#261: Climate Migration Will Reshape America

Jaquira Díaz: “I am the Black daughter of a white woman, which means that in my family tree there are colonizers as well as colonized people, and I carry this violence in my body. I see it in the mirror every day. Whether or not people read me as Black, I’m a racialized person: I’m Latina; my first language is Spanish; I have an accent. I’m also a gay woman with a white transmasculine fiancé. The truth is, some of us have never felt safe. Some of us have always been navigating systems of power and oppression in our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools, so we were not surprised by the last presidential election, because while some of America woke up to reality in November 2016, or even just last month, the rest of us have been waking up in this America since we were born or arrived here.” (8 min)

If voting-by-mail fails in November, it won’t be the fault of the U.S. Postal Service or incompetent state and local elections boards. According to Jesse Barron in this well-reported article, the problem lies not with government but with private corporations like Runbeck Election Services, a Phoenix-based ballot printer. Can they print the ballots fast enough? Will the $500,000, 20-foot-long W+D BB700-S2 inserter put the right ballots in the right envelopes? Will the AgilisDuo machine verify voter signatures correctly? Mr. Barron says maybe. (18 min)

Next time you’re out and about in San Francisco, know that the police have access to 2,400 cameras if they think you’ve committed a crime. But thanks to the Surveillance Oversight and Transparency Ordinance, passed last year, city departments can’t introduce new methods of surveillance without following specific procedures. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the Union Square Business Improvement District from giving the police unfettered access to its 375 cameras during the Black Lives Matter protests in June, causing some activists to have second thoughts about exercising their First Amendment rights. (8 min)