reject that out of hand and offer a 30 year example of very fulfilling, very rewarding experiences that has in effect made a qualitative difference in the life of communities. Building hospitals, building rail lines, building affordable housing and building empowerment and communities and causing people to find purpose and learning then how to demystify government such that it works for the good of people. I submit that as worthy of my time, my talents and my training.
Speaker 4:
There's a whole lot of places to find it. I would think the public space would benefit more from people with training that's similar to that which we are speaking to. Not that we are morally superior, but the analytical tools that we bring to bear happen to be different. I deal with largely those in the profession of law. They often think different. We don't think in terms of ethical discourse from a legal perspective. We tend to think about it in theological or philosophical terms, which does not preclude legal analysis, but it doesn't allow the [geritical 01:21:23] to monopolize the conversation. So when we had in Los Angeles this huge crisis with jails, jail beatings and people's constitutional, civil and human rights being violated, major convening that resulted in some significant changes in the County of Los Angeles, the largest jail system in the nation.
Speaker 4:
Then populated by jurists of consequence, every single one of the seven happened to be trained in legal matters, with the exception of the individual that I appointed. I appointed a pastor who happened to be a trained with the doctorate in ministry and theology at Claremont. His name is Cecil L. "Chip" Murray. Why? Because I knew the different from the advocacy and the courtrooms that those lawyers had. He visited families who were suffering as a result of the inhumane treatment to which their family members had been subjected. He buried those who had been victims of police violence. Do you follow me?
Speaker 4:
In other words, it brings a different sensibility to the conversation based on his professional training as well as his academic training and it seems to me that makes a huge difference and I can cite examples of how that works in various endeavors in the public space. In technology, you can apply that. I was yesterday or the day before at Google working on artificial intelligence, and it was a throwback to the late '70s and early '80s when I was in graduate school studying issues related to eugenics and cloning and a whole range of things. It's a serious throwback, but the ethics person they brought to bear was an engineer, and he talked about it from that vantage point, and he did a good job. But if he had been trained like the persons here, a different set of insights would have been brought-
Speaker 5:
Here, a different set of insights would have been brought to bear, in a meaningful and significant way. What am I suggesting then? Google could use someone who's trained in social ethics as his, as its ethics officer. The campaign over which we discussed the issue of civilian review doesn't always have to have a lawyer. It can be someone who's trained. Similarly, we bring value to the equation. Now, if it's about going to court, don't send the social ethics, get a lawyer.
Speaker 6:
Well that reminds me of a planning conversation. They finally released the results. If folks remember that Uber, a autonomous vehicle hit a pedestrian in Arizona, right? Well, it turns out that that vehicle was not designed to see pedestrians outside of a crosswalk.
Speaker 6:
Okay? I mean, let's look at that in social ethics terms, right? We're assuming that people only behave within the lines. I don't know about any of you, but we don't, that's not humanity. And, and as a sociologist, as an ethnographer, as an anthropologist of religion, that's what I bring to the table, as someone who says, "wait, this is not how people make meaning together. This is not how people have conversations." The hardest thing for me becoming a commissioner, and I'm curious to whether others have this experience was language. And I think it goes to your point about the law. The precision of language, the fixed nature of language and the assumption that we were supposed to adapt to what words meant as opposed to policies and procedures, adapting to what people, how people lived?
Speaker 6:
That was the hardest. That was the hardest bridge to cross and I think we're beginning to see it now. I think we're seeing it in the County of LA, that we're doing much more user-centered human-centered design work both in the programs and in the policies themselves, but we still have a long way to go and we need more, we need more ethicists and ethnographers and observers to be part of those, to be the part of those issues. Let's open it up to questions. We have a mic here if you wouldn't mind. I hate asking people to line up, but please line up.
Speaker 5:
Mr. Moderator, let me just simply say on the language front, at least this sort of training affords us to lay bare what our values are about. The values that are embedded in the policies that we promulgate.
Speaker 7:
And the conversation is also the example that you brought up, supervisor, of that Martin Luther King who is the epitome. He went from marching with the garbage workers strike. We heard him preach at Patel chapel at Yale university, when the students were going down to be freedom writers. He did both and one enhanced the other.
Speaker 6:
Yes sir.
Speaker 8:
I have a question that I would value your response. I mean, and so there's a question in here.
Speaker 6:
Yeah, please tell us who you are, too.
Speaker 8:
But I'm going to start you with the mantra of Walter Capps, that democracy is born and reborn in conversation.
