Thoughts Cannot Be a Crime

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as 45th president of the United States, there has been a spike in the number of reported incidents of harassment and abuse of Muslims, Jews, African-Americans, and members of the LGBTQ community across the country. Some of these incidents have later turned out to be fabricated. Even so, the number of actual incidents of racial, religious, or gender-based crimes has spiked in the past month. This is no surprise if you heard the words and tone of Candidate Trump at his rallies. Of course not all Trump supporters are racist, homophobic, or biased against non-Christians. That would be a ridiculous claim and it is patently false.

Donald Trump received a LOT of votes—in fact, he got just 3 million fewer votes than Barack Obama in 2012 or Hillary Clinton in 2016. It would be ridiculous to believe that all 63,000,000 Trump voters are racist, sexist, homophobic, religious bigots. But of that 63,000,000 people, some miniscule percentage are. And those who are now feel vindicated. They voted for Donald Trump because they believe that the only true Americans are straight, white, and Christian. And because Donald Trump won, they may now feel free to act on some of their baser instincts. Their actions have included breaking windows, spray-painting swastikas, screaming abuse at people wearing head scarves and turbans, and physically assaulting people. These actions are certainly driven by hate.

BUT, the fact that a person’s actions are driven by hate does not make them guilty of an additional crime. 

I believe that hate crime legislation, as well-meaning as it is, is unconstitutional.

It is already illegal to paint on someone else’s property, to threaten people with violence, to push or shove someone who has done nothing to you, or to run them off the road. These are all crimes if you do them on purpose. If a person arrested for any of these actions is charged with an additional crime because the assailant hates the victim due to the victim’s race, religion, or gender identity then the government has just outlawed a thought or a feeling. Maybe this is on my mind these days because I am reading George Orwells’ classic novel 1984 for the first time. Hate crime legislation creates a category of ThoughtCrime that I do not believe consistent with the Constitution.

To see how indefensible hate crime legislation is, let’s turn things around. Suppose a law was passed that said the following: “Stealing the property of another person is illegal. If, however, your motive for stealing their property is love, then you have committed a lesser crime.” It is easy enough to imagine a single parent with a sick child. They have no insurance coverage. The child needs a prescription, but the parent cannot afford it. The parent grabs $50.00 from the cash register of the store where they work and uses it to pay for medicine for the sick child. The motive for the theft was love, so in keeping with “love crime” legislation the thief is not charged with robbery but is instead charged with some lesser crime.

It becomes clear that making the motive, as well as the act, subject to separate charges is not in keeping with American principles of justice. If you want to let people know that their motives are as reprehensible as their actions, leave judges and juries room in sentencing guidelines. This is already the case in most places for most crimes. Judges and juries are allowed to consider mitigating circumstances when they consider punishment—and this is as it should be. Hate crimes legislation is unconstitutional and unnecessary.

To any right-wingers reading this who are agreeing with me, follow along to the next example and see if you still agree.

This is a line from the Flag Code of the United States of America:  

“When a flag is so tattered that it no longer fits to serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burning. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America, the military and other organizations regularly conduct dignified flag-burning ceremonies.”

The code calls for the burning of the United States flag.

Recently President-elect Trump tweeted “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!” Was Donald Trump REALLY calling for the jailing of Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion members, Boy Scouts, Girls Scouts, and others who regularly burn the flag?

Of course he wasn’t. He was calling for the jailing of people who burn the flag in protest. In other words, he was calling for people to be punished for their thoughts—which is exactly what the US flag does NOT stand for.

We live in a sprawling country with people from everywhere. It is our greatest strength. And, it is our greatest challenge. How can we live together and still leave room for such strong feelings and beliefs? Certainly not by making feelings and beliefs crimes. And not by hunkering down on our side of the battle lines we seem to etch more deeply every day with every issue. I am going to work hard in 2017 to step out from behind my bunker and see where there is common ground. Maybe all that will mean is getting everyone mad, but it’s a worth a shot. I can’t live four more years feeling like I am always at the ready to engage and attack and defend.

