Innocence Project Ribs, Veggie Pickup, Steller Turns 50

Keeping busy these days.  I'm in the third grade class daily mostly helping one young man catch up on his English but also with other kids too.  Biking in the breaks in the rain.   

Also went to the Alaska Innocence Project's BBQ Rib Cook-off.  This year their invite also mentioned there'd be veggie options too.  The baked beens were great.  

Justice is one of my most cherished values, and the idea of innocent people be locked up, even executed, moves me greatly.  Right now the national Innocence Project is working to prevent an innocent man from being executed. 

"The Missouri Supreme Court has scheduled the execution of Mr. Williams on Sept. 24, for a crime he did not commit."

Even the prosecuting attorney involved has changed his mind.

"The St. Louis County prosecuting attorney reviewed these DNA results and filed a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ conviction because he believed the DNA results proved by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Williams did not commit this crime."

Moving on to the execution, when there is serious question, even if not definite proof, of innocence, tells me these people are not serious about justice. 

The BBQ took place at the Alaskan Airmen's Association great building at Lake Hood float plane base.  It's a great location, but the steady rain and cloud cover that evening meant there were very few planes taking off or landing.  And one would hope they might consider a name change soon.  Airmen seems a lot sexist.  I suspect they could find reasonable synonyms, like pilots, flyers, etc.  

Picked up our Thursday veggies from Grow North Farms.  

And Friday afternoon went to the Community part of the Steller Secondary School 50th Anniversary celebration.  Here's one of the students who spoke to the crowd hold the Legislative Proclamation Rep. Alyse Galvin presented the school.  Alyse was involved with Steller a long time as a parent.  (As were we, but not for so long).  I saved this picture in fairly high resolution.  The story is pretty cool, but not sure you can read it.  Among the signatures is Sen. Jesse Kiehl of Juneau, who was a Steller student when my daughter was.  

Here's Rep. Galvin talking to the gathering before making the presentation of the Certificate.  To the side are the student speaker (whose name I didn't catch), the principal Maria Hernandez, and a parent who worked hard to organize the anniversary weekend.  

And here's Bob Reid, one of the original Steller teachers back in 1974, who came up from Texas to participate.  Bob talked about how the school got started and the ideals of creating a school where everyone participated in the decisions on courses, rules, etc.  Students, teachers, administrators, staff, and parents.  And how the vision was to bring the world into the school and involve the students out in the world.  

Bob was also a neighbor of ours before he moved to Texas, so it was great to see him again.  His major claim to fame for me was that he was the host of "Nothing but the Blues" on the then new public radio station KSKA.  

For those who can't read the Legislative Proclamation, here's part of it:

"The self-directed aspect of Steller Secondary School is a big part of what makes Steller so successful, and so unique.  With an emphasis on responsibility to self and to one's community, students, parents, and staff work together through a democratic process to set school policy and procedures.  The school ethic encourages self-advocacy and inquiry:  students are encouraged to participate in collaborative processes to determine what courses should be offered and which events will take place. 

With no bells to call students to class, no advanced placement classes, and no interscholastic sports, students who choose to attend Steller find themselves both appropriately challenged and personally engaged through the opportunity to co-create independent studies and intensives with their instructors and their peers, and to develop self-directive intensives ranging from foreign and domestic travel, sports, carpentry, drama, creative writing, sculpture, and batik, to fun with math and the chemistry of cosmetics.

As part of Stellar's commitment to their motto, "only the educated are free," and their recognition that education of the individual occurs in the context of an interdependent world, the school heavily emphasizes service to community, both through a sustained commitment to service intones community, region, and state, and through a commitment to one another within the school's peer mentoring and leadership opportunities."

I'd note, that while it says "no advanced placement classes, and no interscholastic sports," students are free to arrange those activities at other schools in the district.  My daughter took advanced placement classes at another high school and she took German at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) while she was in high school.  And NBA player Trajan Langdon played basketball for East High School while he was at Steller.  

The school was named after Georg Steller, (from Wikipedia):

"Georg Wilhelm Steller (10 March 1709 – 14 November 1746) was a German-born naturalist and explorer who contributed to the fields of biology, zoology, and ethnography. He participated in the Great Northern Expedition (1733–1743) and his observations of the natural world helped the exploration and documentation of the flora and fauna of the North Pacific region.

Steller pursued studies in theology and medicine before turning his attention to the natural sciences. In 1734, he joined the Russian Academy of Sciences as a physician, eventually being selected to accompany Bering's expedition to the uncharted waters between Siberia and North America. Steller kept detailed records of species and cultures encountered, as well as ocean currents during the journey. . ."

Among the regular visitors to our backyard, the Steller's Jay was named after Georg Steller.  (The photo is from a 2014 post and I wrote then that I did nothing to enhance the color. The light was just right.)

So connecting several threads here, I took Dr. Margritt Engel to the Steller anniversary celebration.  Dr. Engel was my daughter's UAA German teacher while my daughter was at Steller.  But more important, Dr. Engel translated Georg Steller's journals from the expeditions to Siberia and North America.  She brought two with her to give to the school for their library and to arrange for further interaction with the school and scholarship on its namesake.   

AIFF: Sunday Offers Impressive Crime/Prison Lessons

 I missed the noon movie Sunday.  I just needed a little more time to recuperate. 

Saturday morning had a great set of Alaska themed or made films.  I was very pleased that we are past the days when Alaska films were any Alaskan project where someone writes a story and goes out (usually) into the woods and experiments with how their cameras and mics work.  

That elation didn't survive Sunday's Alaska Shorts Program.  There were good ones mostly.  And that's all I'll say.  

