Brothers or Fools

Justin A. Joyce introduces the eighth volume of James Baldwin Review with a discussion of the US Supreme Court, the misdirected uproar over Critical Race Theory, a survey of canonical dystopian novels, and the symbolism of masking during COVID-19.

Slovenia ∙ FDI Screening Overview: More Clarity on the Horizon

[...]the present contribution addresses the current decisional practice with regard to FDI screening in Slovenia. Obligation to Notify According to the COVID-19 Act, (i) the foreign investor, (ii) the target company, or (iii) the transferor company are obliged to notify the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology (Ministry) of the FDI within 15 days from (i) the conclusion of the merger agreement, (ii) from the publication of the takeover offer, (iii) from the establishment of company, or (iv) from the conclusion of the contract by which the foreign investor or its subsidiary in Slovenia acquired the right to dispose of land and real estate, whichever applicable in an individual case. Essentially, the subject of the notification obligation is an FDI that meets the two following criteria, namely:6 It relates to certain risk factors, such as: performance of critical economic activities and critical infrastructure, supply of critical resources, access to sensitive information, freedom and plurality of the media, and projects or programs in the interest of the EU as defined in Annex I of the FDI Screening Regulation;7 and It represents either (i) the gaining of participation or permanent influence through voting rights in a commercial legal entity, whereby a 10% participation in capital or a share of voting rights is considered a permanent influence, or (ii) the acquisition of the right to dispose of land and real estate essential for critical infrastructure, or for land and real estate located in the vicinity of such critical infrastructure. The Ministry approves an FDI by decision, if the latter is not considered to threaten the security or public order of Slovenia.14 However, if the Ministry determines that an FDI threatens the security or public order of Slovenia, the former may issue a decision, which (i) sets special conditions for the foreign investor to fulfil in relation to the FDI, (ii) prohibits, or cancels the investment.15 Prohibition or cancellation results in the nullity of the transaction,16 and hence the nullity of any eventual pertaining decisions on entry in the court register or entry in the land register.

Gerrymandering the States: Partisanship, Race, and the Transformation of American Federalism: By Alex Keena , Michael Later , Anthony J. McGann , and Charles Anthony Smith . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2021 . 189 pp., $29.99 Cloth

In addition to this, the Republican Party has used their manufactured advantage to forward policy that increases the cost of voting and diverts money away from public health initiatives, including COVID-19 preparedness. The authors conclude that the inter-relatedness of American politics, contrary to Justice Scalia’s assertion that gerrymandering’s effects are limited to the district in which they occur, means that gerrymandering is everyone’s problem. The authors relay this assault on the foundation of modern democracy with the gravity it deserves, explaining how, when, and why contemporary redistricting has eroded our democratic institutions and the public’s faith in them.

Biopower, racism, and yellow fever

Protection includes access to pharmacies and health-care services, information, resources, people, and goods that can shape one's life or lead to one's death. The 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia was thought by some, including physician and signer of the US Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush, to originate from rotten coffee grounds left in the port. Long known as the “stranger's disease” due to misguided perceptions that only visitors and outsiders harboured yellow fever and brought it to New Orleans and other places, Olivarius takes a different approach in arguing that only the so-called acclimated were bestowed with vestiges of power in the form of local capital, networking opportunities, recognition from local credit houses and businesses, and status. While some public officials attempted to mitigate the potential impact of voting in the election by calling for increased access to mail-in ballots and more accessible and safer polling places, for instance, others hoped the impacts of COVID-19 might suppress “unwanted” voters from participating in the election.

Recent Key Efforts to Improve HIV-Related Intersectional Stigma and Discrimination Research

[...]In 2020 the NIH Office of AIDS Research and the National Institute of Mental Health, Division of AIDS Research developed and Implemented a deliberative process to actively engage researchers, community members, and government officials In a rigorous review of the concepts, theories, measurements, and Interventions that address HIV-related Intersectional stigma and discrimination. The co-occurring amplification of the COVID-19 pandemic and persistent racial Injustices further exposed the Intersecting effects that racism, economic disenfranchisement, gender Inequity, heterosexism, and other forms of systemic discrimination have on people belonging to multiple socially oppressed groups and the reality that people experiencing multiple forms of oppression suffer the greatest harms to their health. Genuine community-based participatory approaches respect the Innate knowledge ofthe community with its inherent strengths and assets while engaging community members as partners to Inform the entire research process-from framing the research questions to designing, conducting, analyzing, and Interpreting findings- which benefits from research and community perspectives.