An Open Letter to the Cayuga Waterfront Trail

Dear Cayuga Waterfront Trail,

Hey! What’s up? I know we just saw each other yesterday and I’ll probably see you later today too with Ginger and Lotti, but I find myself awake at 5:30 in the morning and you’re on my mind.

Weird, right? That I would be thinking about a trail while having my morning coffee and working on the crossword puzzle? Yet…

I feel like I need to tell you something. We’ve known each other for, what, four years now? I can still remember the first time I saw you. I was living way out at the far end of Snyder Hill Road and I was tired of always having to run on hills. I was just looking for a flat place to run. I didn’t intend to fall in love.

But that is exactly what happened. I’m sorry to surprise you like this, using the word “love” and all, but I can’t hide my feelings any longer. Cayuga Waterfront Trail, I love you.

I’ve never felt this way about a trail before. If it’s a shock to you, well, it caught me by surprise too. I’m not really sure what to do with this feeling. I mean, I know it’s crazy to love a trail. I know you can’t return the feeling. You’re a trail for crisesakes--you can’t be exclusive.

And I know in my heart of hearts I don’t really want to keep you just to myself. I mean, part of what makes you so great is how open and accepting you are of everyone. Bikers, runners, dog walkers, skateboarders, people in wheelchairs, racewalkers, families with kids on trikes---you’re there for everyone and I wouldn’t have you change.

Now that I’ve spilled the beans I feel a little self-conscious. But I’ve also now got nothing to lose. I hope you’re still reading this and haven’t tossed it to the trash. I was telling a friend about you the other day—I talk about you A LOT—and he wanted to know what was so great about you. So I started to tell him about how you change so much from season to season and day to day and even hour to hour. But at the same time you are always there for me.

And I told him about how being close to water makes me feel better, no matter what. Even if I was already feeling good to start with.

But then I stopped talking and took him for a run through Cass Park and over the foot bridge and past the boathouses and the Farmer’s Market and over to Stewart Park and then back. He saw what I meant. We must have seen 40 people while we were walking and all of them were happy just to be near you.

I love the way you make me feel, but I can’t keep that just to myself.  It’s clear you make other people feel that same way.  Cayuga Waterfront Trail, I just want to thank you for being you and to let you know I love you.

Sincerely,

Chris Dawson

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Almost Halfway (in sha'allah)

I am on my way to Seattle, where I will rent a car and drive to Bellingham, WA to run the Bellingham Bay Half Marathon. The registration was a Christmas gift from Erica. This is the third race she has gotten me for Christmas. The others were in two of the most beautiful places in the American West. One was Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada and the other was Bryce Canyon, Utah. Both were stunning.

I am a bit superstitious about some things, so I am almost afraid to start writing about this weekend’s race before I have run it.  I have always been superstitious in this particular way—I fear that assuming a particular thing will happen--and then stating that assumption out loud--somehow calls the Universe’s attention to my stupid human hubris and makes it far more likely that the Universe will take pains to prove me wrong.

When I was 21 and moved to Yemen I found an entire nation that had my same superstition. Only, theirs was part of their religion and came out in the phrase in sha’allah.  I was teaching English in Yemen and if I said to my students “You will have a test next Tuesday” they would quietly append the words “in sha’allah.”

If I said to my landlord Mohammed “I will live here in your apartment next year, too” he would say “in sha’allah.”

It means “if Allah wills” and it is meant as a reminder that everything is in the hands of someone or something else. To state something with certainty is seen as sacrilege.

Given all of this, I feel compelled to qualify the things I will write here about this weekend’s race. Indulge me?

So, IF my plane makes it to Seattle on time and IF my rental car gets me safely to Bellingham, and IF I actually complete the race Sunday morning, that will make 25 states I will have run a half marathon in. It will mean I am halfway to my goal of running a half marathon in all 50 states.

You know what?  This already feels like I am tempting fate. I was about to write a whole bunch more about some of my favorite memories from some of the past races and about some of the things running has taught me. But I just can’t do it.

IF all goes well, I will write more on Sunday as I take the red-eye home, in sha’allah.

