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Governor Wolf’s First Year: A Comparative Analysis
Get PDFTom Wolf’s first year as governor was dominated by the challenges of reaching a budget compromise with the Republican-dominated General Assembly. This article provides an overview of the difficulties and accomplishments of the first year of the Wolf administration. The article draws a historical comparison with seven other governors—Leader, Scranton, Shafer, Shapp, Thornburg, Rendell, and Corbett—four Republicans and three Democrats, and it concludes with some observations drawn from these previous governors’ experiences that may inform the Wolf administration as it navigates its remaining years
The Women of the Pennsylvania General Assembly: Explaining Women’s Representation in Pennsylvania State Politics
Get PDFThe Pennsylvania General Assembly is ranked 40th among the 50 state legislatures for its proportion of female legislators. Women constitute 18.6% of the bicameral legislature, including nine of 50 senators and 38 of 203 representatives. Various characteristics of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, including its professionalization, appear to provide numerous challenges to women’s entry. As such, the presence of 47 women in the legislature is noteworthy. This exploratory case study examines the experiences of women in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, presenting a qualitative analysis of several interviews with female legislators. The findings indicate that these women were encouraged to run for their current seats primarily by having the support of their families and political parties, by the availability of open seats, and by developing confidence in their qualifications through a politicized upbringing
Book Reviews
Get PDFThis edition of COMMONWEALTH includes book reviews of Choosing State Supreme Court Justices: Merit Selection and the Consequences of Institutional Reform, by Greg Goelzhauser; A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt, by Aaron Cowan; and Undocumented Fears: Immigration and the Politics of Divide and Conquer in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, by Jamie Longazel
Generations of Struggle: Panel Discussion on Protest before, during, and after the Ferguson Rebellion
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Intersectionality
Get PDFAmong feminists scholars’ critiques of knowledge production has been the disconnect between theory and practice. Feminists of color, in particular, have engaged in this critique in their articulations of themselves as scholars, their research foci, and the relevance of their intellectual labor to their communities’ struggles for social justice. Their approach to intersectionality as a practice linked to social justice is evidenced in their articulation of identities such as “insurgent Black intellectual” and “Xicanista,” as well as practices such as that of “oppositional consciousness.” Describing Black feminism as a social justice project, Patricia Hill Collins defines her work as intellectual activism and considers how engaged scholarship can remain oppositional. The commitment by feminist scholars of color to continue to enact intellectual labor that challenges unjust social, political, economic, and cultural arrangements can be carried out in different ways, but all entail an intersectional practice. I will focus on only two strategies—the assertion by feminist scholars of color of their intellectual labor’s intended intervention, and the careful selection of sites in which to carry out their work—and as I show, both strategies also involve certain risks
Home Was New Orleans. But They Said Home Was Gone
No full textMy cousin had just been enrolled at Sci Academy Charter School and I agreed to go on the tour with him. Students have to walk on the line. Students can’t make noise in the hallway. Students can’t do this, students can’t do that. I wanted a good education, but not at the price of having to be a prisoner. There was a long list of what would end up with suspensions. Chewing gum, having a phone, being late to class, simple things. A friend from Moton had enrolled in Sci. The teachers were white and not interested in Black problems in New Orleans. They couldn’t relate or understand some of the issues she had in her family. Actually, it was apparent they didn’t want to. I decided to stay at McMain. My new best friend, Wesley, had told me about this AP English class, which had a program attached to it, Students at the Center. “She want to take the class.” As simple as that, I was in the class. I was learning about everything. My education felt valuable again. I was doing college courses and always had work to do. I also got my confidence back. I also was given a platform that made me feel my feelings were legitimate. I found out I wasn’t the only one complaining about the education system. I started learning about what was really going down in New Orleans. I started learning the truth behind charter schools
What Do We Mean When We Say, “Structural Racism”? A Walk down West Florissant Avenue, Ferguson, Missouri
No full textWalter Benjamin describes the concept of “presence of mind” as a way of thinking about and being in time that is at once, historical, prophetic, and actively engaged in the fullness of the moment. Its achievement is a bodily art as much as a mental one; it is the sort of understanding that comes from walking down the street.The street I want to walk along today is West Florissant Avenue, in Ferguson, Missouri. There on August 4, 2014, Emerson Electric announced third-quarter sales of $6.3 billion, down about 1 percent from the second quarter, but undergirded by a record backlog of orders. A quarter mile to the northeast, five days later, Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown. While the distance between the spot on Canfield Drive where Michael Brown died and the corporate headquarters of Emerson Electric is so small that the shots fired by Officer Wilson must have been audible in the company lunchroom, I do not want to draw too direct a line between them. I do not want to suggest that Emerson Electric is responsible for the murder of Michael Brown, at least not according to any conventional understanding of responsibility in our society. I do, however, want to use the proximity of Emerson’s corporate headquarters and the shooting of Michael Brown to suggest something about the framing determinants of historical events: ways the relationship between the past and the future is hedged in, limited, perhaps even determined by past histories and the habits of mind they support. After explaining what I mean on a fairly abstract level, with reference to the long history of the United States, I narrow the aperture a bit to think about the history of racism and real estate, of white supremacy and wealth, of structural racism with particular attention to the history of twentieth-century Saint Louis. I then, finally, return to Ferguson, the recent past, and the notion of “presence of mind.
Truth and Reinvestment: A Call for Reparations
No full textIn a political climate where criminal justice reform has finally begun to gain traction among both the right and the left, the reinvestment of funds away from systems of punishment and toward community-based resources has also become politically possible. “Jobs, not jails” is a common rallying cry within the criminal justice reform movement, including at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, where we work to reinvest resources in jobs, education, health care, and housing for communities of color instead of wasting money on police and prisons. However, as long as political discussions about reforms and reinvestment continue to exist in a race-neutral sphere with no acknowledgment of the truth of this country’s long history of racial injustice, we move no closer to meaningful change and radical transformation of how the government cares for and is accountable to the people.
Cedric J. Robinson, Modest Audacity, and the Black Radical Tradition
No full textThe work and mentorship of Cedric J. Robinson inspired in us an obligation to locate alternative archives in which the extraordinary actions of ordinary people could be revealed, studied, and made useful to our own historical context. We came to understand why culture counts as a political process that registers and contests the deleterious impacts of racial regimes. Robinson’s public lectures and panel presentations encouraged us to understand that when accompanying social movements of racially oppressed people in particular, and aggrieved communities in general, we must take as a first premise that for people to survive in struggle, that survival must be on their own terms. He demonstrated that we cannot win against rapacious social forces with a bigger and meaner rapaciousness. We had to become capable of building relationships rooted in mutual respect and a commitment to social justice. We recognize this process as developing what Professor Robinson called a <i>modest audacity</i>.