The afternoon Documentary Feature - The Body Politic - was a riveting look at Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott.   We see Scott elected into office as a young Black man who saw his first shooting at 10, and vowed that the basic approach of mass arresting of Black men had to be replaced.  The alternative was to give people options in life other than crime and prison.    He comes into office after 327 (maybe it was 37) people had been murdered in the previous year, vowing to cut murders by 15%.  But pro-active reaching out to folks is a long term strategy and takes a while to work.  He monitored every murder as they outpaced his target.  The Republican governor, who controlled prisons, parole, and critical social services, refused to meet with Scott and said he needed to beef up the police to stop the crime.

The discussion afterward included director Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough, film subject Erricka Bridgeford, and another film maker whose name and role I didn't quite catch.  Ida, the director of the festival is on the right.  Ericka is in the middle.  

You can read more about the film from a Baltimore paper and read an interview with the director here.

The next shorts program began with another excellent film - The Bond - which was short and packed a powerful punch as we see an incarcerated woman having her baby, shackled, and then having the baby taken from her.  The filming, the story, the acting were all just right.  

The last program were three films related to prison and domestic violence.  

Infraction told the true story of an inmate who the judge had, at some point concluded was innocent, but was still locked up.

Seeds of Change told the story of a farmer who takes on the project of setting up a farm adjacent to a prison and then utilizing prisoners to work on the farm.  The fresh food is served in the prison.  The film shows the effect of the farm work on the prisoners who worked there and the effects of having fresh food prepared well on the prisoners. 

Where I Learned Not to Sleep  - The camera follows two retired police who grew up with domestic violence, doing training programs for police on how to approach domestic violence situations.  

The whole afternoon and evening illustrated the need to treat citizens, abused women,  and prisoners with dignity and respect to break the cycle of violence and criminality.  

There's much more to say, but this at least gives you a sense of what I got out of the festival on Sunday.  

People, Not Prisons - Stories, Poems, Songs, Heartbreak

 ACLU Alaska's The Alaska Prison Project Action Network (PRAN), hosted a People, Not Prison night a bit over a week ago.  

PRAN Goals
Substantially reducing the incarcerated population, especially among people of color, people with mental disabilities, and other vulnerable populations.  The human and financial costs of mass incarceration are staggering, and the burden falls disproportionately on the poor, the ill, and people of color.  However, the current fiscal crisis, overcrowding issues, and growing understanding about the correlation between rehabilitation and improved public safety create the best opportunity to challenge Alaska’s addiction to incarceration.  Increasing public accountability and transparency of jails, prisons, and other places of detention.  Because places of detention are inherently closed environments housing the unpopular and the politically powerless, external oversight is critical to guard against mistreatment and abuse.  The business of detention, which creates financial incentives for both increased incarceration and harsher conditions of confinement, has made public accountability even more important.  The federal Prison Litigation Reform Act and flimsy state public records laws have significantly reduced judicial oversight of prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities, and resulted in serious abuses going unchecked. Ending cruel, inhuman, and degrading conditions of confinement.  Far too many incarcerated people are held in conditions that daily threaten their health, safety, and human dignity.  Denial of adequate medical and mental health care, basic sanitation, and protection from physical and sexual assault are all too common.  Across the country, tens of thousands of prisoners are held in long-term solitary confinement, a disturbing practice used in Alaska all too often.  The devastating effects of such treatment, particularly on persons with mental illness, are well known.  Expanding prisoners’ freedom of religion, expression, and association.  Prisoners’ rights to read, write, speak, practice their religion, and communicate with the outside world are often curtailed far beyond what is necessary for institutional security.  Not only are these activities central to the ability of prisoners to retain their humanity, they also contribute to the flow of information between prisons and the outside world and thus provide a vital form of oversight of these closed institutions. Expanding access to justice for incarcerated Alaskans. Access to justice is an essential right for all victims of abuse, especially those who have been abused while incarcerated. But all too often, the prison system creates barriers to counsel and legal resources. The Alaska Prison Project works to assist incarcerated people seeking relief from abuse by fighting to limit new policies further restricting prisoners’ access to the courts and counsel, assisting prisoners in understanding the processes by which they must pursue relief for any harms they have suffered, and representing classes of prisoners seeking relief from abuse.

There were several several other partners - Keys to Life, the Learning Inside Out Network (LION) -and probably some others I missed.  Keys to Life is

 "Dedicated to Empowering, Creating and Strengthening an Inclusive Community through Rich Arts and Cross-Cultural Experiences."

Storytelling is a big part of what they do.  For the People, Not Prisons night they highlighted their Lullaby Project where they work with women prisoners, talking to them, getting them to write, and then pairing them up with a musician who works with them to take their words and put them into a song, which is recorded and given to their child(ren).    The women pick the style of music they want.  That evening a band and vocalists played four or five of those songs.  

The LION project had a box that generated poems.  Their overall goal is:

"The Learning Inside Out Network supports education and creative collaboration between people who are inside and outside of Alaska’s jails and prisons. As a grassroots group, we catalyze community wellness projects and advocate for individuals and families affected by incarceration."

There were also art pieces.  We were told that the prisoners cannot get paid for the work they do in prison, but they had agreed to donate any proceeds to the Prison Project Action Network.  I understand reasoning that would keep prisoners like Michael Cohen from profiting by writing a book about his years with Trump, but in this case it seems petty and even counter productive to rehabilitation goals.  

And there were also stories and poems that prisoners had written and paper where readers could leave notes for the prisoners.  Here are a couple.  These are high resolution images so if you click on them they'll get larger.

And there were live stories told by ex-prisoners.  Trevor Stephano told about being imprisoned as a juvenile and how the structure of the prison system puts pre-trial people who could not get out on bail with seasoned criminals who know how to take advantage of them and recruit them into prison gangs.  (It's been a little over a week and I may not be conveying it quite like he said it.)  If I remember correctly, Trevor has gotten a college degree and is working at a law firm now.