Democracy in post-growth societies: A zero-sum game?

Talk of crisis is no longer the prerogative of drama-seeking intellectuals. It is increasingly difficult to overlook the many current incidents of economic, ecological and political malfunction and breakdown that call for structural explanations.In the economic dimension, two multifaceted crises frame the last decade. While there has been scant recovery after the global financial breakdown of 2008, the economic rupture caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to contain it are the next blow for the global economy, with as yet unclear outcomes. Politically, liberal democracies have been unsettled by the sharp rise of far-right parties, movements and governments, with severe effects in some countries. As this Special Issue goes to print, there is widespread uncertainty about the US presidential elections. With legitimacy already being called into question and voting rights disputed in many local contexts, it is uncertain whether the incumbent will accept defeat if he loses or whether democratic procedures will remain intact in the case of a narrow result. At the same time, strained ecological conditions are making themselves felt in all parts of the world, from melting polar icecaps through to flooding and massive wildfires returning autumn upon autumn with increased force.

Reflections On COVID-19: Whiplash! Volunteering at the Polls During a Pandemic

Serving as a poll worker is just one of those volunteer responsibilities I have long been prepared to assume. Since returning to the community in which I grew up, I served 10 years on the County Board of Supervisors and now serve on committees as a community member. [...]as April drew near, it had become a two-person race because one candidate seemed to be moving toward having the needed delegates. [...]interest in that election was waning. The Village Director of Public Works was concerned about setting up the polling place so that both the voters and poll workers would be safe. The Presidential election finds a significant number of residents registering onsite because for some individuals, it is the only election in which they exercise their responsibility to vote over a 4-year period.

Civic Engagement for the Underserved—A Clinician Imperative

The Healthy People 2020 initiative under the Department of Health and Human Services reported an association between voter participation and better self-reported health.1 A supporting study concluded that though the mechanisms might be unknown, the fact is that the level of civic participation in a country is tightly tied to the overall health status of a country.2 National provider groups recognize the importance of civic engagement to their clinical practice and those they serve as well. The Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU) recently began working together with VotER (www.Vot-ER.org) a national nonprofit that was founded by an emergency medicine physician, Alister Martin, who recognized both the need to encourage civic engagement and voter registration, and the particular role that providers can play in empowering patients to have a voice. While many organizations have been encouraging and supporting their staff, patients, and communities to vote for years (and many are required by law to offer voter registration in some circumstances), for some, the idea of registering voters in the current politically charged environment is worrisome.

Malvina Reynolds Sings the Truth: Psychoanalytic Truth, the Post-Truth Era, and History as a Series of Psychoanalytic Sessions

Dubbed the "Summer of Love," the summer of 1967 found U.S. youth coming together for music, sex, and drugs, but more importantly, coming together for an escape from and opposition to dire circumstances of social unrest, including the Vietnam War and the civil rights conflicts that abounded in the 1960s. [...]the topics at the forefront of intellectual and broader societal thought in the 1960s are some of the very same topics we wrestle with today. Antiintellectual disdain for experts and critical thinkers has reappeared as documented in Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason (2008), Russell Jacoby's The Last Intellectuals (2000), Tom Nichols's pre-Trump-era essay, "The Death of Expertise" (2014), and David Masciotra's "Anti-Intellectualism is Back" (2020), which reprised Hofstadter's work in reference to attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci and the development of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. Climate change is a current critical topic, but has an important history in the album's 1967. A 2015 poll was conducted by The Carbon Brief, in which members of the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chose an article by Manabe and Wetherald (1967), written in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences from the same year as Reynolds's album, as the most influential paper on climate change research and the first to demonstrate the effects of carbon dioxide on global temperatures through a computer model (Pidock 2015).

