Discussions

The Crime of Punishment
With less than five percent of the world’s population, the US holds a quarter of the world’s prisoners. The root of this is the high rate of incarceration for drug offenses, and their lengthy sentences. With a declared cost of $70 billion a year and a hidden cost of up to $200 billion, the “War on Drugs” is now the gateway to the prison/industrial complex. Marc Mauer is one of the country’s leading experts on sentencing policy, race, and the criminal justice system, and is the author of Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System, and Americans Behind Bars. Honorable Judge James P. Gray, Superior Court of Santa Ana, and Chief Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Chief, are both part of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), and will provide an alternative look at this failed policy.

Get Dirty: Art, Environment, and Community
Steven Badgett, Amy Franceschini & Nance Klehm
Straddling the worlds of art, education, and activism, these three artists discuss working across boundaries for environmental change. Steven Badgett is a founding member of the SIMPARCH collaborative with Matt Lynch. Their work is an exploration of social aspects in art, architecture, and the environment, and their project, Clean Livin’ (2003–ongoing) is a live-work facility that attempts to be a self-sustaining system in terms of waste and energy use. Amy Franceschini is an artist, educator, and founder of Futurefarmers and Free Soil. Her solo and collaborative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany. Nance Klehm is a radical ecologist, designer, urban forager, teacher, and artist. Her solo and collaborative work focuses on creating participatory social ecologies in response to a direct experience of a place. She has shown and taught in Mexico, Australia, England, Scandinavia, the Caribbean, and the United States—including at UCLA.

Education Without Learning
Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, outlines the current crisis in American education, compares our schools and universities with others around the globe, and with wit and humor, shows us the path towards a more enlightened America. Robinson revamped the UK education system and is working on improving education in the State of Arkansas. Jennifer Washburn, a fellow at the New America Foundation, discusses the commercial transformation of American schools and the effect this is having on education, innovation, research and the free flow of public knowledge. Her book, University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education, exposes the relationship between research universities and private industry, and the broad market forces transforming American higher education from expanding knowledge to narrowing minds.

Paying for Play Money
As the recession becomes more apparent and a depression more possible, Professor Michael Greenberger, former Director of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, explains the crisis in American capitalism where finance has replaced production as income disparity grows and debt piles up. Until recently, the US has been considered the world’s most successful industrial democracy because its currency and its credit set the world’s standard. Lack of individual security, insufficient private and public investment, slow growth, an antiquated tax system, and widening disparities in income fortell a potential global financial crisis of catastrophic proportions. This could occur if the US dollar ceased to be the world’s reserve currency, exposing the full extent of our debt.