Speaker 6:
Wonderful.
Speaker 8:
Society is a conversation.
Speaker 7:
Absolutely.
Speaker 8:
Sometimes those conversations become contested, bitter, oppositional. Okay, now with that thought, I want to go to homelessness in Los Angeles. Steve Lopez, who has on and on and on articles about homelessness.
Speaker 7:
In his columns. Right, they liked his.
Speaker 8:
This was maybe a week or two ago, it was all about who's in charge.
Speaker 8:
Okay, now this is what I want to present. So who's in charge? Conversations are certainly between individuals but in society often it's social institutions that are having the conversations in and through the people who are representing the institution. So now this is about a contested conversation, or better, public argument going on in Los Angeles. So clearly you have a responsibility, and part of it is the order and stability of society. But more importantly in that order and stability is looking at every citizen of Los Angeles as equal. Now, okay, to make this conversation contested, I've got to get oppositional groups in here. So the other major institution that's really involved in this conversation is the market economy.
Speaker 8:
And so, and what's interesting about, especially downtown Los Angeles, which is sort of the epicenter of homelessness, is economic growth going on. And I've had a couple instances where I mean, because I sort of know the area that I met a friend at the Nomad Hotel. Which is, and now, and there's another hotel, I can't remember the name of it, sort of nearby. So these, that's a prestigious hotel from Manhattan that has got to represent, a new hotel in Los Angeles. And what they've done has gone in and get old hotels and refurbish them. And they're beautiful, right down in the center of downtown Los Angeles. But it's wonderful because it's near the convention center when their big conferences are going on, people stay in very nice places. But it's also the center of homelessness.
Speaker 8:
Okay. So one of the contentious dimensions to this conversation is businesses like that, or restaurants. And now there's like reaction and push back. They're starting to like, build obstacles on the streets so you can't put your tent down because, and so forth. Okay, so now that's, so we have two, government and the market economy. Now I'm going to throw a third one out. The Catholic worker. Sixth and Gladys, the soup kitchen right in the heart of the homeless center. Okay, now, and I'm picking them especially because they won't be nice.
Speaker 8:
And so I'm just thinking of past examples. Like one was the shopping cart thing where the police started to take people's shopping carts, and they would put all of their belongings in a box and, and so then the Catholic worker went out and bought their own shopping carts. And so you can't take these because they're ours. And they don't want to come down to city hall and negotiate with you. They're standing over here saying, "this is what Jesus did." And so what's driving them? You could say compassion, especially for the most, least among us. Okay. All right. Now, so who's in charge? So I'm saying in a sense, I've got three institutions. Now here's my question.
Speaker 8:
If you could think of these three institutions sort of arguing this out, this sort of public argument. This is the point that the Catholic theologian, John Courtney Murray made once, most important one who was very interested in these kinds of issues. For public argument to even begin, there has to be a consensus, some point of agreement. No argument can proceed if the contending parties don't at least agree on this. Okay, my question is, thinking of these three institutions, and it's to you all. Thinking of these three institutions, but focus especially on homelessness, what would be the consensus that could begin a public conversation about homelessness in Los Angeles, between the city council, between the market economy and religious groups like the Catholic Worker?
Speaker 6:
Thank you.
Speaker 8:
Oh, Michael McGrath. I'm from the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, and I teach social and systematic.
Speaker 6:
Okay, both. That is the question, right?
Speaker 7:
Well first of all, is there a place for conversation between the parties? That's the starting point, isn't it? To find some kind of place for it to begin, right?
Speaker 8:
A consensus.
Speaker 7:
Right.
Speaker 8:
Something like, we really, like, if I'm a business owner, I'm really bothered by this, because it's really hurting my business. I put all this investment into this major hotel, it's important.
Speaker 5:
Well, consensus building is dynamic. It is not afforded us from on high. It's a very human enterprise, the enterprise of consensus building. And the law in some ways reflects consensus and ethical language. As you well know, being the good Episcopalian that you are, will appreciate that the law represents consensus, but it is the moral minimum around which consensus is built. And so the question is, can we build more than the minimum? And so that, the descendants of Dorothy Day, and those who are the current market players, significantly real estate developers and restaurateurs, as well as those who occupy the public sector. There's a conversation of consequence that can take place, and it centers around, can we rid these streets in Los Angeles of these unspeakable conditions, these uninhabitable places, where people who are human beings have been relegated? Can we do that? Then the question becomes, how? And that's when, pardon me, they'll pretend that they said, like it is. That's when all hell breaks loose.