The Foundation of Care: Wages, Rights, Access, Equity, Housing and Safety

Georgia organizers Leng Leng Chancey and Erica Clemmons-Dean take a no-holds-barred look at the connections among the care economy the pandemic, and the current political climate. The authors analyze these factors and the cumulative Impact on BIPOC women, particularity in light of numerous voting rights bills in the Georgia legislature.

Challenging the Challengers: How Partisan Citizen Observers Contribute to Disenfranchisement and Undermine Election Integrity

Almost every state allows political parties to sponsor and train private citizens to serve as election observers and sometimes even to challenge the eligibility of other private citizens to vote. These partisan citizen observers, referred to in this Note as "PCOs," have far too often perpetuated the racism, disenfranchisement, and discrimination that already plague our democratic processes. While election observers can play a valuable role in preserving and maintaining the integrity of our elections at all levels, existing regulations do not effectively guard against discriminatory or intimidating PCO behavior. This Note analyzes the social and legal harms that may result from improper and illegal PCO activity and offers solutions to the PCO regime that maintain the benefits of citizen oversight of elections while minimizing the potential for intimidation, discrimination, and voter suppression.

La elaboración del padrón electoral en tiempos de pandemia: las Elecciones Generales 2021 en Perú

En una democracia, el padrón electoral es fundamental en cada proceso electoral, ya que en este se organiza y se lista a las y los ciudadanos que se encuentran hábiles para sufragar. El presente artículo da cuenta del proceso de elaboración del padrón electoral para las Elecciones Generales 2021, las cuales se llevaron a cabo en un contexto de pandemia por la COVID-19 que, pese a esta difícil coyuntura, Perú cumplió con el cronograma electoral a fin de salvaguardar el derecho al sufragio de la ciudadanía. La elaboración del padrón electoral en Perú está a cargo del Registro Nacional de Identificación y Estado Civil. Así, este trabajo muestra la inherente relación del cumplimiento de la elaboración del padrón con la garantía del derecho al sufragio, el cual fortalece la democracia.Alternate :In a democracy, the electoral roll is fundamental in each electoral process, since in it, all citizens who can vote are registered. This paper gives an account of the process of drawing up the electoral roll for the 2021 General Elections, in the COVID-19 pandemic context. Despite this challenging issue, Peru met the electoral calendar to assure the citizens' right to vote. Thus, this work shows the inherent relationship between compliance with elaboration of the electoral roll and the right to vote, which strengthens democracy.

OD's "Contribution" to Addressing Grand Challenges

Before I dig in, I want to suggest that many non-governmental organizations (NGO), non-profits, and benefit corporations, as well as a number of internal units in for-profit firms, are working to address voting rights, racism, income inequality, and climate change in participative and developmental ways. Todays climate and engagement surveys are direct descendants of survey feedback;newly formed groups routinely engage in team building activities;and OD was in the visioning, role clarity, decision rights, and culture change business a long time before they became au courant in organizations. [...]Worley and Jules (2020) pointed to a "blind spot" in the field. Unfortunately, coaching executives will not change a culture;unconscious bias training will not end racism, and flawlessly executing a change management process to create diversity and sustainability organizations that have to compete with other functions for scarce resources and management attention will not create inclusion and lower your carbon footprint.

Disparities in Poll Closures in the Age of COVID-19: A Case Study of Wisconsin

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 arose during the presidential primary process and spring elections for states across the U.S. One of the consequences of the pandemic on election administration was the closure of polling locations due to resource constraints and public health concerns. We aim to measure the extent to which disparities in electoral access and participation arose given polling place closures during the April 7, 2020, Wisconsin spring election. We run a spatial probit analysis on the probability of poll closures given population density and nonwhite populations of a given area using poll coordinate data provided by the Wisconsin Electoral Commission. We follow up to take advantage of the exogenous nature of poll closures to measure the impact of closure costs within the counties of Milwaukee and Dane via a multilevel logit analysis of turnout by mode. We find that the pandemic led to a series of poll closures that systematically impacted racial minorities and areas of high population density. Further, these poll closure costs as measured in increased distance to and size of polls are associated with reduced voter turnout, especially within Milwaukee County. We conclude that disparate access to polling places and costs of poll closures present challenges that must be overcome for purposes of election legitimacy and social cohesion. © Copyright 2021, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 2021.