Jacqueline Shepherd wasn't a prisoner, but was caring for some children of prisoners and visited a number of prisons to see their fathers.  She talked about experiences getting in to see prisoners.  Her very first visit she had on a tank top and a work suit jacket.  She was told she could only wear one layer.  She felt the tank top was inappropriate, but so was the suit jacket with nothing underneath.  But the rules were the rules.  She also had a parka and ended up wearing that with nothing underneath.  She told another story about a woman with a month old baby in line in front of her.  The guard said she couldn't bring in the baby bottle with milk.  The woman only spoke Spanish.  She had a four hour visiting slot and the baby couldn't go that long without eating.  Sorry, no liquid.  Eventually they worked out that she could bring in dry formula and as she was getting it out, some spilled onto the floor.  She was given a broom to sweep it up.  

I'd had a somewhat different frustrating experience.  I flew to Oregon to visit a friend who was in prison.  We'd gone through all the paper work and he'd been told I was approved to visit.  But when I got there, they didn't have the paperwork and I couldn't visit.  Had to fly back to Alaska and come down another time.  

Dimitrios Alexiadis talked about the difficulties for prisoners getting out of prison.  How hard it is finding housing that will take an ex-con, and the same with employers.  

It was both difficult and uplifting hearing first hand about the problems with our prison system and the work that people are doing to help individual prisoners and to change the system itself.  The timing made it doubly meaningful because I had just posted about how corrupt and ineffective prisons are.   

One other event of the evening was the reading of the names of people who have died in Alaska prisons this year.  I got the list so I could post it here for us all to think about.  

Lawrence Lobdell

Luke Dennis

Kitty Douglas

Leefisher Tukrook

Jarvis Sours

James Wheeler

Austin Wilson

David Bristol

Nastashia Minock

RobertVann

Bernie Alexia

James Keith Rider

The point was made that when prisoners die, their obituaries highlight their worst mistakes.  We were admonished to consider what our obituaries might look like if we had to highlight our worst mistakes.  

Prisons are expensive and effective only to the extend that they keep dangerous people away from the rest of the population and they employee guards and make a profit for private prison companies.    We have these prisons because 

• people believe prisoners are bad people and deserve to be punished
• they are out of sight so we don't see how demeaning, dehumanizing they are
• we are fed a regular stream of scare stories from the media - usually fed by law enforcement public relations offices - and so politicians campaign on being tough on crime
• because we don't spend the money up front on education, helping poor families, and physical, mental and emotional health

This list could go on and on, but these are a few of the reasons

AIFF 2022 Poster And Reaching Avanos (Metacyclicly) [UPDATED September 28, 2022]

My brain has been wandering.  I've got half a dozen posts either in draft form or in that wandering brain.  But sitting down to type them up here has been a challenge.  For one thing, I just got a copy of the 2022 Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF) poster.  

I think it looks great and I'm trying to find out the artist [UPDATE:  Jessica Thorton] so I can give credit here.  The festival will be all live this year, not much Bear Tooth, a lot of museum if I remember right.  

My summer biking Anchorage trails in real life/from Istanbul to Cappadocia in my head is complete. 

Actually, Cappadocia is a region with several major towns..  The biker whose map I was following on RidewithGPS ended up at the far end of Cappadocia in the town of Avanos.  Here are some pictures from https://visitmyturkey.com/en/avanos/.

These are out in the country side nearby.  From Wikipedia:

"Old Avanos is riddled with a network of small underground "cities" which may once have been residential but are now mainly used by the many pottery enterprises. Although there is no documentary evidence to prove when these structures were carved out of the earth, it is probable that work on some of them began in the Hittite period.

As Venessa, the ancient Avanos was the third most important town in the Kingdom of Cappadocia (332BC-17AD) according to the geographer Strabo.[5] Although it was the site of an important temple of Zeus, nothing remains of it today. [5]In Roman and Byzantine times Avanos had a large Christian population who were responsible for the rock-cut Dereyamanlı Kilisesi. [6]Unusually, this is still occasionally used even today."

Avanos, by the route map I was following, is 891 km from Istanbul.  I made it to 897 km on Saturday and today went on to 912 km.  (900 km = 559.23 miles)  Weather permitting, I'm now hoping to hit 1000 km (621 miles).  I thought that was pretty good for the summer until I talked to a friend the other day who did over 600 miles in 13 days in France.  Oh well.  

But I'm hoping that by 2024 at the latest I will have been to Istanbul and Avanos in person.  

Then there's the follow up on the Words in the Constitution post.  

Dimitrios Alexiadis

I've also got pictures from an ACLU event on prisons and the people in them that was co-sponsored with several other organizations that work with prisoners.  Just putting up pictures is relatively easy, but there were important messages as well.  But if I wait too long I'll forget the details.  

And more.  But the bike, the yard, Netflix (watching the rescue of the Thai soccer team from the flooded caves series now - finished two episodes and the international cave divers have reached the boys, and there's still a bunch more episodes to go; enjoying trying to catch as much Thai as I can; don't think this is a spoiler since we saw this live in the news a couple of years ago), and other things steal from blogging.  Oh yeah, got my bivalent booster and flu shot the other day too.  Slightly sore arms, but that was all.  

This LA Times Story Tells us Prisons Are A Criminal Justice Joke

[The point here is the excerpt below from an LA Times story.  But I ended up putting a lot of context before the excerpt.  You an skip down to the quote if you think you know all the introductory thoughts already.  And, of course, you don't need my permission to do that, or whatever you want.]

