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The Reading Room of the Library of Congress, one of the many spaces that students in the Democracy and Arts in Washington, D.C. course toured this January. Photo by Katie Anderson 20

During Interim, many Oles decide to travel off campus to learn in a new place and culture. While students often take advantage of these programs in order to go abroad, several courses allow students to explore a city in the United States. This past January, the Democracy and Arts in Washington, D.C. course provided such an opportunity for 24 students who traveled to the nations capital for an immersion in the world of arts funding and advocacy.

Led by St. Olaf College Assistant Professor of Music Louis Epstein and Assistant Director of Academic Civic Engagement Alyssa Melby, the course took students to museums, government offices, performance venues, and other arts facilities to talk to professionals and representatives about arts policy and advocacy.

These opportunities included visits to the offices of Minnesota senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar. The classs visit with Sen. Klobuchar was part of the senators Minnesota Morning program, in which Sen. Klobuchar invites Minnesotans to talk with her over coffee on Thursday mornings. In addition, several students in the course had the opportunity to describe their experience of being in D.C. during President Trumps impeachment trial in an interview for NPRs All Things Considered, and an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Epstein and his approach to grades for the course.

Katie Anderson 20, one of the students in the class, applied an artistic eye as she captured photos of the many spaces and places the St. Olaf group visited throughout the month. Get a glimpse of what the class saw in the album below.

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The course culminated in a policy proposal assignment in which students drafted a new arts policy in an area of interest. Throughout the course, students shared their experiences on an online blog, including end-of-term reflections.

Here are some of their reflections of how their perceptions of arts and democracy changed during the month in D.C.

I dont want a career in the arts, and I certainly dont want a career in politics, but I think this trip has reaffirmed that I need both in my life. There are too many ugly things in the world not to do something about it, and there are too many beautiful things in the world not to take them all in. After my time in D.C., I feel better equipped to do both in a more evaluative, optimistic, community-oriented way. Hannah Summers 22

Do we keep performing art that perpetuates negative stereotypes of women, men, POC, LGBTQ+? The conversation is important. Its what comes after that I am concerned with now. Alina Villa 20

I misjudged and underrated how much art is able to intersect with civic engagement and how artistic citizenship is able to redefine what civic duty means. So many of the institutions and organizations we visited in Washington whole-heartedly believed that civic duty is inextricably combined with the arts. Anna Cook 22

This month has made this English major question dictionary definitions, especially definitions of words so abstract and complex as art and democracy. In this sense, combining these words during this course and evaluating each word in the context of the other made for a challenging, complicated, and innovative union. Katie Anderson 20

I came into this course knowing I wanted to help bring the arts to people, but I didnt know how to find a niche in that space. It is easy to say that Im passionate about the arts, but it is so much more powerful to be able to talk about why; to say that Ive seen the restorative power of the arts in action and want to protect that. I always knew those things were true because I felt them in myself, but the opportunity to see that happen in others and have those stories to tell alongside my own is invaluable. Now I am armed with the perspective and experiences I need to explain why equity in the arts is essential. Penelope Musto 21

I am leaving this trip with a call to action in my ears. Our month in Washington D.C. made clear the power that each individual holds in this country. This program reminded me not only of the point of democracy, but also the point of art. Democracy is what gives a voice to each person in this nation, but art is what allows that voice to be heard. The dynamic culture of the arts scene in Washington D.C. reflects the development of personal civic identity that is essential to the success of the democratic system. The residents of Washington D.C. firmly believe in the concept of showing up, an idea that is sticking with me as I go back to my community and reflect on how I can show up. Holly Beck 22

This is what Ive taken away from Democracy and the Arts in Washington D.C.: For the sake of community, for the sake of artists, and for the sake of art itself, everyone must be given the opportunity to create and enjoy art. This is how art survives. Elijah Leer 22

I have felt encouraged more than ever about my individual political voice and the importance of showing up. Our first full day in town, we met with a staff member in representative Angie Craigs office. The next day, we met with Minnesota senator Tina Smith. A number of us went on to meet Amy Klobuchar later in the month. Each time I entered a building on Capitol Hill, I was shocked by just how easy it was to get in and access our representatives. Walking through the hallways and passing by the offices of people whose names I hear or read daily felt surreal; being located in the nations capital really lets you be positioned among those who make choices to change the course of history. Claire Strother 22

