Network for Responsible Public Policy

Exploring the Misinformation Landscape
2020-10-28 19:30 - 2020-10-29 21:00 UTC | Webinar and Facebook Live Stream
The media news landscape is difficult to navigate and is fueled with false and manipulated information. Yet, to be a knowledgeable voter and engaged citizen requires credible trusted information and journalism. This program will explore journalism and news literacy and navigating what many describe as a treacherous news landscape. Using election-related examples the speakers will cover the tools for fact-checking, the reasons things go viral, verification, debunking strategies as well as the role of journalists and journalism.
Our speakers:
John Silva is the News Literacy Project’s senior director of education and training. He joined NLP in March 2017 with 13 years of experience as a middle and high social studies teacher with Chicago Public Schools He first became involved with news literacy in 2014 when his students engaged in NLP’s original classroom program. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, John spent several years in corporate telecommunications positions before deciding to become a teacher. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in the teaching of history and has a master’s degree in education, with a concentration in e-learning, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He became a National Board Certified Teacher in 2012.

Kyle Pope, editor, and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review. Previously, he worked as an editor at Condé Nast, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Observer.

Jane Sasseen, moderator/discussant is the executive director of the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. The Center provides grants and editorial support to journalists working on investigative and enterprise stories on critical economic and financial issues. Previously, she was the senior editor in charge of News and Washington bureau chief for BusinessWeek, editor-in-chief of politics for Yahoo News, and the Paris bureau chief of International Management magazine. She is a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award, the top prize for financial journalism in America.

To RSVP for the Zoom Webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fTrhfq6gTjmSHKeqxpctdw
To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live_videos/

Event Sponsor:

Dog whistle racism, race-class fusion politics, and our future
2020-10-14 19:30 - 21:00
Over the last half-century, the Republican Party has exploited social divisions—and racism in particular—to win power, and then has ruled primarily on behalf of the ultra-wealthy. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has struggled to respond effectively and has even stooped to imitation. In this conversation, Ian Haney López lays out the history of dog-whistle politics and Donald Trump’s place within it. Then he suggests a clear way forward. His research—discussed in his most recent book, Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America—demonstrates that dog whistle politics can be defeated. Drawing on these results, this lecture assesses the looming 2020 presidential election.

Ian Haney López is the originator of the race-class approach to beating dog-whistle politics. A law professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in Critical Race Theory, his focus for the last decade has been on the use of racism as a class weapon in electoral politics, and how to respond. In Dog Whistle Politics (2014), he detailed the fifty-year history of coded racism in American politics. He then co-chaired the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice and co-founded the Race-Class Narrative Project. In Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019), Ian explains Trump’s complex relationship with dog-whistling and further develops the race-class response.
Ian is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published four books and two anthologies and lives in Richmond, California.

Roger Berkowitz, moderator, Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College.

Adrian Costa, a student representative, is a Senior majoring in both Political Studies and Theatre & Performance at Bard College

To RSVP for the Zoom Webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Wg8auw8TRhqOtE_cwMrGhg
To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live_videos/

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Understanding Systemic Racism and Challenges for Policy Change
2020-09-24 19:30 - 21:00
Racism has been the underside of America throughout our history. The manner with which we have treated Racism has led to our current moment. How we acknowledge and confront Racism today will have a major impact on our future. This means examining our institutional challenges, class struggles, and more, important, ourselves.
Coming to terms with our history, finding the strength and courage to make a change will be discussed by our thoughtful distinguished experts.

David Dante Troutt is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Justice John J. Francis Scholar at Rutgers Law School-Newark where he also directs the Center on Law, Inequality, and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME). Current CLiME research initiatives examine gentrification, equitable growth strategies in Newark, and place-based disparities in the context of fair housing, psychological trauma among school children, child welfare, and other areas of institutional inquiry. He emphasizes using the law and interdisciplinary study to understand structural inequality and to formulate legal and policy reform strategies. Troutt teaches tort law, intellectual property, and a multidisciplinary approach to racial and economic inequality called metropolitan equity (land use, civil rights, state and local government, housing, and poverty law). His most recent book, The Price of Paradise: The Costs of Inequality and a Vision for a More Equitable America (NYU Press), examines six cultural assumptions that have informed legal rules and public policy across American communities to reveal how they contribute to structural inequality at a time of immense demographic change.

​Alex S. Vitale is a Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

To RSVP for the Zoom webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_vo6Jw95nRF6M2hvBz_9GCg
To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live_videos/

Event Sponsors:

Policing: The Change America is Awaiting
2020-07-23 19:30 - 21:30
Americans have taken up the fight for fairness and equity in the policing of their communities. The numerous stakeholders for change and reform are debating concerns for what it will take to create model policing that serves the interests of our communities and policing as well. Three experts will help “unpack” this long-festering issue. They bring to our discussion experience in policing, activism, research, and solutions they believe essential for reform and change.

Speakers:
ANDREW COHEN is a senior editor at the Marshall Project and a Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. A former senior legal analyst for CBS News and 60 Minutes, he has covered law and justice in America since 1997 online, in print, and on radio and television.
DR. EVELYN GARCIA is a scholar-activist with over 35 years of experience in the field of policing. She is currently the Senior Lecturer in the School of Criminal Justice, Political Science and International Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her many publications center on ethical issues in criminal justice.
DR. JASON WILLIAMS is an Assistant Professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University and author of “Black Males and the Criminal Justice System.” A dedicated criminologist, he is deeply involved in issues of racial disparity and mistreatment.
SARAH RYLEY, the moderator, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. Her data-driven stories on policing have appeared in New York Daily News, ProPublica, BuzzFeed News, and The Trace, and have triggered numerous reforms, including the passage of two-dozen laws in New York City.
See FLYER for more information.