I've watched enough prison movies and read enough books and articles to know that the US prison system doesn't work very well*.  First of all we top the world in prisoners per 100,000 population:

The countries on this list are not among the most enlightened and prosperous.  But we're on top.  By a lot.  

Our justice system massively discriminates against people of color.

"Nationwide, Black people are locked up in state prison at a rate of 1,240 per 100,000 residents, as compared with 261 whites. That’s 4.8 times greater incarceration of Black than white people, based on 2019 data from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. On average, one of every 81 Black Americans is in a state prison.

In California, it’s worse. One of 62 Black Californians is in state prison."

The editorial goes on to counter the traditional response that it's because people of color commit more crimes, but rather it's discrimination throughout the justice system.

When people make lascivious remarks about what evil things might happen to a young defendant when he reaches prison, do you smile or do think that something is wrong with prisons? If you smile or if you're the one who makes the joke, you're part of the problem.  

What about people who are wrongly convicted?  The Innocence Projects around the US have gotten 399 prisoners exonerated.  Those are just the people who were able to get enough evidence to prove their innocence, even though it's guilt that is supposed to be proven in court. 

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery, EXCEPT for prisoners.

"Thirteenth Amendment

Section 1

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

  Prisons and companies who get prisoners to work for them take advantage of this exception.  

So all that was preface to this excerpt from an  LA Times story that appeared last week about the Mexican Mafia (their term) that has operated in San Bernardino for decades (again, according to the story). 

This excerpt truly tells us of how truly corrupt and failing these prisons are.  (Yes, I know they depict this in tv shows and movies regularly, but still it's shocking.)

Moreno was Rodriguez’s “secretary” — a role once typically filled by women who were not in prison, who used visits and letters to pass messages from Mexican Mafia members to their underlings. But the proliferation of contraband cell phones in the state prison system has proved a “game changer,” testified Lt. Eddie Flores of the San Bernardino Police Department. Prisoners can now communicate directly with one another to arrange drug deals, order assaults and organize collection rackets, Flores testified.

Phones are smuggled in by correctional officers and “free staff” — plumbers, electricians, food preparers, Goo Goo testified. “I’ve seen nurses bring ‘em in, I’ve seen ‘em flown in on drones.”

A phone costs about $1,200 in prison, he said. “You kind of learn how these things work, the economics. If you’re bringing in too many cell phones, flooding the yard, the price drops.”

Goo Goo described his daily routine as Rodriguez’s man on the street: “I’d get up in the morning — it’s like going to work, having a job,” he told the jury. First he would call someone in the prison system, usually Moreno.

From his cell at the state prison in Calipatria, where he was serving 10 years for possessing an assault rifle, Moreno would tell Goo Goo what needed to be handled that day. “Patch this up here, that there,” he recalled. Deliver drugs. Pick up money.

That's from LA Times,  but if you can't get in, it's also on Wildlandfire News.

*Whether the prison system 'works well' or not, of course, depends on whose objectives you measure it by.  The official objectives to get dangerous criminals off the streets so they can't keep committing crimes, to mete out justices, to rehabilitate offenders, or the objectives of other players like the prisoners who are well connected, the owners of the private prisons, or the various people who work in the prison who can double and triple their salaries by smuggling in contraband.  

Interconnections - Oil and Democracy, Microbes and Human Behavior

The world is complicated and humans are constantly tracking down the linkages between different factors.  The first seems much easier to understand, though confirmation bias plays a big role in how easy it is for someone to understand the link between oil and democracy.


1.  Oil's Impact on Democracy

From Philosophasters

OIL IS THE DEVIL'S EXCREMENT
SEPTEMBER 28, 2017 BY DAVID JACQUES IN ARTICLES
Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo was a prominent Venezuelan politician who served two terms in office with the Centrist Betancourt Administration (1947-48 & 1959-64). As Minister for Energy he was drawn into conflict with the U.S. under Eisenhower who had negatively affected quotas on Venezuelan oil by favouring new trade agreements with Canada and Mexico. Alfonzo’s response was to form an alliance with oil producing Arab nations in an attempt to regulate the global oil market. His ideas came to fruition with the establishment of 'The Organisation of Oil Producing Countries' - OPEC.
However, protection within the market and the promise of unfettered wealth arising from Venezuela’s immense oil reserves were undone by what economists came to term the 'natural resource curse'; the sudden influx of money would cause the national currency to dramatically appreciate, wages are driven up, prices inflate, manufacturing, imports and exports all slump. Though this was yet to occur for Venezuela during the early OPEC years, Alfonzo saw it all coming. In a prophetic 1975 speech he uttered the infamous lines: "ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see; oil will bring us ruin. Oil is the Devil's excrement".

• Rachel Maddow

  Posted: Sun, 13 Oct 2019 20:01:14 -0000

  Play Now
  MSNBC host Rachel Maddow talks about the oil and gas industry’s impact on democracy around the world, tying in Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, the impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump, and more. On October 6, 2019, Rachel Maddow came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to read from her new book “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth”. Maddow spoke to Dan Pfeiffer, a former advisor to President Barack Obama who now co-hosts “Pod Save America”.

I highly recommend Confessions of an Economic Hitman.  It tells the story of how international corporations funnel trillions of public dollars into their own coffers.  It's short and easy to read.  The link tells more about why I recommend it.


2.  Gut Microbes' Impact on Behavior.  

From Science Magazine

Animal sociability through microbes
Accumulating evidence suggests that the microbiota living in and on animals has important functions in the social architecture of those animals. Sherwin et al. review how the microbiota might facilitate neurodevelopment, help program social behaviors, and facilitate communication in various animal species, including humans. Understanding the complex relationship between microbiota and animal sociability may also identify avenues for treating social disorders in humans.
Science, this issue p. eaar2016

These studies are in mice and from the abstract All I could tell was that it affected 'sociability.'
I learned about 10 years ago how my body's functioning was dependent on microbes living inside me.  Finding out the there are 10 times more microbial cells in my body than human cells caused a major shift in how I understand the world and what it means to be human.  I'd note that because the microbial cells are very small, they only make up about 1-3 percent of human body mass.