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Reflections on studying democracy and the arts - St. Olaf College News

As the two rivals dig in their heels, dormant threats are poised to rise anew. Agitators on either side of the rift were talking to each other not long ago with guns, Fazel Fazly, President Ghanis chief adviser, told me. During the Afghan civil war from 1992 to 1996, mujahedin armies waged such fierce and destructive assaults on one another that the rise of the Taliban was initially welcomed as a relief from the carnage. During that time, the offending warlords convened five major peace talks, and after each negotiation, they came back to Kabul and initiated a bloodshed, Fazly said. The animosity ran too deep; alliances were built and broken within days. Yet in the wake of 9/11, many of these same rivals came together to establish the post-Taliban state, which has tentatively survived to the present day. A key to its cohesion has been the abiding presence of a strong guarantorthe coalition of U.S. and international troopsable to compel adherence to shared terms. The one big change, Fazly said, was that the countrys strongmen, power brokers, and warlords now had to obey the rules of the game.

What happens, then, when you remove the guarantor? The question has dogged Afghanistans democratic endeavor since the beginning. In a recent statement, the Taliban scorned the arrogant Americans and recalled a proverb: You may have the watches, but we have the time.

Every democracy has growing pains, but not all get the chance to outlive them. Shaharzad Akbar helped found Afghanistan 1400, a youth-led movement devoted to liberal principles, nearly a decade ago. She recently told me, Afghanistan is still a battleground between democratic values and radicalization. After coming of age in Kabul, Akbar was accepted at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she graduated in 2009 and delivered the commencement address for her class. Living and studying in the U.S. had taught her that it was OK to be a woman, she said at the ceremony, and that to feel and act like a woman in public was a strength, not a weakness. In 2017, Akbar began to work for the Afghan government. Last July, she was appointed to the historic delegation that traveled to Doha to initiate talks with the Taliban. A new mother at the time, she prepared her briefings while her two-month-old sat on the conference hall sidelines, tended to by her husband.

At one point during the first days session, the baby boy stirred, as if wishing to add his voice to the discussions over his countrys future. In some of the lists circulating online, the newborns name was even published as a participant. Observers delighted in the symbolism, but the inclusion was an error.

Continued here:
Afghanistan May Soon Have Peace. And the Cost Is Democracy. - The New Republic

New report lists 142 serious attacks on journalists in 2019

In a statement issued ahead of World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejinovi Buri calls on governments to avoid unduly restricting media freedom during the COVID-19 crisis.

Governments are facing unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 crisis, but the situation must not be used to silence or hinder journalists, said the Secretary General. Media must be free to report on all aspects of the crisis. Journalists have a key role and a special responsibility for providing timely, accurate and reliable information to the public. They must be able to scrutinise the decisions of authorities in response to the pandemic. Through responsible reporting, journalists can also help prevent panic from spreading and highlight positive examples of solidarity in our societies. I have been personally impressed and encouraged by the many media reports I have seen of citizens helping each other and of carers, nurses, doctors and other heroes on the frontline of this crisis.

The Secretary General also expressed her concern at the findings of the annual report of the Council of Europes Platform for the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists, compiled by 14 media freedom NGOs, highlighting a trend of violence and intimidation against journalists over the last year.

Unfortunately, the worrying trend of violence and intimidation against journalists observed in recent years continues. Too many journalists are in prison and there are too many cases of impunity for the killing of journalists. I am also aware of the difficult economic situation that many journalists find themselves in today", she said.

The Secretary General encouraged member states to protect the role of journalists as watchdogs and as an important part of the necessary checks and balances in democratic societies. The 2020 annual report of the Platform for the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists, published yesterday by 14 international NGOs, lists 142 serious threats to journalists in the 47 Council of Europe member states. This includes 33 physical attacks against journalists, 17 new cases of detention and imprisonment, 43 cases of harassment and intimidation and two new cases of impunity for murder. The NGOs express concern over a total of 22 pending cases of impunity for the killing of journalists and state that at least 105 journalists were in prison by the end of 2019.

