Category Archives: Uncategorized

My name is Alexander Howard: I’m a good governance advocate and digital democracy analyst. Today, I’m testifying as a DC Public Schools parent: my daughter is a third grader. Thank you for the opportunity to testify again before the council — and for your service and attention to these issues, which I know affects you and your families and neighbors.

Let’s step back.

Imagine if there were a dire airborne virus that left kids and adults sick and incapacitated. Parents and kids were afraid, but there was no Internet to work from home or do school learning.

With no virtual option, schools had to adapt differently to tuberculosis & the flu pandemic of 1918: kids moved to ferries, parks, roofs, & were bundled into classrooms with windows wide open to the cold with radiators.

How did a generation a century ago do so much more with so much less? How could we do the same, or better?

Let’s imagine DC classrooms had been full of bad air from gas or mold or fire in July. Would the council have stayed in recess in August and hoped DC government would fix it?

What would we as a city and community have done?

Here are 8 ideas for the days and months ahead: please adopt, adapt, improvise, & overcome!

1. Call on the DC National Guard to build field hospitals, but for learning. They have tents, strength, and motivation: the guard are our neighbors. Treat it like a barn raising for every school in national parks, & invite parents. If safety is an issue for outdoor field schools, keep the Guard on site, or bring park rangers & DC police in to watch over our kids as they do construction sites & national monuments. Don’t forget sanitation: DCDPW will have to support this frequently.

2. Engage the White House & Department of Education to make hybrid DC schools a model for the nation by using national parks and gardens. Presidential praise without public school progress isn’t moral. Use their praise for DCPS for access to federal spaces, support, and cover from rain & cold: winter is coming.

3. Issue all teachers and staff special permits for dedicated street parking, & accelerate permitting for parking lots, playgrounds, & roofs. Tap into libraries, grounds too!

4. Close side streets and sidewalks to expand outdoor space! How can restaurants possibly be higher priorities while our kids eat unmasked indoors? Other cities have done this. Why not DC? Ask for help from parents to supervise & take kids for walks. We will help if it means safer schools! Surge teams for permitting! No excuses: this could & should all have been in place in fall of 2020.

5. Over 1000 kids are quarantined as we speak. Support remote learning! Why wasn’t there virtual learning set to scale for kids in quarantine or sickened to begin! Why aren’t we ready to do this for sick days? Everyone had to know this would happen. Dedicate capacity to support them: devices, MiFi cards, paramedics to help & visit to make sure students have what they need.

6. Adopt test to stay! Rapid, on-site tests administered by school nurses should be a norm.

7. Hard vaccine mandate: get all staff & teachers vaccinated ASAP & disclose percentage. Hold DCPS accountable to keep our kids & communities safe.

8. What YOU can do as a council is mandate (and enforce) transparency, & hold agencies & the Mayor accountable for fixing infrastructure! Do performance issues suggest it’s time to make DC schools much more independent from the Mayor’s office?

There should be a DC pandemic dashboard for schools, full of open data on testing, quarantine, cases, outdoor space & HEPA filter status. Build it with OCTO, Code for DC & the open government advisory committee. Make that Salesforce data on work orders open and put it online! Hold weekly press conferences with the chancellor updating us all on status of outstanding issues. Make social media responsive, not broadcast press releases. Stop spending money to advertise propaganda to frustrated parents & ignoring our replies: work with us.

What’s missing is not resources or ideas in September 2021: it’s leadership, action, transparency, and accountability. Higher risk environments persist because we allow it.

Let’s fix it, together, & keep everyone as safe & healthy as possible.

After March 13, 2020, I started counting backwards from the inflection point caused by our school going virtual. Just over a year later, I’m still counting the Days of “pandemic time” based upon the status whether my child is back in school, her family vaccinated, & this novel coronavirus has been suppressed — the Holy Grail of no new cases for a week here in DC. (It’s now Day 370.)

That light at the end of the tunnel is now in sight and plausible, born upon vaccination, but I do not expect my daughter to be back inside that school this term.