3.  Census Methodology Impacts on  Gerrymandering

It's no secret that how and who the Census Bureau counts in decennial census counts impacts elections. People who pay attention to the news are aware of the Trump administration's attempt to add a question about citizenship on the 2020 census which would have (and even though it failed, still might have) the effect of causing non-citizens to hide from census takers.

But this article is about how the census bureau counts prisoners - in the community where the prison is located.  Here's the beginning of a primer from the Prison Gerrymandering Project:

"The way the Census Bureau counts people in prison creates significant problems for democracy and for our nation’s future. It leads to a dramatic distortion of representation at local and state levels, and creates an inaccurate picture of community populations for research and planning purposes.
The Bureau counts incarcerated people as residents of the towns where they are confined, though they are barred from voting in 48 states and return to their homes after being released. The practice also defies most state constitutions and statutes, which explicitly state that incarceration does not change a residence."

4.  Blogger Best Wishes and Better New Year

I couldn't find any studies on how blogging good wishes for the new year actually impacts people's
New Year.  I did find this opinion heavy and fact light article on the effects of kindness.  One link is to a Dr. Emoto (really!) who studied how kindness helps water crystals form better and since human bodies are 60% water (plus 3% microbes) being kind helps the water in your body.

There's something off balance in the number 2019.  2020 is much more in tune with human aesthetics.  So I'm wishing you all a great 2020.  Find the good in every day.

A Thinking Break

So, does that mean a break from thinking?  Or a break so I can think?  More the latter, but it's the thoughts invading my brain more than my deliberately saying, "Whoa, I need to stop and think a while."

So this post is just a brief (yeah, that's always my intent) overview of the action taking place in my brain, in hopes of not forgetting the many loose ends.  [And it didn't stay brief so I'm adding an overview so you don't get lost in the meanderings.]

• OLÉ classes - Project Innocence and the Fairbanks Four  and a proposal for police to have Devil's Advocates keeping them from straying after the wrong suspects
• OLÉ classes - Homelessness 
• The Struggle for Modern Tibet
• Dan Sullivan and the tension between loyalty and the rule of law and Profiles In Courage

I've bolded these highlights and enlarged them so you can scan on down to the ones you're most interested in.  Or just quit right here.


Thursday I went two OLÉ classes:  The Innocence Project and the Pebble Mine class.
Friday was State and Federal Courts in the morning and Homelessness in the afternoon.

I'm also reading ahead for my December book club meeting - The Struggle for Modern Tibet, by Goldstein, Stebeschuh, and Tsering.  It's Tsering's story and the other two helped him getting written down in English.  He's a Tibetan, from a peasant family, who gets to Indian and works with the Dalai Lama's older brother and then manages to get a scholarship to the US.  He feels the Tibetans in India who follow the Dalai Lama are basically supporting the old Tibetan class system and he feels appreciation for the Chinese who are interrupting that and bringing roads and schools and hospitals to Tibet.  He wants to help with bringing Tibetan culture into the modern world (he was partly influenced by reading medieval Western history in the US and thinking they had the same kind of religiously dominated class system then too, but were able to modernize yet keep their distinct cultures.  Everyone thinks he's crazy to go back, but he does and gets sent by the Chinese to a    that is training Tibetans to be teachers and to go back to Tibet.  It's the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and gets to go on a field trip to march before Mao at Tiananmen Square.  That's as far as I've gotten.  I'm still waiting to see how it ends up.  (Well, I know he got back to the US somehow and with the two co-authors to write the book.)

Tibet was one of about three or four topics that my Chinese students were united and unbudging on:  China saved the Tibetans from a slave culture run by the Dalai Lama and the ruling class.  And Tshering gives support for this interpretation.  So I'm challenging my own Western take on Tibet by even reading this book.

So what else am I thinking?

The Innocence Project - Thursday was the last class.  The executive director and until recently the only employee, Bill Oberly, is the main speaker, sometimes backed up by Board president, Mark Johnson.  Thursday, Bill finished up the reasons people are wrongly convicted and then chronicled the Fairbanks Four trials, the one case the the Alaska Innocence Project has overturned and gotten the wrongly convicted freed.
As he told the saga, he illustrated the reasons for wrongful convictions he'd just finished.  The problems included:

• false confessions
• false eye-witness testimony, 
• misuse of forensic pattern identification (in this case using bootprints to 'prove' a suspect's boot was involved) (I did a blog post on this topic a week or so ago)
• false informant testimony
• police misconduct (intentional and unintentional)

In fact, all of the problems as Oberly tells it (and I don't doubt him, but he's my only source) seemed  to stem from police misconduct - from how they got the confessions, how they pressured a witness to tell their story even though it was different from the witnesses original and then later story, and the coached testimony of a prison inmate who said one of the Fairbanks Four had confessed to him in prison.

This issue is one that's been rummaging through my brain and has come up with the idea that police (and probably many other types of government, and for that matter private companies) need to have some form of Devil's Advocate involved in murder and other felony investigations.  The Devil's Advocate would be there to challenge the lead investigators when they seem to be caught up in confirmation bias (seeing the facts that confirm their suspicions, and not seeing ones that challenge their theory of the case).  The Devil's Advocate's job would be to put pressure on the investigators when their not following proper procedures for interrogating suspects (no lawyers, no parents even for minors, planting false scenarios (in this case on pretty intoxicated suspects who couldn't remember anything from the previous couple of hours), etc.

