Stanford Workers Cut Off by Stanford Politics

stanford politics magazine STANFORDPOLITICS.ORG SEPTEMBER 2020 | ISSUE 08

STANFORD WORKERS CUT OFF STANFORD’S FUMBLED CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE HIGHLIGHTS PROBLEMS WORKERS AND STUDENT ACTIVISTS HAVE STRUGGLED WITH FOR YEARS

PROSECUTOR REFORM • HOMELESS RIGHTS • AI IN SENTENCING • LEBANON5

Your bi-weekly rundown of Stanford news and commentary on campus, local, US and world politics.

EDITOR’S NOTE For over half a decade, Stanford Politics has come to be known as this campus’s primary platform for long-form, thoughtful, and original student journalism. After months of work, our first issue of the year continues to exemplify these standards and ideals. A summer defined by a global pandemic, a racial reckoning, and raging wildfires has left Americans with deep physical and spiritual wounds. To many, it has become evident that leaping reforms in the United States are necessary for the nation to heal. In response to this unprecedented moment in history, our latest magazine centers around the theme of justice . Our writers not only investigate instances of domestic and international injustice, but also thoughtfully engage with how different systems can and ought to exist. Our cover story details the work of Students for Workers’ Rights in their struggle to secure financial support for Stanford workers during the outbreak of COVID-19. The story started over six months ago and offers an in-depth illustration of workers’ and student activists’ experiences engaging with the university. Written by Kyle Wang, it details the unique challenges faced by subcontracted and undocumented workers in securing job pay and security both before and during the pandemic. The rest of the magazine addresses equally pressing and important issues related to justice. Avery Rogers investigates the role our country’s prosecution system plays in driving mass incarceration. Inspired by her thesis work, Courtney Cooperman details the unique challenges homeless people face in engaging with democracy in the U.S. Mac Taylor questions the use of AI algorithms in American sentencing procedures, and Gabby Conforti addressed the false hope offered by Lebanon’s new government in the wake of the Beirut explosion. As always, this magazine was only possible because of the countless hours our writers, editors, and designers dedicated throughout the summer. I am hopeful their words and ideas will resonate with and inspire many readers, as the best journalism does. And despite the challenges that come along with reporting in a remote setting, let this issue stand to show that our work will not stop.

Nathalie Kiersznowski Editor-in-Chief

MASTHEAD MANAGING EDITOR GREGORY BLOCK

EDITOR IN CHIEF NATHALIE KIERSZNOWSKI

CHIEF OF STAFF AVNI KAKKAR

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER TOM PFEIFFER

SENIOR EDITORS ROXY BONAFONT NIK MARDA

EDITORS BECCA SMALBACH AVERY ROGERS KYLE WANG PHOEBE QUINTON CAT BUCHATSKIY

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER SIERRA BURGON

CONTENTS

FROM CUFFS TO CONVICTION 03 The Role of Prosecutors in Driving America’s Mass Incarceration Problem AVERY ROGERS

UNHOUSED AND UNEQUAL

How Homelessness Undermines American Democracy COURTNEY COOPERMAN

STANFORD WORKERS CUT OFF 14 Stanford’s Fumbled Coronavirus Response Highlights Problems Workers and Student Activists have Struggled with for Years KYLE WANG

AI PREDICTION TOOLS CLAIM TO ALLEVIATE AN OVERCROWDED JUSTICE SYSTEM...BUT SHOULD THEY BE USED?

ALEXANDRA ‘MAC’ TAYLOR

CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP WON’T SOLVE LEBANON’S CORRUPTION 30 GABBY CONFORTI

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ARIST OF THE COVER STORY Kyle Wang (Author) is a junior studying English and math. His interests include poetry, a cappella, and all things Frank Ocean.

Marcus Marritt (Artist) is an illustrator living and Glasgow. He has previously created work for Politico, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

All in-text references are cited online at stanfordpolitics.org.

Stanford Politics is a student publication at Stanford University. All views expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and interviewees only and do not represent the views of Stanford University. Copyright © 2020 by Stanford Political Journal. All rights reserved. No original article or portion herein is to be reproduced or adapted to other works without the expressed written consent of the editor of Stanford Politics.