Electoral Fraud

Donald Trump has recently brought up the threat of electoral fraud leading to his defeat in November’s election. His repeated comments are interpreted by many in the fact-based world in several ways:

•     He is trying to scare his supporters into turning out on Election Day to cast their votes for him.

•     He knows he will lose and he is making excuses in advance.

•   He is sending a signal to his followers that they should refuse to accept the results of November’s vote and instead participate in some sort of revolt.

I think there is a likelier true fourth explanation: he believes what he is saying.

Donald Trump is not a person who has spent much time studying the deeper currents of electoral politics in the United States. He has a notoriously short attention span and shockingly thin skin. If the current polls are an accurate reflection of voter preference, it is an existential threat to Donald Trump’s dreadfully under-developed self. To keep his hyper-exaggerated ego inflated, Trump must dismiss the polls as wrong or crooked.

The same is true for the vote totals in November. If he losses in November, it can only mean one thing---the totals are fraudulent and the Presidency has been stolen.

To people out here in Factland, the idea of massive electoral fraud at a national scale is unsupported by ANY evidence.

But to Donald Trump the idea that he might not be liked by voters is equally unsupported by ANY evidence.

Three or four or five times a week he is the star attraction at rallies with thousands of enraptured supporters who cheer his every word. It is clear to him that The People love him. What he does not get is that people love him, but The People do not. He believes only what he sees and feels rather than what is happening away from his tiny, tightly controlled universe.

He is just like Kim Jong-un in that over time he has surrounded himself only with people who tell him how beloved he is, how great, how amazing, how revolutionary, how huge! Other voices with other opinions have a hard time making their way in. When an occasional alternative view makes it to Mr. Trump’s ears, he immediately and reflexively dismisses the source as somehow hateful or biased.

He believes his own good press and dismisses everything else as wrong. Of course he would say that electoral fraud would be the only way he could lose in November. At his center, Donald Trump is a small person who has never learned to think or feel outside of his own under-developed intellect and over-indulged id. 

Timed Tests are Stupid

I have a friend who thinks that one of the main criteria of intelligence is knowing lots of facts. This same friend believes that another defining characteristic of intelligence is speed. This friend thinks that I am somewhat smart. I read a lot (and widely) so there are a lot of facts stored away in my head. I also have fairly fast recall, though not as fast as it was when I was younger.

On the surface, my friend’s picture of intelligence makes sense. It is certainly one that correlates highly with good grades in school. If possessed in sufficient quantities, factual knowledge and ready access to those facts make standardized tests relatively easy.

I like taking tests. Especially standardized tests. I always have. I find them pretty easy and I LOVE the added element of a severe time limit. I do well under pressure and usually score pretty high. As a 50-year old, I have very few opportunities in my life to take standardized tests any more. So instead I get my ego stroked by playing trivia games and doing timed crossword puzzles on the New York Times’ website. I am not proud to admit that I do these things, because I know that deep down they really do serve just one purpose—to make me feel good about myself.

As a product of schools that graded based on timed recall of facts, I used to believe that intelligence was a thing you could measure in just exactly that way—gauge how many facts a person knew and how quickly they could recall them. But once I became a teacher, I saw how utterly wrong, and even destructive, this view of intelligence is for so many kids.

If I develop a pain in my abdomen that won’t go away, that seems to move around a bit, that doesn’t respond to antacids, that wakes me up in the night, and seems worse after I eat dairy products, eventually I will go to a doctor. And once I describe my symptoms to the doctor, if she is flummoxed and no obvious diagnosis comes to her right away the LAST thing I want her to do is to take a guess.

If my car starts to run a little rough, (especially in the rain), and it makes a knocking sound when it idles below 1500 RPMs, and it has a bit of trouble accelerating up hills, I will take it to a mechanic. If, after hearing the list of symptoms, the mechanic cannot say exactly what is wrong I do not want her to just replace the fuel injectors.

In both cases I want the expert to do some digging. I want them to research my symptoms and ask follow up questions and to take it out for a test drive—(the car, not my abdomen). I want them to slowly and methodically isolate the problem and then help me fix it.