Screens were already ubiquitous in her life in March 2020, but over the past year they’ve become present and relevant in a way our smartphones, tablets, and laptops were not before, windows onto the rest of the world, from FaceTiming with grandparents do virtual classes and recitals to hanging out with friends.

We are far from alone, as this Washington Post story relates. We’re rolling with it, as we must, but I’ve been reflective today about what has been lost or gained for millions of kids & their families, particularly those who were left behind by lack of access or computing devices.

Heather Kelly, author of the Post story, encapsulates the dynamic: “Since U.S. schools began closing down roughly a year ago, the country’s children have been adapting, learning and getting creative with how they use technology. The realities of their day-to-day lives vary wildly, as have their relationships with screens. For some, technology is a savior — the lifeline keeping them in touch with friends and helping them maintain social skills; a welcome alternative to in-person school. For others, it’s a failed promise — unable to make up for the gaps in their education, their parents’ lost wages and their own mental health.”

Kelly’s reporting distilled a truth about this moment: a “year of everyone turning to screens has shown us the worth, or danger, of devices has less to do with screens themselves & more to do with how they’re used. What appears to matter most is the support systems children & their parents have”

The gross inequities and inequalities laid bare by the last year show that the digital divide isn’t the fundamental driver here. It is not just about the tech, though Internet accesss and modern computing devices are obviously essential to remote learning and virtual classes: it’s the missing social safety net for families.

The USA is the only country in our peer group of developed nations without paid family leave and child care.

As former OECD ambassador Karen Kornbluh said in February, “the US is off the charts among OECD countries in our social insurance, labor & family support funding. Other countries’ education systems counter socioeconomic differences. Ours exacerbate them.”

Whatever else can be said about its strengths and deficiencies, the American Rescue Act is the most significant legislation for children’s poverty in generations.

It will come too late to prevent generational harms for many of the innocent kids and teens who endured unprecedented stresses when their schools closed, borne disproportionately by those who had the least.

The USA should catch up with our peer nations and invest in paid family leave & child care. These social safety nets will unlock a LOT of talent & help tens of millions of Americans survive the next pandemic.

We cannot bring back those we have lost nor make up the time with family, friends, and teachers, but we can ensure there are more lifelines, life jackets, boats, & supplies to aid those caught up in the endless tides of disruption from wars, disasters, and climate change.

If we do not build in more resiliency, more will drown in the swift, rising waters ahead.

I composed an homage to Shakespeare’s “Richard III” on a dark, chilly December night, using a famous network anchor’s quote as my muse to extend an earlier thought exercise on Twitter.

I thought it would be worth pulling together the tweets and editing them into single document of bowdlerized verse after Dan Rather and other folks on Twitter praised it.

My timing feels apt.

As Peter Baker observed in the New York Times, President Trump’s final days “railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury.” Just so.

Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard, told Baker that “this is classic Act V behavior.”

“The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.

If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December. We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”

And now, the final act begins.

---

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made inglorious bummer by this son of Queens;
And all his tweets that low’r’d upon the House
Impeachment charges by the Senate buried
Now are our brows bent to funeral wreaths
Our bruised hearts debate traitorous monuments;
Our schools and work changed to virtual meetings
Our protests and marches to indoor pleasures.
Grim-visaged Death hath smooth’d his dark shroud
And now, instead of heart attacks & cancers
To fright the souls of fearful Americans
He capers nimbly indoors
Borne by the promiscuous breathing of our youth
But we, that are not used to pandemic restrictions,
Nor bade to mask our plagued breaths;
We, that are rudely cramped, and in want of love’s tragedy
To dance before a wanton ambling nymph;
We, that felt curtail’d of our fair proportion,
Cheated of life by a dissembling cretin
Sickened, uninformed, sent before our time
Into this breathing world, alternative facts made up,
And so lame and irrational
That dogs bark as they halt by them;
Why, we, in this bleak time of plague,
Have tried to vote away the crimes,
Hoping to drive away shadows with the sun
And return our union to normalcy:
Therefore, since he cannot prove widespread fraud
We must not entertain these baseless lies
He is determined to invent villains & rages against the displeasures of his days
Plots has he laid, inductions dangerous
By conspiracies, libels & dreams
To overturn the election & become king
In deadly hate set one against the other
And if our union be as true and just
As he is subtle, false, and treacherous
This day should he be mew’d up
About a conspiracy, which says that ‘Q’
One of his heirs shall be fascistic
Dive, tweets, down here
Winter comes