Press releaseSecretary General: Governments must protect the essential role of journalists in democracy, especially in times of crisis

Statement by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

Statement by David Zalkaliani, President of the Committee of Ministers

Link:
Secretary General: Governments must protect essential role of journalists in democracy, especially in times of crisis - Council of Europe

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Our world faces a common enemy: COVID-19, United Nations Secretary General Antnio Guterres said on March 23rd. The virus does not care about nationality or ethnicity, faction or faith. It attacks all, relentlessly. Meanwhile, armed conflict rages on around the worldThe fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.

Guterres ceasefire plea has yielded some positive results. By April 3rd, he reported ceasefires in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, Libya, Burma/Myanmar, Philippines, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. Actual ceasefires are hard to document, as the so-called fog of war clouds attempts to wage peace. To silence the guns, he added, we must raise the voices for peace.

Guterres makes a vital point: the novel coronavirus is a common enemy, capable, as we have painfully learned, of killing huge numbers, regardless of the flag one flies. As the outbreak aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt demonstrated, even staying aboard a $5 billion nuclear naval vessel offers no protection. And COVID-19s extreme contagiousness will certainly be on the mind of close to 1,000 West Point cadets, the newest of the U.S. Armys elite officer corps. They vacated their historic campus in March, when the Army declared a public health emergency. They are now being forced back to campus in June, after President Donald Trump abruptly announced that he would be delivering the commencement address at their previously-cancelled graduation ceremony.

Antnio Guterres noted in his ceasefire plea, The most vulnerable women and children, people with disabilities, the marginalized and the displaced pay the highest price.

Refugees from conflicts across the world are often held in camps that are crowded and lack proper sanitation a breeding ground for COVID-19. At a sprawling refugee camp on the island of Chios, in Greece, long described as a hellhole, occupants recently protested the death of an Iraqi woman there, after she suffered a fever. Camp residents believed the death was due to COVID-19, and that she suffered, as they all do there, from dismal medical treatment. On either side of the U.S/Mexico border, asylum seekers face the threat of infection, either in squalid camps that have sprung up in Mexican border cities as a result of the Trump administrations remain in Mexico policy, or in immigration jails like the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego a private prison run by CoreCivic where prisoners have been pepper sprayed and attacked by guards for demanding access to protective face masks.

Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza and Lebanon also suffer heightened risks of COVID-19 infection, exacerbated by many decades of systemic impoverishment, poor sanitation, and the denial of access to medical care.

COVID-19 has prompted a look back at previous pandemics, including the 1918 flu that swept the planet, killing an estimated 50-100 million people. It may even have hastened the end World War I, wiping out thousands of soldiers on both sides. The illness has long been called The Spanish Flu, a misnomer, as it almost certainly did not originate in Spain. News was censored in the warring countries of France, Britain and Germany, but not in Spain, which became the key source of European pandemic news, hence the name. An outbreak in Kansas led to infection of thousands of U.S. soldiers bound for the war in Europe, which added to the deadly flus global spread.

Much earlier in WWI, long before the scourge of the flu, a remarkable, albeit short-lived, ceasefire occurred. On Christmas Eve 1914, along the Western Front, German soldiers sang carols from their trenches, and soon British and French troops followed suit. By daybreak, an informal ceasefire had taken hold. Soldiers left their trenches, embracing their enemies in No Mans Land, playing pickup soccer games and sharing champagne and cigarettes.

That pandemic, that war, and the Christmas Truce are distant memories now. Have we learned anything? How we confront the coronavirus as a global community will tell. UN Secretary General Antnio Guterres concluded his ceasefire call last March 23rd, when the number of confirmed cases globally was only 300,000 it has since grown to over 3 million: End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world. It starts by stopping the fighting everywhere. Now.

Read more from the original source:
The Fury of the Virus, the Folly of War - Democracy Now!

