Soundbites, fall 2022

December 19, 2022

The results of the Russian aggression—starving people, murdering people—from that perspective, we have to help (people) so that they survive. But the cause, the causes are really more important. The cause is the bad political system in Russia. It’s not just Stalin or Putin. It’s a political system that makes it possible for people like them to show up.

Lech Wałesa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of Poland. Weiser Diplomacy Center event, “Russia’s war on Ukraine and its global impact,” September 13, 2022.
Kaltura Video

 


 

The reason we have the laws that we have is because we have been complacent, and we’ve let a very small minority create pretty radical laws. We do national gun policy surveys every other year, and what we find incredibly consistently is that gun owners and non-gun owners, Republicans and Democrats, actually agree on a lot of things. It’s the lobbies.

Daniel Webster, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy. Policy Talks @ the Ford School, “Policy-focused solutions to the firearm epidemic: What we know works,” September 22, 2022.
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We realized that somebody needed to step into the void to find out what was going on behind the scenes at big tech companies and how — people have called it ‘data capitalism,’ some people have called it ‘surveillance capitalism,’ I just call it ‘the business model of the internet’ — is impacting our rights, our choices, and maybe constraining our choices in ways that we don’t totally understand.

Kade Crockford, ACLU of Massachusetts. STPP lecture series, “Technology, surveillance, and civil liberties,” October 3, 2022.
Kaltura Video

 


 

It’s about reframing the idea of a Black maternal health crisis. On one hand, there is attention to an important issue, but the way the issue is framed is problematizing Black birthing bodies instead of addressing a system that is really not good to any birthing bodies. We deserve high quality, transformative, radically loving care that affirms our power. Changing the culture of birth in the country could be a gamechanger for power-building in our communities.

Leseliey Welch, Birth Detroit. Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Lecture Series, “Maternal health equity: The racial justice imperative,” October 27, 2022.

More in State & Hill

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