We have people who do this sort of work after the fact - Ombuds offices, Inspectors General, etc.  But if this work had been done on the front end, innocent people wouldn't end up spending five, ten, fifteen, and more years in prison.  And the actual murderers wouldn't still be loose killing other people.  And overzealous cops and prosecutors would be checked early, and perhaps disciplined or terminated before doing more damage.

Would this cost more?  Cost isn't supposed to be a factor in getting to justice.  But trying innocents suspects costs way more than the cost of a position of Devil's Advocate.  And if the victims are able to sue and win a wrongful conviction case, well, there's money that would have funded a dozen Devil's Advocates.

I've not given details of this case yet and won't today.  So it's hard for readers to feel the injustices done in this case.  But I've recommended several times already that readers here watch the Netflix short series When They See Us about the Central Park Five.  All the reasons for wrongful convictions are clearly illustrated in that case.  It's heartbreaking, but compelling viewing.  And all five have been exonerated and released.

Tied to all this is a notion of written about professionally on corruption.  There's a natural tension in all of us between following our human social value of loyalty and the value of following the rule of law.   We all have genetically built into us a loyalty to our 'group' whether that be family, team, school, profession, work group, whatever.  And that notion of loyalty is reinforced by our society and every other society.  Studies show that loyalty is a more important value for political conservatives in the US than for liberals.  We can see that playing out in Washington now as the Republicans are being held tightly in control by the president, despite their private misgivings.  It's the power that mafia bosses and platoon leaders and sports coaches have.   They are far less likely to vote, as the Democrats did with Senator Al Franken, to give up one of their own because of a violation of principles.

The idea of rule of law is, in part, to counter blind loyalty so that people are treated fairly and equally.  While loyalty can work in concert with the rule of law, it can also thwart the rule of law.  In police and military and corrections organizations unwritten "Codes of Silence" or "The Blue Wall" will keep police and corrections officers from reporting crimes within their ranks.

This loyalty vs rule of law tension also got me to thinking about one of my Senators - Dan Sullivan.  While he has said he did not vote for Trump, he's since been caught up in the loyalty to the Republican Bully in Chief (sorry conservatives, that characterization is pretty accurate - just look up any literature on bullying and the spell they hold on those around them).  He even signed Sen. Graham's letter condemning the House impeachment investigation.  (My other Republican Senator did not.)

So I've been wrestling with how to reach out to him - not to attack him, but to find ways to open his brain to alternative ways of seeing all this.  He's a Marine (still in the reserves) and their values are all for courage.  But they are also indoctrinated into a loyalty to the Marines that means not following orders to run into danger takes less courage than not.  So while he might have tremendous physical courage and be willing to risk his life on the battlefield, the moral courage to break with his loyalty to the president and the Republican Party is much more difficult.

So how can someone talk to him about that?  I've started looking at John Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage (it's available at the link online.)
 Kennedy wrote about six US Senators who stood out by overcoming all the pressures weighing dow US Senators.  Maybe that would help, but I doubt it.

I'm also pondering all the data we've gotten on homelessness.  The Municipality of Anchorage is participating in a data gathering and management plan based on a nation wide data system, Built For Zero. It tracks monthly:

• newly homeless (and where they come from in terms of previous housing)
• current homeless
• exiting homelessness

 The intent is to always have enough beds so that zero people spend the night homeless.  It involves collecting and sharing data on all the homeless, why they're homeless, what level of services they need, etc. so that they can find the right level of help for people in different categories of need.  And always making sure there are enough beds.   The plan they have addresses most of the questions the class raised the first week.   Here are some links - though they don't quite deal with some of the programs and data we've seen in class:

• MOA Housing and Homelessness Page - the basic Muni page on homelessness with links
• Data Dashboard - some numbers on the Anchorage homeless population

That's just a smattering of the activity going on in my skull.  When things get so busy, it's hard to sit and write something that doesn't meander a bit.

AIFF 2017: Short Docs In Competition - Old Harbor, The Collection, Ten Meter Tower, Ghosts of the Arctic,He Who Dances On Wood, Family Rewritten, Perception, and Wildland

'Short Docs' are non-fiction films under 55 minutes. At least that was the rule in the past.  I mention that because one film in this category is 57 minutes.
'In Competition' means the programmers picked it to be in the running for an award.

The shorts (narrative and docs), because they're short, are grouped into programs.  To see all the short docs in competition you have to see three different programs, plus one more showing where the 15 minute short in competition plays with the 57 minute short doc.

To make it easier to find the times and locations of the films you want to see, I've grouped them and color coded them by program.

Short Docs 1: Stories of Redemption Mon, Dec 4, Ak Exp Theater Large, 3pm Fri Dec 8, Ak Exp Theater Small,  5pm	Short Docs 2:  Against The Grain Sat Dec 2, E Street Theater, 12:00pm Mon, Dec. 4, Ak Exp Theater Small  3pm Sat Dec 10, Ak Exp Theater Small, 12:30pm
Short Docs 3 Compelling Characters Tuesday Dec 5,  Ak Exp Theater Large 3:00pm Thursday Dec 7 Ak Exp Theater Small, 8:15pm	Unnamed Program (Old Harbor, New Hope)  Sat, Dec 9,  E Street Theater,  3pm

Short Docs in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Wildland	Daniel Steiner	USA	25 min
Perception: From Prison to Purpose	Garret Guinn	USA	40 min
Family Rewritten	Yasmin Mistry	USA	13 min
He Who Dances on Wood	Jessica Beshir	USA	6 min
Ghosts of The Arctic	Abraham Joffe	Australia	7 min
Ten Meter Tower	Maximilien V an Aertryck	Sweden	16 min
The Collection	Adam Roffman	USA	11 min
Old Harbor, New Hope	Joshua Branstetter	USA	15 min