From

Cuffs

to Conviction

THE ROLE OF PROSECUTORS IN DRIVING AMERICA’S MASS INCARCERATION PROBLEM

n 2016, a young man was arrested for robbery in Kansas City, Mo. The prosecution alleged that the man had forcefully robbed a pedestrian outside of the city’s Embassy Suites hotel. The man, unable to afford a private attorney, waited in jail for 13 months before the local public defender’s office had a chance to take his case. Once the public defender’s office opened his case file, however, the investigation was swift–his public defender quickly realized that 23 seconds after the victim placed a 911 call to report the robbery, the man had been caught on tape at a gas station that was a six-minute walk from the hotel, proving he could not have committed the crime. The man was released shortly after the investigative evidence was revealed, but he had already spent 13 months unnecessarily confined in a jail cell, jeopardizing employment, housing, and important relationships. This man’s situation wasn’t unique, according to Ruth Petsch, head of Kansas City’s public defender’s office. With only 34 attorneys, the Missouri public defender system was so overloaded with cases in 2017 that it stopped taking new clients altogether, instead forcing people to either take a plea deal or wait indefinitely in jail for an assignment to a defender. Missouri has the second-highest caseload per public defender—behind only Louisiana— but the situation is not much better elsewhere around the country. The United States criminal justice system is full of inefficiencies, poor incentives, and rules and practices unseen elsewhere in the developed world. The country’s laws give prosecutors enormous discretion and power, and in many places leave defendants and their poorly funded defenders at the mercy of prosecutorial decisions. This imbalance causes perverse injustices and is a driving factor of

Avery Rogers

Courthouse in Kansas City, Missouri

PROSECUTION mass incarceration and the politicization of criminal justice. If the United States is to achieve its ideals of justice and fairness, the country must turn its eyes to prosecution and defense. To understand just how much power prosecutors have in the justice system, it is important to first understand the whole criminal justice process, from the moment an arrest is made to the locking of a prison cell. This process has eight major steps (described in figure 1). While recent conversations about criminal justice have focused on Steps 1 and 2—laws and arrests— Steps 3, 6 and 7 are where public prosecutors and defenders take center-stage in the criminal process. There is good reason to believe that these steps carry a large share of the burden of mass incarceration and injustice in the criminal system. Fortunately, there is also good reason to believe that these steps are amenable to significant and sustained corrections, many of which are being pioneered across the United States today.

A RISE IN PROSECUTION Several years ago in Los Angeles County, the fire department was called to respond to a pair of flaming palm trees in a small strip mall. The police tagged along to investigate, and found the likely suspect sitting on a curb near the fire, dazed and nervous. They arrested the man and put him in jail to await charges. It appeared that the fire had been started by a cigarette butt the man had thrown into the trees from the man’s own statement and that of witnesses. Despite the man’s clear lack of intention in setting the fire, the prosecutors on the case decided to charge him with a form of arson called arson of forestland, since the objects on fire were trees. Arson of forestland carries a higher penalty than arson of regular property, which itself carries a felony charge while unintentional setting of fire is only a misdemeanor. The man was found not guilty in court. In this case and all others, it is up to the prosecutors to determine exactly what crime was committed, and, like in the case above, many infractions do not fit easily into one criminal category. Laws are concrete but ambiguous, and there is lots of room for prosecutors to interpret the intentions of the defendant and the degree of damage. Prosecutors can also press multiple charges for a single offense; for example, a prosecutor could charge someone with five counts of assault for hitting the same person five times during a fight. In the United States, prosecutors have full discretion over charges; there are no official or unofficial checks on that power. Defendants, defense attorneys and even judges only respond to the charges pressed, and have no participatory power in the charging process. Prosecutorial discretion may be the key to understanding mass incarceration in the United States since 1980. John Pfaff, an economist at Fordham University, has dedicated much of his academic career to the very question of determining which step in the criminal process has produced the country’s enormous prison population. He investigates sentencing laws, arrest rates, conviction rates and drug laws, and concludes that