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To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live_videos/

Many thanks to our co-sponsors who make these events possible:

Stop the Madness! Why the US Government Increases Inequality in Good Times and Bad
2020-06-11 19:30 - 21:30
Economic inequality is a central theme in the Presidential campaign. Progressives have proposed that one way to reduce inequality is with a tax on the accumulated wealth of the richest Americans, yet an influential theory in economics, endorsed by the right, argues that the ideal tax on wealth is zero. Is a wealth tax a good idea, a bad idea, or both?

Professor Eric Schoenberg is a former investment banker, a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, and has taught at Wharton, Columbia Business School, and NYU before taking his current position in Columbia’s Psychology Department. His multiple video appearances on tax policy have garnered more than 40 million views online, including this encounter with Fox News host Stuart Varney: https://www.facebook.com/PatrioticMillionaires/videos/1643177482371735/?id=126877

Peter Coy, the moderator, is Economics Editor of Bloomberg Businessweek. He writes on a wide range of economic, social, and financial issues. He is a regular contributor to the magazine’s “Remarks” column. Mr. Coy came to Businessweek from the Associated Press in New York, where he served as a business news writer since 1985.

To RSVP for the Zoom webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_A5-Km3KHRqeIF1iZfcjAyw
To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live/
(Webinar access is limited to the first 100 RSVPs, and will include the ability to ask questions. If you only want to watch the event, please use the Facebook Live link on the night of the event.)

COVID-19: The Ongoing Financial Implications and the Long-Term Financial Outlook
2020-05-28 19:30 - 21:30
William D. Cohan is the bestselling author of, among others, Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World and House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street. He is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and writer-at-large for AirMail. He also writes opinion columns for The New York Times.

Peter Coy, the moderator, is the economics editor for Bloomberg Businessweek and covers a wide range of economic issues. He also holds the position of senior writer.

To RSVP for the Zoom webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Km9Ts0C2QH20IATXJ133Xg
To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live/
(Webinar access is limited to the first 100 RSVPs, and will include the ability to ask questions. If you only want to watch the event, please use the Facebook Live link on the night of the event.)

Dangerous Speech Pre and Post COVID-19: Countering Online Hatred while Protecting Freedom of Expression
2020-05-21 - 2020-05-22
When you see something hateful online, do you respond? If so, why? And how, exactly? Everyone says “don’t feed the trolls.” But blocking, ignoring, and deleting can only go so far – and often serve to further polarize and isolate us. People around the world are choosing instead to actively resist hatred online by engaging with the trolls, alone and in groups, in different innovative ways. This talk will draw on 18 months of research conducted by Cathy Buerger, Director of Research at the Dangerous Speech Project. The talk will discuss the challenges of responding to hatred online as well as best practices gleaned from this research.
Speaker:
CATHY BUERGER is the Director of Research at the Dangerous Speech Project (DSP), a Washington, DC-based NGO that studies the relationship between speech and violence. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut, where her research examined how civil society activists in Ghana work together to support positive norms and to uphold human rights. Her current research at the DSP focuses on civil society responses to dangerous and hateful speech online. She is a Research Affiliate of UConn’s Economic and Social Rights Research Group, Managing Editor of the Journal of Human Rights, and an Editor for the Teaching Human Rights Database.

This event is from 7:30pm to 9:30pm on May 21, 2020.

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To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/live/
(Webinar access is limited to the first 100 RSVPs, and will include the ability to ask questions. If you only want to watch the event, please use the Facebook Live link on the night of the event.)

Transforming Our Democracy with Ranked Choice Voting
2020-04-23 19:30 - 21:30
Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a simple solution with a big impact. It promotes majority support, contributes to more civil and issue-oriented campaigns, gives voters more choices, and produces a more reflective democracy. Amidst widespread frustration with politics among both voters and elected officials, it’s no surprise that ranked-choice voting is gaining momentum across the country as a win-win solution that strengthens our democracy.
The RCV movement is poised to continue its momentum. BIlls in Congress would establish RCV across all congressional elections, with both the Ranked Choice Voting Act and the more comprehensive Fair Representation Act garnering growing political and intellectual support. State activity is growing. FairVote President Rob Richie will discuss ranked-choice voting’s transformative impact and what it will take to bring RCV to states like New Jersey.
Speaker:
Rob Richie has been the leader of FairVote since co-founding the organization in 1992 and was named president and CEO in 2018. He has played a key role in advancing, winning, and implementing electoral reforms at the local and state levels. Richie has been involved in helping to develop, win, and implement: ranked-choice voting in states and more than 20 cities, fair representation voting systems in numerous Voting Rights Act cases, the National Popular Vote plan in 16 states, and voter access proposals like voter pre-registration and automatic voter registration.

To watch the event on Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/NFRPP/posts/2799065263502450
To RSVP for the Zoom webinar, go to https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QxzwveIkRE2KeZI5ji8Uog
(Webinar access is limited to the first 100 RSVPs, and will include the ability to ask questions. If you only want to watch the event, please use the Facebook Live link on the night of the event.)
