Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

NYTime columnist Charles Blow wrote a column today damning the latest candidate for the President, former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The basis for Mr. Blow’s condemnation was Mayor Bloomberg’s racist and failed stop-and-frisk policy, a fear-based policy that was presumably designed to seize illegal weapons and contraband. In the final analysis, though, the policy failed to accomplish that goal and instead resulted in the increased incarceration of people of color who were overly represented in the group that was stopped and frisked on the street.

After reading the column, I left the following comment:

Fear of “the other” drives many bad policies.

Have the billions spent on the so-called global war on terror made made us any safer? What data have we collected to prove it?

Has the caging and separation of immigrant children from their parents made us any safer?

Has millions spend on the widespread installation of surveillance cameras and the placement of police officers in public schools made us any safer?

These practices designed to protect us from “the other” are as odious as stop-and-frisk and yet we continue to spend billions based on the faith that we are protecting ourselves.

In the meantime we are unwilling to face the cold hard data of climate change. Why? Because in order to address climate change we need to accept that the enemy is US….

Alas, it is far easier to stoke fear in “the other” than it is to look at ourselves. And if we DID examine ourselves we might find that our fear of “the other” is baseless.