none of these factors have been the primary drivers of mass incarceration. “Over the 1990s and 2000s, crime fell, and so too did arrests. But prosecutions rose, and those rising prosecutions seemed to drive prison populations more than anything else — conviction rates remained roughly flat, as did the risk of being admitted to prison and the time spent there,” Pfaff says. To parse the number of prosecutions over this time period, Pfaff studied felony filings per arrest from 1990 to 2010, and found that this measure increased significantly during this period. In 1994, only one in three arrests would be charged as a felony; by the late 2000s, two out of three were being charged this way. Sometime after 1980, arrests that had previously been met with a warning or slap of the wrist started getting charged as felonies. Why the increase in charges per arrest? Pfaff points to the rising number of prosecutors in the United States. In 1990, the country employed about 20,000 prosecutors. By 2007, that number was nearly 30,000. This is not the result of increasing caseloads—crime went down significantly from the early 1990s into the 2000s, and the population of the country increased by only 20 percent. With more attorneys available to prosecute less crimes, prosecutors could afford to charge a broader range of cases rather than triaging only the most egregious offenses. Pfaff postulates that the rising crime in the 1980s caused politicians to pursue more tough-on-crime campaign promises, including increased spending on prosecution. Why this trend continued even as crime rates plummeted may be due to a time delay effect, though no concrete answer has been discovered. It is important to note that rising felony charges per arrest may not inherently be a bad thing. It’s important for a country to have the prosecutorial bandwidth to keep dangerous offenders off the streets. On the other hand, it is also inefficient to prosecute every crime that occurs. In the U.S. system, this discretion depends entirely on the integrity of the prosecutor handling the case. Even among conscientious, well-intentioned prosecutors, this is a heavy burden to carry. And when prosecutors do misstep, the current system does not have the mechanisms in place to prevent it.

THE PROBLEM WITH PLEA BARGAINING

The next crucial step in any criminal case is plea bargaining. While popular media and entertainment often portray criminal cases as courtroom dramas, filled with impassioned speeches and judges banging their gavels, only about 3 percent of criminal cases are handled in jury trials. The other 97 percent are mostly settled through a system called plea bargaining, where the prosecutor on a case offers a lower charge to the defendant in return for a guilty plea. Since different crimes carry different minimum sentences, taking a plea bargain may reduce a defendant’s sentence by half or more. Once a plea deal is reached, the defendant will be sentenced directly by the judge

FIGURE 1. THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROCESS 1. The local, state, or federal legislature passes a law prohibiting some conduct.

2. The police arrest an individual for an alleged violation of that law and bring that individual to jail.

3. A prosecutor for the city, state, or federal government decides whether to press charges on the individual, and if so, which charges to bring. 4. A judge reads the charges against the individual at an arraignment where they may plead guilty or not guilty to those charges. If they plead not guilty, the judge arranges for a jury trial date and assigns a public attorney to the defendant if they qualify. 5. The judge sets bail, and the defendant can either pay the bail amount or remain in jail until their trial date.

6. The prosecutor and defense attorney engage in plea bargaining, wherein the prosecutor can offer a lower charge to the defendant in return for a guilty plea. The prosecutor and defense attorney also use this intermediate time to investigate the case and compile evidence in their favor. 7. If the defendant rejects a plea bargain, they will then go to trial in front of a jury. If the defendant is convicted of the charges, the judge will then set the length of the prison sentence or impose other punishments permitted for that crime.