The U.S. Capitol is seen in Washington, on April 29, 2020.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

They gather in small groups in the cloak room. They huddle in the marble corridors. Their aides lean over their shoulders at hearings. They whisper confidences on the floor. They crowd into the Members Only elevators to reach the chamber. They march shoulder to shoulder out of the building to return to their suites. They greet their constituents in tiny vestibules. They share bourbon and bonhomie in tucked-away retreats known as hideaways like the one, nicknamed The Board of Education, where in 1945 Harry Truman learned he had become president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died.

There may be no more dangerous occupation in the United States during the coronavirus pandemic than caregiver or lawmaker.

Which is why a branch of the U.S. government built on up-close-and-personal interchanges an institution the 19th-century statesman Daniel Webster called a hall for mutual consultation and discussion is embroiled in one of its most intense debates of the new century: Can an exclusive club where the most damaging epithet hurled at its members is a charge of being remote operate remotely in an emergency? Can a national capital where personal capital is built by being in the room convene in lawmakers living rooms dispersed across a continent?

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Those questions are roiling an institution so marinated in tradition that former senator Robert Byrds lectures on Senate customs and folklore fill 724 pages of an oversized bound volume and still omits the past 31 years of debates, dithering and delays. Indeed, before the Senate agreed to broadcast its proceedings, it took 64 years of sober contemplation and devout protests that the character of the body would be compromised. The Senate has been contemplating the nature of the filibuster for 179 years and is still unresolved over the issue.

For just as long, the movement of legislation onto the House floor has been regulated by the rules committee, which meets in a tiny room in the Capitol with only 13 seats. Thats by design," said Sarah Binder, a George Washington University congressional scholar. You actually have to be in the room to get your amendment on the floor. These guys exploit small spaces.

Now the coronavirus has made meeting in small spaces unacceptable and technological advances have made the notion of remote sessions more acceptable than after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks on Congress that followed.

We have so much to do and were not engaged," Republican Senator Rob Portman said in an interview. It is possible to do remote meetings and do them securely. Its like doing a financial transaction. You have a code for each transaction. If it isnt smart to be in Washington, we still have responsibilities. We are spending billions and have to be involved.

The Capitols attending physician advised this week that it was too dangerous for lawmakers the average age of the Senate is 61.8 years, and the two top House leaders are both 80 to gather on Capitol Hill. The Democratic-controlled House followed his recommendation. The Republican-controlled Senate, with barbed asides suggesting House members were cowards and sissies, is resisting doctors orders and will meet next week.

But the question of remote sessions is in the air, as it has been for two centuries.

It first surfaced in 1814, when British troops invaded Washington in revenge for the American burning of York, later known as Toronto. They ignited the Executive Mansion (later the White House) and set fire to the Capitol, destroying its interior and its furnishings and prompting debate about moving Congress to Philadelphia. Instead, lawmakers met in Blodgetts Hotel and then in temporary quarters called the Brick Capitol, situated where the Supreme Court stands today.

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There was no technology for remote sessions during the 1918 influenza pandemic that claimed three House members and was so virulent that 1,130 people died in a two-week period in Washington. Congressional galleries were closed for a month.

Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reluctant to contemplate remote sessions and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who built his power base in intimate personal entreaties, is resistant.

But Congress has held hearings around the country, on environmental issues in Colorado, for example, and on financial issues in New York. This week Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested remote hearings on coronavirus testing.

Last month, Democratic Representative Katie Porter began a push to hold House sessions remotely. But her allies thought she was a problematic advocate as a single mother of three living where there are no non-stop flights to Washington. It looked too much like a matter of convenience for her.

But if you wait and wait on this there may be some time they cant come back at all and will wish they had addressed this, said Norman Ornstein, a political scientist with the American Enterprise Institute. Its possible the House physician may say they shouldnt come back until summertime.

Still, remote sessions would alter the character of an institution where senator Barry Goldwater said of Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson, known for nose-to-nose confrontations with colleagues, When hed talk to you hed breathe in your mouth. The Johnson Treatment, as it was known, would be condemned in the coronavirus era.

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Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives will not return to Washington next week as planned, due to the continuing risk of coronavirus infection, Democratic leaders said on Tuesday. Reuters

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Can U.S. lawmakers live with remote democracy in the age of COVID-19? - The Globe and Mail