Offline, we wash our hands so we don’t catch or pass on a disease. We emphasize physical hygiene to our kids.

Online, we need to practice information hygiene and teach everyone how to use social media responsibly, just as we do cars, guns, water, & fire.

It takes 20 seconds to wash your hands properly.
It takes 30 seconds to check info before you share an update.

How? “SIFT” the content: https://infodemic.blog/

Stop.
Investigate the source.
Find better coverage.
Trace claims, quotes, & media to original context.

Whether we wash our hands or scrub our feed of viral misinformation, we can stop the spread to our friends, families, & communities as others become vectors for infection.

The more social interactions someone has, the more responsibility they have not to pass on a disease.

The bigger a platform someone has, the more responsibility they hold. (Mark Zuckerberg, for example.)

But this isn’t just about media in 2020: every politician & member of the public has to help.

Always verify before you trust or amplify.

Deny lies oyxgen.

Attention & trust are 2 of the most precious commodities today.

Whether it’s algorithms suggesting politicians & content, taking $ for ads, running op-eds, or broadcasting a tsunami of lies or a protest live, tech companies, media, & the public all give speech reach.

What we amplify or damp shows our ethics.

Please don’t pass on disinformation or 🦠

If everyone had worn a mask since March, tens of thousands of Americans might be alive.

President Donald J. Trump bears direct responsibility for that, as well as the absence of the testing and contact tracing capacity we must have to reopen safely.

Why have European and Asian counties been able to suppress this pandemic while the USA has not?

The public health playbook for a pandemic is not a secret: universal masks, robust, rapid testing, contact tracing, & supported isolation & treatment — quarantine — for infections.

It’s the *only strategy* that will help us reopen in a safe way until we develop an effective vaccine, vaccinate 70%+, and have effective antivirals and therapeutics.

Masks are about protecting other people, & them protecting you, while scientists work on a safe, viable vaccine.

The key exception is someone who needs to gear up with a N95 as a healthcare worker or first responder to treat infected patients, in which case they’ll need that respirator, face shield, gloves & gown.

But that better mask would help on a subway or bus or plane or office. If we had manufactured tens of millions of N95 masks & distributed them this spring, Americans would be safer — like South Koreans, who did exactly that, distributing inexpensive masks around their nation.

We should have them, and all be wearing them.

Republicans seem to have realized they are on the wrong side of public opinion, the global health consensus, and history, shifting to saying everyone should mask up, with Speaker McConnell, Leader McCarthy and Rep. Cheney all speaking out in favor of wearing them last week.

But President Trump hasn’t just refused to wear a mask himself or tweet his *own administration’s guidance” on people wearing a mask: He has used his bully pulpit on Twitter and White House events to mock people who mask up & cast doubt on their effectiveness.

After months of anti-mask messaging, he finally reversed himself last week.

Why?

Republicans in Congress and Governors finally decided to support this crucial public health intervention — like their peers in the rest of the world’s developed nations and democracies — to stop the spread of COVID19.

“‘I’m all for masks,’ Trump lied, adding that he would wear one himself if he were in a crowded room (he hasn’t) and noting that he had a black one on recently. “I sort of liked the way I looked.’”

And then he hosted two large public events where people close together were not required to wear masks.

His defenders should ask why that didn’t happen in March, April, May, or June, and how many lives were lost as a result.