8. The defendant may appeal their case, but will generally be sent to prison or to serve the sentence set by the judge.

PROSECUTION and avoid the laborious trial process. guilty plea that offers some control over the sentence awarded Plea bargaining can introduce perverse incentives into a rather than a trial followed by a near certainty of conviction.” criminal case for both prosecutors and defenders. Both parties Additionally, if the original crime is low-level and does not usually lack the resources to handle the bulk of their cases and carry much prison time, a defendant might accept a plea deal might want to bargain in order to take a relatively minor case that allows them to walk free with only a fine or probationary off their dockets. measures. Prosecutors determine which charges are pressed against Nonetheless, in those cases where prosecutors pursue a client and have most of the power when it comes to plea barmore serious charges to induce pleas, defendants–both guilty gaining. They decide what initial charges are pressed and what and innocent of an offense–can be harmed. Defendants who lower-level offense they are willing to settle for. It is thus posare not given bail or are unable to afford it may accept a plea sible for overwhelmed prosecutors to intentionally pursue an deal out of desperation. The time from arrest to trial can last initial charge with a long minimum sentence in order to levermore than a year; even if a defendant knows they are innocent age that charge in plea bargaining. A defendant is more likely and has evidence to prove it, they may lose their job and housto accept a plea deal when the anticipated prison time or other ing and endanger close relationships by waiting so long for a punishment is significantly reduced by the plea. Trials are risky, trial. Particularly for those crimes that carry low prison senand defendants may opt for certainty over the possibility of a tences, defendants may plead guilty to a lower felony or misdenot-guilty verdict. meanor offense to expedite their return to normal life. Since charging and plea bargaining are not recorded publicly, the frequency with which prosecutors pursue high initial charges for bargaining power is unknown. “No doubt some Thanks to the Supreme Court rulings in Gideon v. Wainprosecutors overcharge their cases to create leverage in plea wright (1963) and Strickland v. Washington (1985), every perbargaining; many others don’t. I’m not familiar with any study son in the United States has the right to a competent defense in of the prevalence of the problem,” George Fisher, professor of criminal cases at both the state and federal level. In most states, law and co-director of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic at Stanthis means that individuals below a certain income threshold ford University, says. may request to have a public defender appointed to them rather On the public defender side, limited budgets may comthan seek outside counsel. The right to an attorney is currentpel defenders to cajole their clients into accepting plea deals ly honored across the United States, but public defense in the even when the client would like to go to trial. Going to trial is United States hardly lives up to its constitutional mandate of a massive investment, and defenders have to prioritize those competency. cases which are most likely to result in not-guilty verdicts. In One of the biggest barriers to effective counsel in indigent some jurisdictions, public defenders refer to their working defense cases is the lack of resources conditions as “plea factories,” available to public defenders. Pubchurning out plea deals with little regard for the merits of any he time from arrest to lic defenders are outcompeted by prosecutors, both in terms of sheer particular case. If they do not trial can last more than numbers and budgets; as of 2007, operate in this manner, they are there were over 25,000 prosecutors at risk of massive backlog, which a year; even if a defendant and 15,000 public defenders. Prosemeans longer time spent in jail knows they are innocent and cutors in all states had a total budget for their clients. But plea bargains do have has evidence to prove it, they of $5.8 billion, while defenders had a budget of $2.3 billion. However, their place in the justice system. may lose their job and this significant budgetary difference For some defendants, plea barstill fails to capture the disparities in gaining can be highly advantahousing and endanger major monetary privileges afforded geous. Fisher cites the following close relationships by to prosecutors. While public defendexample in which plea bargainers largely have to pay for their own ing is ideal for a defendant: “If waiting so long for a trial. investigators, DNA tests, and other a person burglarizes a home, is modes of collecting evidence, proscaptured on film by a home seecutors receive these services for free from the government. curity camera, leaves behind fingerprints and blood stains, and Thus, the actual gap in resources between prosecutors and is found ten minutes later by the police with unique property defenders may be far greater. This gap is likely driven by the identified by the homeowners as theirs, this person faces a very unpopularity of spending on criminal defense; politicians are high likelihood of conviction after trial,” he says. “Sure, trials often loath to expand funding on a program that can be chalked sometimes go awry, and juries sometimes nullify clear cases of up to ‘assisting murderers and rapists’ by their opponents. guilt. But it would be rational for this defendant to prefer a

OUR FAILING PUBLIC DEFENSE

“T

”

PROSECUTION

George Fisher (left) is a professor of law and co-director of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic at Stanford University. David Sklansky (right) is a former prosecutor and current professor of Law at Stanford University.

Public defense in many states is also marred by poor incentives arising from their personnel structures. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the most common way states provide indigent defense in the United States is not through full-time public defender’s offices, but through flat-fee contracts with private attorneys. In the flat-fee system, private attorneys are paid a flat fee by the county or state to represent an unlimited number of clients. Since these attorneys receive the same payment regardless of the number of hours they work, they have strong incentives to cajole their clients into plea deals or else do the minimum possible amount of work on each case. This system is so dysfunctional that the American Bar Association recommends banning it outright, though it persists in many areas of the country. For those clients who do receive a full-time public defender, the picture may not be much improved. Across the

nation, public defenders are swamped with several times the number of cases they can realistically handle. While the American Bar Association recommends that public defenders handle a maximum of 150 felony cases per year, places such as Miami handled approximately 500 felony cases per defender in 2008. Public defenders with the best of intentions often have no choice but to plead out many of their cases for lack of time, taking to trial only those cases most likely to secure a not-guilty verdict. For those clients who do decide to go on to trial, wait times can still be immense and ruinous to their livelihoods, and they are by no means guaranteed to receive a strong defense. Many indigent defendants around the country have noted that during trial, their public defender was so underprepared as to nullify any chance of winning the case. Those public defenders who do show up to the courtroom unprepared do so not only because of overwhelm-

