scholarly journals “All lives matter”: How districts co-opt equity language and maintain the status quo

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Tiffanie Lewis-Durham
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Community Schools ◽  
Critical Policy Analysis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
The Status ◽  
Critical Policy ◽  
City Schools ◽  
White Innocence

The term “equity” is widely used by educational policy makers to describe myriad programs and practices aimed at closing the supposed racial achievement gap. Research about the way equity has been used in these policies typically explores how policy actors with low will and capacity frame and implement their reforms. Few studies, however, explore equity-oriented reforms initiated and supported by policy makers who claim to fervently support educational equity. The purpose of this critical policy analysis was to examine how the rhetoric used by equity-supportive policy actors may have reinforced neoliberal ideas and inadvertently maintained white innocence and color-blind racism. Examining the Community Schools policy in New York City schools, this study found that some equity initiatives are circumscribed by their focus on “all lives”, which can unwittingly reinforce the status quo in schools.

scholarly journals Is deliberation a laudable goal when policy is a done deal? The Habermasian public sphere and legitimacy in a market era of education policymaking

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liza N. Pappas
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
School Closures ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
School Closing ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
The Status

The state mandated public hearings concerning school closing proposals in New York City provide a window into a diverse set of policy actors and their deliberations. Opposition to school closures is often cast as entrenched interests, emotional attachment, support for the status quo or at worst negligence. However, content analysis reveals that testimony offered by parent, community, and educator leaders contained a range of substantial critiques of school closing proposals, their motivations, justifications, and expected results. I argue that the hearings did not fully constitute a public sphere by Habermasian criteria, nor a counterpublic by Fraser and Dawson criteria. In fact, the hearings had contradictory effects; one school successfully fought closure by both resisting and reifying neoliberal logic in education policymaking. Some data demonstrates that this school’s market-based argument resonated with state authorities, while other data indicates that this market-based argument coincided with the state’s own interest to defend its legitimacy in policymaking.

Getting Tsunami Recovery and Early Warning Right

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-61
Author(s):  
Ben Wisner ◽  
Peter Walker
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Warning System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Indian Ocean Tsunami ◽  
Tropical Storms ◽  
Warning Systems ◽  
Tsunami Warning System ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status

The massive human and economic impact of the Asian tsunami in later 2004 is mirrored in the aftershocks felt among humanitarian organisations, development agencies, and policy makers. This paper raises a number of these troubling, fundamental issues. Firstly, the call for an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system raises fundamental issues about what warning systems can, and cannot, do. Secondly, one is also forced to consider why in the first place so many people live on exposed coasts today, vulnerable not only to tsunamis but tropical storms and rainy season flooding among other hazards. Thirdly, one is challenged to question the very meaning of “recovery”. Such massive damage has been done and so many people and their livelihoods have been dislocated, is it actually possible to imagine a return to the status quo ante? Fourthly, reconstruction of the magnitude now underway in the affected areas raises many difficult questions about accountability, transparency, and the unevenness with which the international community responds to crises. The paper finishes with some recommendations.

A failed Roma revolution: Conflict, fragmentation and status quo maintenance in Rome

Ethnicities ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 775-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella Clough Marinaro ◽  
Ulderico Daniele
Keyword(s):  
Municipal Government ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Opportunity Structure ◽  
Political Opportunity ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Status ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article examines novel spaces for Roma political participation that opened up under a right-wing municipal government in Rome between 2008 and 2013. Three channels were created through which Roma could engage with policy-makers and, in theory, make their voices heard: a ‘Mayor’s Delegate for Roma Issues’; a forum for debate among Roma groups and elected representatives in two official camps. Based on in-depth interviews with protagonists of this key period of mobilisation, we evaluate the successes achieved and obstacles faced. In particular, we highlight the differentiations which emerged among Roma actors, concluding that, following an initial period of enthusiasm and cohesion, most participants withdrew, achieving few of their initial goals. While the analysis demonstrates the heterogeneity of Roma groups and interests in this process, it also underlines the constraints created by the external political opportunity structure which ultimately worked to co-opt activists in order to maintain the status quo.

Noise-Making, Occupy Wall Street, and the Politics of Amplification

Resonance ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-280
Author(s):  
John Vilanova
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Media Activism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Drum Circles ◽  
Acoustic Device

This research explores a set of sound technologies deployed during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City’s Zuccotti Park. It examines the People’s Microphone, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) sound cannon, the drum circle, and the noise complaint. Deepening understandings of their places within the contemporary urban soundscape and their use during the protests, it uses historical research, textual analysis, and qualitative discourse analysis methods to explore the technologies within a larger framework of the city’s discourses around (in)appropriate sound and action. Its findings suggest that each individual technology was evidence for the nature of its user in a way that presaged how the conflict would play out. The microphone epitomized the ideology (and fragility) of the hyper-democratic Occupiers’ ethos. The LRAD suggested the state’s superlative sonic capability and its “monopoly on the legitimate use of noise.” And the drum circles and noise complaints that followed ultimately showed the ways “noise-making” is better understood as a discursive construction that delegitimizes sound. Together, they suggest the ways the hegemonic soundscape serves the status quo. The essay also elaborates a taxonomy of sonic terms, specifically exploring volume, amplification, and noise-making as terms that explain the dynamics of sound during protest. It offers scholars of media activism a toolkit for sound studies that gets at the dynamics and structures of sonic power and explores the way sound-making is a key battleground of modernity. Sound conventions are a way that contemporary society is codified, legislated, and contested.