The factors that make a doctor or an auto mechanic good are careful listening, a deep pool of basic knowledge and experience with bodies and cars, a network of colleagues to consult with, excellent research skills, an ability to focus, an ability to think critically, and a reservoir of patience.

These are the very same skills we should be developing in students. Notice that high among these skills is a deep pool of basic knowledge. We should absolutely be teaching facts. Memorizing multiplication tables, state capitals, planets, the periodic table, countries of the world, and all sorts of other facts is a good thing and should not be tossed aside in favor of teaching critical thinking.  But this sort of list-based learning should be seen for what it is—a necessary preliminary step and NOT the true measure of intelligence.

I have been thinking a lot about timed tests recently. My daughter is a sophomore in high school and she has tests all the time. Most of the tests are given in a 45-minute class period with no time later to finish what you did not get to or to check over your work. Is this really a good way to test what people know? If you really want to find out what students know, wouldn’t you give them enough time to let them show you what they know rather than increasing their anxiety and making it more likely they will make mistakes?

Seems pretty basic, doesn’t it? Yet timed tests are still the most common way teachers and states evaluate what students have learned. As someone with many years of classroom teaching experience, I get it. Schools are organizations built on structure and predictability.

Put bluntly, schools need to move hundreds or even thousands of kids through their day with maximum predictability and minimum friction. In most high schools, the master schedule is driven by the size of the cafeteria—how many kids can eat lunch 4^th period? 5^th period? 6^th period? If school systems really valued student learning as the top priority, class schedules would look very different, as would tests.

When I go to the doctor or the mechanic I do not give them a 43 minute time limit to correctly diagnose the problem. Then why do we add the unnecessary element of time to our evaluations of what kids have learned?

If I am in a car crash and trapped behind the wheel with a collapsed lung, I want the rescue crew to get me out of there as fast as possible. But reading a passage and answering comprehension questions is not a life and death situation. Why do we treat it like it is? Working through a complex geometry problem involving the quadratic equation quickly will never save someone’s life—so why do teachers and schools continue to use timed tests to find out what kids know?

It is a well-known truism among teachers that what you test on should reflect what you value. In a twisted way, our utter over-reliance on timed tests bears this out. As a society we value speed and busy-ness. We do not seem to value quiet reflection or the student who says “let me think my way through this.”

I understand that all of this is really just a reflection of the deeper problem of education in America. We still don’t agree on what schools are for. Are they a great democratizing place where our kids go and all of them learn facts, but also learn how to find, process, consolidate, evaluate, and synthesize information in order to be citizens who can participate fully in our democracy? Or are they the place we send kids to train them for whatever entry-level jobs will demand of them? Do we want our schools to help our kids come to their own well-founded, well-considered conclusions or do we want them to be able to produce a lot of factual information quickly?

You value what you test.

GOP Primary Voters---You're Fired!

There are some Republicans who believe that John McCain and Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama because they were not conservative enough. This group of GOP voters pinned all of their hopes on Ted Cruz this time around. Without harping on Cruz or his fans, let me just say that we all saw how that turned out.

I disagree strongly with the above-mentioned conservatives’ analysis of the elections of 2008 and 2012. McCain and Romney did not lose because they were not conservative enough. McCain lost because he showed godawful judgment in wanting to place Sarah Palin one old-man-heartbeat away from the nuclear launch codes. He also lost because Americans were sick and tired of George Bush and wanted a change. Mitt Romney lost because he was simply not likable, though he could never get himself to this conclusion.

Heading into this year’s long primary season I was a bit concerned. You see, I am a latte-drinking, quinoa eating, NPR listening, NY Times reading, climate change believing liberal and I know how rarely a two-term president is followed by someone from the same party. I figured the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton and I knew she had very high negatives.

I saw the Republicans had a few candidates who were somewhat likeable. They had Jeb Bush. They had Marco Rubio. They had John Kasich. It seemed like even odds to me that the Republicans would win the White House. It was certainly within their grasp.

GOP primary voters had just one job to do and the Presidency of the United States of America could be theirs. All they had to do was nominate someone less unlikeable than Hillary Clinton. That's it. That is all they had to do. One thing. One job…and they chose Donald Trump.