ing caseloads. Public defenders face constant obstacles to getting the information they need to prove that a defendant is not guilty. Public defenders have fewer investigative resources than prosecutors do, and most lack open access to police records and other government-managed files. Technically, public defenders do have the right to some of this information: the Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland (1963) obliged prosecutors to turn over any evidence to the defense in a criminal case “where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment” (US Supreme Court). That is, prosecutors must turn over evidence that could show the defendant is innocent or committed a less serious offense than the one alleged. However, the Brady rule is complicated in practice, and again relies on prosecutorial discretion to function properly. Lots of prosecutors don’t understand Brady. That’s a significant problem,” David Sklansky, professor of

PROSECUTION by the

Felony Filing per Arrest

Numbers: 33%

1994 67%

2010

In 1994, only one in three arrests would be charged as a felony; by the late 2000s, two out of three were being charged this way. Sometime after 1980, arrests that had previously been met with a warning or slap of the wrist started getting charged as felonies. (Pfaff 2002)

law at Stanford University and former prosecutor focused on improving prosecutorial accountability and decision-making, says. “One problem with the Brady rule is that it’s very hard for a conscientious prosecutor to figure out exactly what Brady requires the prosecutor to turn over to the defense. The way the rule works is, the defendant has a constitutional right to information if, without the information, they’d get convicted and if they’d had the information there’s a significant chance that they wouldn’t have been convicted. That’s like a double hypothetical: assuming the defendant has been convicted and looking back to figure out if things would have been different if they’d turned information over. Prosecutors have an incentive to figure out a reason not to turn over the evidence because they’re worried about the evidence being misused, even a conscientious prosecutor. ” Sklansky pointed out that even prosecutors with the best of intentions worry that sharing information with defense attorneys may open up their witnesses to harassment or character defamation, or otherwise distract the jury from the crux of a case by undermining witness credibility. Thus, prosecutors “have an incentive to figure out a reason not to turn over the evidence,” even if justice is their goal, Sklansky says. Finally, since police departments control the initial police reports, these departments can block certain information from reaching both the prosecution and the defense. In order to obtain Brady-related information, prosecutors must contact their local police force for reports and disciplinary information that could erode the credibility of police as witnesses. Police departments are often reticent to turn over information that might harm their own officers, and there is little a prosecutor can do to investigate a police department’s transparency. Thus, prosecutors and defenders often enter the courtroom with very different information. A public defender may not know of all the evidence against her client until the day of trial, making it nearly impossible to prepare for all possible lines of attack.

THE ROAD TO REFORM There are many sources of injustice lurking in the shadows of the criminal process. Fortunately, these issues are far from intractable—they are perhaps the most solvable sources of unfairness in the U.S. justice system. Solutions to these issues will benefit vulnerable Americans who, in the absence of private counsel, rely on public institutions to function well and honor their constitutional rights. First, it’s important to remember that prosecutors deal with extremely difficult moral choices. Prosecutors are the only attorneys in the United States who do not have an ethical obligation toward their client; rather, they have an ethical obligation to do justice. While public defenders do not have to worry about the innocence or guilt of their client—many do not even ask—the prosecutor must always weigh the evidence to decide whether to continue pressing charges in a case. That said, there is much that can be done to reform public prosecution in the United States. One possible area of reform is in the electoral process for prosecutors. “Disappointing decisions by prosecutors are in no small part a symptom of what the voters want from those offices,” Pfaff says. “That said, one challenge faced by the question ‘are prosecutors doing justice?’ is that there’s no agreement on what ‘justice’ is. To some, a conviction-centered approach is, sincerely, doing justice.” The notion that voters should determine the boundaries of justice is unique to the United States. “All the other democracies that I’m aware of choose the chief prosecutors of prosecutorial offices by either having them appointed by elected officials or by having them promoted through a prosecutorial bureaucracy,” Sklansky says. As such, Slansky questions the value of electing public prosecutors at all. “It can politicize criminal justice by making prosecutors think about how particular decisions they make in criminal cases will play with the electorate instead of thinking about what the law requires and what justice requires.” Sklansky points to New Jersey, Connecticut,