Speaker 7:
The shit hits the fan.
Speaker 5:
Oh there you go. There you go. That's a more apt description. But I know Harshaw would have called my wife if I had said that. And so there is that. But it's happening right now and there's struggle. But as you know, the market forces are not monolithic. The public officials don't all agree on the same thing. So this, the dynamism of building consensus, but this is not about the, what we describe it as, the paralysis of analysis. It is about how you move forward. It is about progress as you made reference to in the document. It's not about a counsel of perfection, it is essentially about moving things forward in this business. And this may not be the domain of the Academy as I recall it there. There was a point of view that said, and is said today, "the perfect is the enemy of the good." Got to land the plane.
Speaker 6:
Let me try to give, or you have another question, but let me try to give two quick answers to thinking about. One, the supervisor earlier alluded to dividing by five, when the homelessness crisis was first taken up, which implies two things that are both wrong. One is that government is the center of problem solving, and two, that equality as opposed to equity is the approach, right? It implies a centered, it implies centering on government, and then dividing it all up, like you just slice a pie. And I think there were two changes that were, that have to be made for that conversation to move forward. One is to put the human being at the center, and that's something that social ethicists and people like us can argue for. Because every single party in that conversation agrees that that person should not be suffering on that corner for different reasons.
Speaker 6:
But they will agree on that and they probably will agree that that person should be sheltered, right? So moving the human to the center of the equation. And the second thing is moving to an equity model that says, "we have to focus our resources and our attention on the people who are the most vulnerable and who need it most." Which means that in this instance with the person, that person and then the community in which that person exists. Rather than saying, "oops, we divided by whatever the number is, five, 15, however many, and we're sorry we don't have enough resources." We have way too many resources over here, but not enough to help this, but we need to move the resources to where the people are. So re-centering and re-imagining what equity means I think are the two steps forward to addressing the problem
Speaker 7:
There's also, I've always been frustrated. Why don't governments leverage more? Because for that hotel to build that beautiful thing that's going to make their pockets swell, why can't they be a part of the solution at the same time, or before?
Speaker 6:
Have to be. Jobs.
Speaker 5:
And lighten self interest.
Speaker 7:
Easier said than done.
Speaker 5:
Yeah.
Speaker 6:
We have about 10 more minutes. I think we're going to go.
Speaker 9:
Well, first of all, I just, I would like to start up by saying thank you, all three of you for coming here today. Honestly, you all have incredibly inspiring stories and I respect the civil service that you're doing for all of us very, very much. I also really enjoyed the different ways in which all three of you talked about the power of talking with the moral voice, and I think that both as scholars, and as your individual spirituality comes through in the ways that you're speaking. And I guess my question is just for each of you, everyone knows that as you get into politics, there is a toxicity that you deal with. There is adversity that you have to overcome. Can you just give a quick story about the ways in which your own spirituality, and in the case of being a scholar, maybe a bit of your scholarly knowledge has empowered you to be able to take on Texas city and deal with it yourself, but also be able to turn that into something that's positive for the community? Oh, Casey Crosby.
Speaker 5:
From?
Speaker 9:
Oh, from, I'm at Scripps college right now, I just graduated from Claremont school of theology, and I was also director of a homeless shelter while I was in school. So I have a great amount of respect.
Speaker 7:
You're an expert.
Speaker 9:
I try.
Speaker 5:
Claremont in the house.
Speaker 9:
That's right.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, I taught at the School of Theology. Yeah. You jump in there.
Speaker 7:
You're doing it as we speak.
Speaker 9:
That's right?
Speaker 10:
Well, I mean there's one very, very common Muslim understanding that only God is perfect. So you know, when I get frustrated that, why do people do the illogical things? Or, if we could just work together on this issue, there's absolutely no reason why we can't solve it. I do sometimes fall back on that and say then things would be perfect. If everything worked out perfectly then what? Where would God be in that? So I remind myself of that often. But to be honest I'm, I am working through some very naughty, like I have to disentangle this issues with... A lot of it. I think it's going back to the human, it's a lot of just people's personal issues more than policy.
Speaker 10:
That's I think what's, what's interesting for me and what is different, I think to some degree from academia, where it is very idea-centric and our disagreement is in the realm of ideas for the most part. And I am disagreeing with you because I truly believe something different. We don't have a lot of patients for disingenuous speech in academia, or at least that's our value that we don't. But in politics that you do find a lot more disingenuous types of behaviors. And so I'm myself trying to work through that.