Republican voters---you’re fired.

All That You Have is Your Soul

I heard an old Tracy Chapman song a few days ago. It’s a song I have always loved for its simple message and heartfelt delivery. It could have been cheesy, but instead its simple beauty hits me like a slap to the face every time I hear it. Line after line of truth, followed by the repeated deeper truth of “all that you have is your soul.”

Just before I heard the song, I had heard a report on the local public radio station about a bill in New York that, if passed, would make New York the sixth state in the nation to allow terminally ill patients to end their own lives by taking a prescribed dose of lethal medicine. The reporter interviewed supporters and opponents of the bill and allowed each a few sentences to explain their positions.

If that reporter were to have asked me my opinion of the bill, I would have said New York State should adopt the bill immediately. For my reason I would simply sing the refrain from Tracy Chapman’s song: All that you have is your soul.

It is easy to go long stretches without considering the fact that you yourself will one day die. As a child the idea is so remote and unlikely as to be almost impossible to truly consider. At some point, someone close dies and if we are old enough when that happens for the first time, we can’t help but come around to the thought that one day we will also be dead. But then, if you are like most people, you shove that thought aside and get on with life.

Which is the right thing to do. Living in fear of death as a young person is unnatural.

But then you hit middle age. Maybe a friend dies young and you go to the funeral. Your own inevitable death looms a bit larger, but still you put those thoughts aside. You have work to do, a life to lead. Your own death might become something you start to plan for a bit—you write a will, you look into insurance—but still it is more hypothetical than immediate.

Maybe while lying in bed one night you broach the subject with your spouse. You talk a bit about your wishes—burial or cremation? Big memorial service or small gathering of close friends and family? Heroic measures or pull the plug? But again, you quickly make a light joke of it by calling dibs on getting to go first.  Then you change the subject before turning out the light.

And then a parent dies. It knocks you flat. One, because your mother or father is gone forever. And two, (if you are honest) because your own unavoidable end rises up in front of you in a way you cannot deny. There will come a day when you will no longer be. And your children, if you have any, will feel as lost as you do in the aftermath. As far as we can tell, humans are the only species whose members carry with them an awareness of their own impending death.

Which means we also have the opportunity to plan ahead for our own death.  Of course, many of us die in a way that does not allow for much planning. We have a heart attack; we have an accident; we have a stroke. But a fair number of people die of diseases that kill slowly and painfully over time.  It is precisely circumstances like these that allow for us to have conversations with people we love about our exact wishes. People lie in bed in the dark side by side and say things like “If I ever get to the point where I am being kept alive by machines, I want you to pull the plug.”

And states throughout the country have recognized the power of these spoken wishes time and again.  If we are beyond the help of modern medicine with no signs of conscious mental function and no likelihood of ever coming back to consciousness, our loved ones can ask that our wishes be honored and we be allowed to die.

But what if we are not that far gone? What if, instead, we have a fatal disease and we are taking inevitable steps toward our own death, but we are still conscious and able to feel pain? In five states you would have the option of asking a physician to help you die. In 45 states, you would be told the choice to live or die is not yours—it is the state’s.

And this is where I come back to Tracy Chapman and “All That You Have is Your Soul.” I believe that when you are born there is one thing you own and that is your own self. It can be easy to believe we own many other things as we grow up, fall in love, get jobs, have children, and accumulate people and things. The house we live in, the car we drive, the partner we marry, the children we have----all of these can come to feel like they are ours. But really, they are not. These things come and they go and in the end there is nothing you can do to stop them.

In the end, the only thing that is yours is your own soul. And if you are at the point where medical science is useless and you are tired of constant pain and the indignity of being unable to feed yourself or wash yourself or even get yourself to the toilet and you decide you are ready to die, you should be able to ask a doctor to prescribe you a lethal dose of medicine so you can have one last measure of control over your own life.

The Medical Aid in Dying Act was introduced in the New York State Legislature this week to provide for this very control.  I will write to my state legislators right away to let them know I support this bill. In the end, whose life is it? Mine? Or New York States?