PROSECUTION and Alaska, the only states in which chief district attorneys are appointed rather than elected. Changing from an election system to an appointment system requires altering a state’s constitution, making it a difficult reform to pass but one likely to endure for generations once achieved. The second necessary area of reform is in the plea bargaining phase, where defendants too often cede their right to a trial in order to minimize the risk of a catastrophic outcome. According to Sklansky, the United States is the only country where defendants might expect a 90 percent reduction on their sentence by taking a plea deal—for example, decreasing a sentence from 20 years to two years by charging them with a related but lesser offense. In other countries, a 10 percent sentence reduction is more the norm. Sklansky explains that mandatory minimum sentencing laws are one culprit of this problem. Without a minimum mandatory sentence, the prosecutor can only argue for the judge to assign a long sentence, and the defendant can respond that since the prosecutor offered a plea deal with a low sentence, a low sentence is more just. “But if there’s a mandatory minimum sentence,” says Sklansky, “then the only way that somebody can get out from under that sentence is by having the charge dropped. And the prosecutor is the only one that gets to drop the charge in our system.” Changing mandatory minimum sentencing laws will not only help reduce sentences for those taken to trial, but will also help rein in prosecutors who might use minimum sentencing laws to gain leverage in plea bargaining. Finally, the trial process can be improved for defendants in several ways. To start, the Brady rule determining which information a prosecutor must share with the defense attorney on a case can be updated to be more simple and expansive. Sklansky suggests that the clearest way to rearticulate Brady is to institute an open discovery policy; that is, to have prosecutors share all information with the defense by default. “This flips the presumption,” Sklansky says. Instead of letting prosecutors decide what to share, prosecutors would now decide what not to share. The pieces of evidence that the prosecutor believes should be private—the mental health histories of witnesses, for example—can be presented to a judge, who can use a protective order to remove that evidence from the shared case file. “All the states that have open file policies allow prosecutors to seek orders like that from the judge,” Sklansky says. Approximately one-third of states have implemented open file or other expansive policies, and others can follow suit. Another obvious fix would be to allocate more funds to public defenders to mitigate overwhelming caseloads and hire more support staff to handle tasks such as investigations. However, Pfaff points out a possible indirect and negative effect of focusing on public defender budgets. “Public defenders may do very little: they can’t necessarily change the outcome of most cases filed, and better-funded defense may actually help legitimize oppressive prosecution,” he says. Sklansky agrees that charging less people with crimes would help reduce public

defender caseloads while placing the burden of change on the prosecutors who pursue too many charges with overly harsh penalties. Nonetheless, Pfaff says, there may be an indirect benefit of better funding for public defense, as well: creating more accountability among prosecutors. Many elected district attorneys, including a few notable ones in New York City, have reneged on their promises to stop pursuing charges for certain low-level offenses. Public defenders, Pfaff argues, are the best-positioned individuals to report on the injustices happening in the courtroom and to hold elected officials to account for their office’s practices. Doing this requires that public defenders have the time and attention to interrogate the prosecutorial decisions made in the cases they see, which could be improved by more funding. Sklansky agrees that providing more funding to public defenders would benefit individual defendants, and that a path to budgetary equality between prosecutors and defenders is realizable. In fact, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduced such a bill, the Equal Defense Act, in May 2019. The bill is awaiting a vote by the Senate.

***

It is a grim moment in American history to reflect on the excesses of the country’s criminal justice system. But it is also a time of unusual hope, as politicians from both parties recognize the need for reform. This year, Chesa Boudin, a former public defender, was elected district attorney of San Francisco on a decarceration platform. The San Francisco District Attorney’s office has since ended cash bail in the city and fought for new legislation protecting and giving parolees the right to vote. On the other side of the aisle, President Donald Trump has also passed legislation to reform sentencing laws. In 2019, Trump passed the First Step Act to retroactively reduce the sentences of thousands of prisoners in the federal prison system for drug-related offenses, calling on states to take similar measures. Critically, it also allows judges to disregard mandatory minimum sentences in non-violent drug crimes, returning a moderate but promising amount of judicial discretion to the bench. It also retroactively repeals the differential sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, a disparity that especially harms African Americans. Forty years into the mass incarceration era, both sides of the aisle are awakening to the social and economic toll of the United States’ 2.3 million incarcerated people. “There is absolutely a path to [reform],” says Sklansky. “We would just need to decide as a society that it was worth it.”

Avery Rogers ‘21 studies economics and computer science and is an editor for Stanford Politics.