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Short Docs 1: Stories of Redemption

Mon, Dec 4, Ak Exp TheaterLarge, 3pm

Fri Dec 8, Ak Exp Theater Small,  5pm

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Perceptions:  From Prison to Purpose
Garret Guinn
USA
40 min
Perception was selected as the Best Oregon Film at the Oregon Documentary Film Festival in November 2017.  Here's what their website says about the film:

"On April 14th, 2009, Noah Schultz was arrested for attempted murder in Portland, Oregon. This is the story of his transformation. During his seven years of incarceration, Noah took advantage of every program, workshop and educational service provided. He pushed himself not only to be better, but to challenge our perceptions of what it means to be an inmate."

Perception: From Prison To Purpose | Trailer from Perception Doc on Vimeo.

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Wildland
Daniel Steiner
USA
25 min

This is the kind of film Americans need to see regularly to better understand who the people behind bars are.  This film shows inmates at a juvenile work camp program that give them fire fighting skills and experience to make it outside the prison.

Here's a brief bio from Daniel Steiner's website:

"Dan Steiner has worked on impactful documentary programming around the globe for VICE, the National Geographic Channel, and Current TV (RIP). In addition, he has held numerous post-production positions at ad agencies like Wieden + Kennedy, JWT, and Venables Bell & Partners.
He received a Master’s degree in Journalism from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 2016."

I couldn't find a trailer for this film, so here's the whole film, from his website:

WIldland from Daniel Steiner on Vimeo.


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Short Docs 2:  Against The Grain

Sat Dec 2,  E Street Theater, , 12:00pm

Mon, Dec. 4, Ak Exp Theater  Small  3pm

Sat Dec 10, Ak Exp Theater Small  12:30pm

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Family Rewritten
Yasmin Mistry
USA
13 min

A film about one person's experience with foster care.




“Family Rewritten” Trailer from Foster Care Film on Vimeo.



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He Who Dances On Wood
Jessica Beshir
USA
6 min,

This is an exquisite film.  The camera writes poetry in light and patterns.  Fred Nelson modestly but confidently voices wisdom.

"When the right thing comes along, something happens inside of us. . . There's a need to speak to God, but I think that everybody has their way of doing it. . .  I know I found my joy in, not Jesus, not Allah, it's a piece of wood."

He Who Dances on Wood (TRAILER) from BRIC TV on Vimeo.

The whole six minute film is here.


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Short Docs 3 Compelling Characters

Tuesday Dec 5,  Ak Exp Theater. Large 3:00pm

Thursday Dec 7 Ak Exp Theater Small, 8:15pm

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Ghosts of the Arctic
Abraham Joffe
Australia
7 min,

The photography, the landscapes, the caribou and polar bear shots are all incredibly beautiful.  But this film is more about how brave the film makers were under harsh conditions than it is about polar bears - the presumed title characters of this film.  I checked the amount of time that the filmmaker is in the image.  I got 3 minutes and 21 seconds out of a six minute movie.  There's also landscape.  And a small amount of time with caribou and bears.  Just read their own description of the movie at Untitled Film Works:

"Ghosts of the Arctic is the result of a passion project gone wild. Our goal was to venture out into the beautiful frozen expanse of Svalbard, in winter, to search and document polar bears. During the shoot we experienced temperatures that were never warmer than -20ºC and frequently plummeted down as low as -30ºC + wind chill factor.
Most days involved two hundred kilometres on snow mobile in very difficult terrain and conditions. We experienced three cases of first and second degree frostbite during the filming as well as several equipment failures as a result of the extreme cold. Each day involved 14-16 hours in the field.
The film was released with great reviews and write-ups on notable film blogs. The piece also received a converted [did yet mean coveted?] Video Staff pick of the Month."

In a movie about polar bears, the word 'bear' appears once in the description.  It's mostly about how they braved the elements under terrible  conditions.  As an Alaskan, I'd say that -30˚C (-22˚F) is cold, but not terrible, if you're dressed right.

It would be fine to make a film about how hard it is to film polar bears in the wild, but that's not what they say their goal is and it's not what the title suggests.

But the footage is spectacular.  You can judge for yourself.  I could only find the whole video online, not a trailer.







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Ten Meter Tower
Maximilien Van Aertryck
Sweden
16 min,
**Also Plays In Martini Matinee, Fri. Dec 8, Bear Tooth, 2pm

From the film makers in a NYTimes piece:

"Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario."

After my comments about the previous film, I appreciated this comment very much:

"In our films, which we often call studies, we want to portray human behavior, rather than tell our own stories about it." (emphasis added)

Here's the trailer:

Trailer: TEN METER TOWER by Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck from Plattform Produktion on Vimeo.

Here's a link to the whole film.

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The Collection
Adam Roffman
USA
11 min

From Adam Roffman's The Collection website:

"The Collection is a short documentary about two friends, DJ Ginsberg and Marilyn Wagner, and their discovery of an astonishing and unique collection of movie memorabilia, comprised of over 40,000 printer blocks and 20,000 printer plates used to create the original newspaper advertisements for virtually every movie released in the United States from the silent period through 1984, when newspapers stopped using the letterpress format." 

This film should be shown before the full length documentary, Saving Brinton (it's the last movie in this post on the docs in competition.)