Race

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Business Regulation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Status

This chapter examines the status quo before the start of the civil rights realignment, showing that civil rights was simply not viewed as part of the standard “liberal program” as of the early 1930s. Although African Americans were vocal in attacking Franklin D. Roosevelt's weak civil rights record, they were largely alone. When whites on the left pushed Roosevelt to be a more forthright liberal or progressive, they criticized him for inadequate support for labor, weak business regulation, and insufficient recovery spending—but not for his failure to back civil rights. At this early stage, the “enemies” of a liberal Democratic Party generally were not identified with the South but instead were probusiness Democrats from the Northeast, associated with Al Smith of New York. Economic questions were the key battleground in the eyes of white liberals, and civil rights did not figure in these debates.

‘Have a Quiet, Orderly, Polite Revolution’: Framing Political Protest and Protecting the Status Quo

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 733-751
Author(s):  
Tamara J. Lynn ◽  
L. Susan Williams
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Print Media ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Occupy Wall Street ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Status

This paper demonstrates how print media sources frame the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street in ways that, consciously or not, support the prevailing status quo – social, economic, and political elites. The study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA) as the analytic framework, investigating how print media (sometimes referred to as ‘print capitalism’) utilized framing techniques that disparaged the two political organizations but in very different ways. The analysis incorporates articles appearing in the New York Post and the New York Times from the inception of each organization, through six weeks after the 2012 Presidential Inauguration; articles were coded to uncover themes that defined both organizations as ‘outsiders.’ Tea Partiers are characterized as irrational demagogues, while Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activities are criminalized; both are dismissed as irrelevant, leaving the predominant ‘mainstream’ political rule intact. Findings identify tools of discourse used by media to limit the influence of competing movements while essentially protecting the status quo. Revealing these tools provides clues to unreliable discourse in media coverage of presidential candidates, which tends to quash open debate and threaten principles of participatory government.

scholarly journals A questionnaire-based study to comprehensively assess the status quo of rare disease patients in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuefeng Li ◽  
Meiling Liu ◽  
Bingzhe Li ◽  
Xiangyu Zhang ◽  
Shu Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rare Disease ◽  
Rare Diseases ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Poor Health ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Disease Awareness ◽  
Care Givers ◽  
Sleeping Problems ◽  
The Status ◽  
Education And Employment

Abstract Background: There are over 16.8 million rare disease patients in China, representing a large community that should not be neglected. To provide a basis for policy-makers, a comprehensive analysis of the status quo, unmet needs, difficulty caused by the rare disease is essential.Methods: Therefore, a questionnaire-based study of patients and care-givers was performed.Findings: A total of 1,959 patients and care-givers participated, representing 104 rare diseases, such as lysosomal diseases, hemophilia, and muscular dystrophy. The diagnosis was delayed for 1.4 ± 3.0 years, and patients experienced 1.6 ± 3.8 misdiagnoses between 3.2 ± 2.4 hospitals. The hospitals where diagnoses made were highly concentrated in 10 large hospitals (43.8%) and 5 big cities (42.1%), indicating a significant inequality of medical resources. The disease often led to difficulty in social life, education, and employment, as well as financial burden that was seldom covered by medical insurance. A battery of standardized tests, including SF-36, PHQ-9, PHQ-15, GAD-7, and PSQI, demonstrated poor health status, depression, somatization, anxiety, and sleeping issues among both patients and care-givers (p<0.05).To examine the influence of age, disease type, and relationship to patients on the scores in these tests, statistical analysis with a general linear model was conducted. It was also shown that poor health, anxiety, depression, somatization, and sleeping problems were more prevalent in patients than in care-givers, and more prevalent in more severe diseases (e.g., hemophilia, Dravet) or undiagnosed than in other diseases.Interpretations: This study identified the lack of rare disease awareness and legislative support as the major challenge to rare diseases in China, and makes key recommendations for policy-makers, including legislating orphan drug act, raising rare disease awareness, and protecting rights in education and employment.

scholarly journals Digital Stories as a Creative Assignment for Studying World Religions

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 644
Author(s):  
Charles S. Chesnavage
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Spiritual But Not Religious ◽  
The Status ◽  
Digital Stories ◽  
Education Courses

The incorporation of creative assignments in the form of digital stories and artistic assignments in undergraduate and graduate World Religions courses has resulted in positive feedback from the students, and these courses were considered the favorite of the semester. They have given students, many of which identify as “spiritual but not religious”, or “non-practicing”, an opportunity to connect themes from various world religions to their own life stories, implicitly or explicitly. The purpose of this article is to encourage educators in both a secondary and a college/university/seminary setting to consider digital stories as a creative assignment that deepens their understanding of world religions within the context of a World Religions course, or other religion and religious education courses. This article will present the institutional support provided by Mercy College (Dobbs Ferry, New York) and the context for the World Religions class in which the digital stories are assigned. It will be followed by the process of making a digital story, the directions given to the students, the different platforms that students can choose to make the digital stories, and examples of digital stories created by the students. The paper will conclude with a summary of comments made by the students about the assignment and connections with additional articles on the benefits of digital stories to increase empathy and replace the dominant stories that cause oppression and injustice, like racism and white supremacy, with stories that offer resistance and counter the status quo of oppression and injustice.

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