Every preventable death is a tragedy and I’m not willing to lose my parents or friends or neighbors to malign negligence.

President Trump is the first President in modern US history that has not tried to extend beyond his political base, governing all Americans.

His example carries outsize importance for his supporters — which goes to the importance of him wearing one and supporting their use — and negative valence with anyone else.

The public record shows that President Trump holds significant responsibility for the politicization of masks in the USA and thereby actively undermined a basic public health intervention that would have made a huge difference in the R value (infection rate) of a deadly disease.

God may have mercy on his soul, but historians will not be kind.

Americans will keep dying on his watch until our nation masks up, tests, traces, isolates & treats every case.

Here in upstate NY, driving miles of country roads to go hiking in an ancient gorge and plunge into the cool depths of the natural swimming pool is well worth the trip.

Visiting Stony Brook takes me back nearly 4 decades, to looking for fossils in the ancient walls, waterfalls, and the indelible memory of chilly, clear waters dappled with sun.

As forest baths go, this was restorative.

I shared the piece I wrote for Medium about the need to preserve ephemeral updates by politicians & civil servants on my Page. I decided to experiment with boosting it.

Facebook did not approve the “ad,” classifying it as political.

When I experimented further by seeing what was required of me for “identity confirmation,” it simply…didn’t work for me in the Facebook app. Tap button, nothing happens.

Some irony here: I was at the tip of the spear pushing Facebook to adopt political ad transparency & worked with Congress on a law to mandate it!

And now, as a result of their ham-handed self-regulation, I can’t engage people on Facebook about my piece advocating Facebook creating a public interest file for politicians and civil servants who create ephemeral media (“Stories”) on Instagram and Facebook.

UPDATE: When I shared this on Twitter, Rob Leathern, the director of product at Facebook responsive for ads integrity and transparency, replied to my @mention, stating that “This is not blocked – this is an ad about an issue of national importance and so requires you to go through the authorization process, before it will run.”

This is not blocked – this is an ad about an issue of national importance and so requires you to go through the authorization process, before it will run

— Rob Leathern (@robleathern) December 22, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

When I said the feature wasn’t available on mobile, he told me to visit Facebook from a desktop computer to complete the process. When I did so, Facebook prompted me to enter a mailing address and upload images of my passport, driver’s license or state ID.

There’s an interesting wrinkle here, as I noted to Leathern on Twitter: I’ve been “verified” on Facebook for years now, with a big blue checkmark next to my name and a special signifier in comments. What, exactly, does being “Verified” mean if Facebook still needs to identify who I am?

Fascinating new research from the World Economic Forum offers more insight about how using mobile apps leaves people feeling — and how moderation can reduce regret:

Here’s the key contention: for many of the apps that people uses the most, there is a time when the law of diminishing returns kicks in, after which time more use begins to leave us with increased regret.

That’s about 20 minutes a day, for Facebook. I do wonder if Facebook’s internal data would show about how happiness changes over time, across different interactions. I suspect more time interacting with friends and less time passively consuming pictures and video is correlated with more positive feeling.

My takeaways:

1) intentional use & discipline can have a real impact on someone’s sense of well-being and reported happiness. (That sounds a lot like a doctor recommending a healthy diet and daily exercise, to me. Common sense but not always easy to do.)

2) lots of time spent on some apps are strongly enough associated unhappiness that people struggling with depression should probably delete them if they cannot moderate use.

3) In aggregate, this likely adds up to unprecedented combination of cognitive loads for people who spend a lot off time every day staring at their smartphones (ahem!) which may explain our complex relationship we have constant connectivity.

I think I’ll try to adapt Michael Pollan’s mantra for eating to a healthier “digital diet” this year:

Use apps.

Not too much.

Mostly productivity.

In this ad campaign for Facebook Live at DC bus stop, they’re urging users to film people with no caveats or ethics. 

If Facebook is going to encourage its users to livestream strangers, it would be responsible to educate them about privacy, security and minimizing harm.