Here's the trailer:



THE COLLECTION - Official Trailer from Adam Roffman on Vimeo.
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Sat, Dec 9,  E Street Theater, *, 3pm 

(Note: There's a 57 minute film (Journeys to Adaka) before it)

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Old Harbor, New Hope
Joshua Branstetter
USA/Alaska
15 Min

The pre-opeining night showing is about preserving a language that is only spoken fluently by about thirty people.  This film is about resurrecting native dances among the Alutiiq people in the village of Old Harbor.  I'd note the Old Harbor Village Corporation was contracted by Shell  Shell to assist with its rescue operations in nearby Kiliuda Baywhen the oil drill  Kulluk broke loose from the tug in 2013.




If you can't wait, you can see the whole film here.

Lewis Cowan Killed Fred French

It's a long drive from Yosemite to Los Angeles, so when we got to Fresno, I was ready for a break and the car was ready for some gas.  I figure that smaller towns are easier to navigate - to get on and off the highway, find gas, stop and walk around a bit - so we skipped Fresno and decided on Kingsburg.  We had stopped in a town called Kingston over night on the way to Yosemite, so this seemed like good symmetry. 

I don't want to keep you waiting for Lew Cowan too long, so here's his wanted poster.  Click it to enlarge and focus.  The details of the crime are below.









We found the poster in the Kingsburg historic jail.  Which we found strolling a downtown street. As you can see from the horse in the picture below, there's a Swedish flavor to this town as well.












We followed the sign  (above the horse's head) down a cute little passageway to the jail where we found this yellow poster about the dastardly deed.  You can click on the image to see it better, or you can just read the transcript next to it.

"On the night of November 2, 1916, Fred French, while performing his duties of deputy night watchman for the community of Kingsburg, encountered Lew Cowan behaving in a drunken and disorderly manner in the pool hall. Cowan and French engaged in a wrestling match, and bystanders pulled them apart, whereupon Cowan ran away. French then called Constable George Boyle who along with U.S. Marshall S.J. Shannon, found and arrested Cowan. Cowan also caused a disturbance at that time and managed to land a punch to the face of Boyle. They took Cowan to jail, but by that time he had become calm and pleaded that he was sorry and would go home and sleep it off if they would just release him. Constable Boyle then took him home.
Cowan's mother received him at home, but could not stop him from collecting a shotgun and shells and leaving the house. He met a fellow named, "Larson," who had been with him in the initial altercation in the pool hall. Allegedly he threatened Larson and force him to accompany him. The two men walked to the railroad depot, where they spotted French leaning against a fence. Cowan raised the gun and fired both barrels, hitting French in the head and killing him instantly.
Cowan sent Larson home and absconded. Ensuing searches failed to find Cowan.
In her book, "Bit of Sweden in the Desert," Pauline Peterson Mathes, gave this account: "Thirteen years after her father's murder and the day after her mother's funeral Alice (Fred French's daughter) was sweeping the sidewalk in front of their home when and old looking, bearded man came along, tapping a cane as he walked. He asked if that was Fred French's house. She told him her father had been dead for 13 years, having been murdered in 1916. The old man then looked at her with tears streaming down his face, and said, 'Oh, I'm really sorry to hear that.' He went on in the general direction of the old Cowan place. Was that old man Lew Cowan? We'll never know.'"

Drunks with guns isn't a new problem.  This happened 101 years ago last week.

Here's the actual jail.

 And out back, there's a person escapiing.  The muralist makes it look pretty real.

We were there about three weeks ago, but I did want to share our short diversion from the drive.  Kingsburg is on Highway 99, a road my dad and I rode summers for our vacations together in when I was kid.  It was a two lane highway most of the way and went right through the center of town.  Now it's four to eight lanes most of the way and full of big trucks.  Very unpleasant driving.  But reasonably fast.

The Kingsburg Historic Park website has more pictures of the inside - much better than the ones I took - so you can see more there.  There's lots to see in this world, if you just take the time to let it find you.

A Few Important Links You Might Want To Check Out

Here are a few links that have come my way over the last week.  I thank the people who first posted them - you'll recognize who you are.  These all pushed my brain around a bit and are worth checking out.

1.  New heat storing technology  - Despite the fact that we know of how people have repeatedly been proven wrong throughout history when they said one idea or another is impossible, we still say that today - particularly about alternative energy.

"The technology uses the chemical sodium hydroxide (NaOH), commonly known as lye, to store the heat. When dry sodium hydroxide is exposed to water, it undergoes a chemical reaction that releases a large amount of heat. In sunlight, that water evaporates, drying out the sodium hydroxide and resetting the reaction. The dry sodium hydroxide is very stable, which means it can be stored for months or even years as long as it isn't exposed to water."

2.  Since White House comment lines are reported shut down, someone has set up the website https://whitehouseinc.org.  You leave your phone number and email and someone will call you back and connect you to a Trump property somewhere around the world where you can leave your comment.  The site says,

"Foreign leaders and Wall Street executives know that if they want to reach out to our President, they can just connect with his business associates. Now the American people have a direct line to Trump too."

3.  Commodifying Language - This is a ten page letter from a company called Language Inc. about the financial outlook (good) for companies that privatize public information.  Lots to think about here.


4.  Lit Hub on What to Do during these times  Get inspiration on how to resist.



5.  State Department is Taking ppeople off the Global Entry program - Americans of Iranian-descent are reporting that though they've signed up and paid to be on the Global Entry program and been vetted after a thorough investigation, they are getting notices that they no longer qualify.  How long are we going to let Steve Bannon run the US?


6.  Thirteenth (the movie) is a available at Netflix.
This isn't an easy movie to watch, but if anyone wants to understand why Black Lives Matters matters, then they need to watch how incarceration has been aimed at enslaving blacks in a way that everyone - including the Clintons - could get behind.  It shows how by using the word criminal instead of black, they could get blacks off the streets, and could keep them from voting forever.  Don't argue with me about this until you watch the movie.