Speaker 10:
But I also, sometimes I tell myself like, it's good that I'm doing this at the local level, because I can't imagine those people who just go in as congresspeople and suddenly they have to deal with very, very intense situations. I remember listening to an interview of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and she, and they were asking her what it was like to be a Congresswoman. And she said, well, it's kind of like working anywhere else. There's that person on the fourth floor who you don't like and you want to avoid them. So I think that there is something about just human psychology, and getting to the heart of what is troubling people that I'm still working on learning. But I think that that's definitely a skill that's important.
Speaker 6:
Speaking of congress.
Speaker 7:
Building bridges. It sounds easier said than done. But just getting along with people across the aisle, being friends over prayer or over an excursion, a journey together, traveling somewhere. You find out things that you have in common and you're not going to talk about politics because you would get off track there. But common ground is there, there is there. That's somewhere in all of these dilemmas, and sometimes I think we, well it's too, so easy for us to think we know already ahead of time when we don't need to listen to the other person.
Speaker 7:
Listening is a very hard art, very difficult to really hear the other saying. Then my other comment, because I'm not an expert on homelessness at all, but I believe it's probably a pile of things together. It's addiction, it's illness, it's loneliness, it's isolation. These are tough, and they, there's no one size fits all. You just can't-
Speaker 6:
Except nurses. And you built it bipartisan nursing caucus, didn't you?
Speaker 7:
I did.
Speaker 6:
But across that .
Speaker 7:
I didn't do it myself. I,, you know what gave it the support? I would come back from a break and some of my colleagues had had a triple bypass during the break. And they said, "you know, the doctors were fine, but those nurses, they saved my life."
Speaker 5:
That's right.Somebody was smart, in that hospital. So in addition to the list of contributing factors that you suggest Madame Congresswoman, add economic insecurity. That's a significant driver. The unprecedented number of the evictions, the lack of affordable housing. And these are factors of consequences. Let me just simply say on the toxicity front, yes it's true. Toxic environments, and some even say it's radioactive in some respect. And the radioactivity is largely in my view, attributable to partition, partisanship.
Speaker 5:
I have in my career done much better in nonpartisan environments. I don't particularly like being dictated to, as to who I can talk to on who I can't, irrespective of whether they have a D, an R, or I attached to their name. And so we push a certain set of values, democratic values, small D. but things do get challenging and you can come under attack, unearned and in many instances and you'd just have to be able to stand. What do I do to power through it? I do a few things. Go to great preachers, I listen to Gardner Taylor, the Dean of American Preachers. I listen to Tremaine Hawkins and said, "I've never lost my praise." I sponsor any event that celebrates a cultural icon by the name of Aretha Franklin, let people listen to amazing grace that was recorded in 1972 on 81st and Broadway right in the heart of South Central LA and blessed the whole world. That's what I do to recenter myself. All right, now Dumas, by now you should be shouting, Doc. I'm trying to say something to you.
Speaker 5:
So that's kind of what some of us do, to just to power our way through. And I can tell you when this meeting is over, I'm going to turn that music on and see how you take it in.
Speaker 7:
There you go.
Speaker 6:
We have to wrap it, and I'm going to turn it back over to my colleague Sara. But I just want to say on that note, persist, have the courage of your, of who you are and what you believe. Sometimes what it takes, I've, we've all been attacked on social media, I think. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to not respond, is just to sit and take it and listen and try to see what, what kind of pain that person is in, who's coming after you, and try to imagine how to, how to address it. Sometimes you can't, sometimes they're wrong, frequently they're wrong, but there's something there.
Speaker 6:
And I just in the spirit of persistence, want to thank my colleagues here and the AAR. We've had 25 years of conversation about public policy that have grown in complexity and maturity as the AAR has developed. And I know that people will be continuing to listen to this conversation for many years to come. It's been really great to see this unfold here and with these three individual leaders bringing their full selves to the conversation. And so thank you. It's been wonderful to learn from you today.
Speaker 7:
Thank you.
Speaker 10:
Thank you.
Speaker 5:
Thank you.
Speaker 11:
And on that note, on behalf of the audience and anyone listening via SoundCloud or other future podcasts, I'd like to again, extend thanks to the esteemed panelists as well as Dr. Sean Landress. And learning about how we can leverage religious studies to work in public spaces for the greater good. We've learned a lot today, so thank you again.
Speaker 5:
Thank you.