T UNHOUSED AND UNEQU AL HOW HOMELESSNESS UNDERMINES AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Courtney Cooperman

wo weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced an eviction moratorium that extends through the end of 2020. The moratorium, which protects renters who can prove that they are facing economic hardship due to the pandemic, provides much-needed security for an estimated 30 to 40 million Americans at risk of eviction this autumn. According to some projections, without government intervention, homelessness could have risen by 45% this year alone, an alarming escalation of an already unconscionable crisis. As the CDC order acknowledges, housing security is critical to public health. Without a stable place to stay, people are more likely to end up in congregate living arrangements, such as homeless shelters, where they face a greater risk of contracting COVID-19. When people are forcibly removed from their homes, they cannot comply with stayat-home orders. The eviction moratorium is a common-sense step to control the spread of the coronavirus and provide relief, albeit temporary, to those suffering its devastating economic impact. Perhaps less obviously, but no less critically, it is also a significant safeguard of political rights. One of the strongest predictors of voter turnout is how long a person has lived in a particular place. In the 2018 midterm elections, just under twothirds of Americans who lived in their current residence for less than one year were registered to vote, and only 44% reported voting. In contrast, 84% of Americans who lived in their current residence for at least five years were registered to vote, and nearly 70% voted. This pattern makes intuitive sense: when a person changes their address, they need to update their voter registration, which is probably not topof-mind when getting settled into a new residence. Add in the trauma of an eviction and heightened anxieties about the pandemic, and it’s unlikely that this year’s election will take priority for someone who is forced out of their home. Evictions also impede access to mail-in ballots, as voters may have their ballots delivered to addresses where they are no longer living. A wave of evictions would certainly suppress participation in the 2020 election, driving down turnout among renters and low-income citizens, who are already less likely to vote. The CDC’s order, if enacted effectively, will protect tens of millions of people from eviction and its disenfranchising consequences. However, an eviction moratorium provides little comfort to the half-million Americans who are already experiencing homelessness on any given night. More than

200,000 unhoused people in the United States are over the age of 50. According to some research, unhoused people age an average of 15 to 20 years faster than housed people, and they are more susceptible to life-threatening complications from respiratory illnesses. Although people experiencing homelessness are therefore disproportionately vulnerable to COVID-19, they are less likely to have access to safe voting options, since they may not have a consistent mailing address. This November, many unhoused people who wish to vote will have no choice but to risk their health and show up at the polls. Even in a typical year, homelessness can make it much more complicated to participate in the democratic process. People without residential addresses have the right to vote, but often face significant obstacles when they attempt to do so. The National Voter Registration Form instructs citizens who “live in a rural area but do not have a street number” or “do not have an address” to designate where they live on a blank map. However, election administration is handled at the state level, which creates disparities in the ways that states process these non-traditional voter registrations. In many states, registrants that submit a diagram, description, or shelter address in lieu of a home address can show up on Election Day and vote without further question. Other states, however, require additional verification that they are staying in the place where they registered. In Wisconsin, an unhoused person requires a “proof of residence” letter from a shelter or social service provider in order to cast a ballot. In Minnesota, to register at their polling place on Election Day, a person experiencing homelessness must bring another registered voter from their precinct or a shelter staff person to sign an oath confirming their current dwelling place. These rules not only create logistical barriers to voter registration among unhoused citizens, but also fail to respect the moral autonomy of people experiencing homelessness. The state indicates that it does not trust unhoused voters to attest to their own eligibility, and questions their membership in the political community. Even in states that do not impose such burdensome requirements, voter registration is not always a smooth process for people experiencing homelessness. Only 20 state election websites provide any specific information for unhoused voters, leaving some unhoused people uncertain of whether they are eligible, and if so, how to go about registering. In my honors thesis research on homelessness and political participation, I spoke with Raquel, a woman who is experiencing homelessness in the Bay Area. (Sources agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity, so all names have been changed to pseudonyms). At the time,

Raquel was staying in a shelter program that rotates among multiple houses of worship, so she did not have a fixed place of residence. It took multiple phone calls to get through to someone at the county election office that could accurately explain the process of voter registration for someone in her situation. Eugene, a man experiencing homelessness in Washington, D.C., cited a similar problem: many shelters operate on a first-come, first-serve basis, so people experiencing homelessness do not know where they will be staying on any given night, and therefore do not know which address to use on their voter registration forms. This poses an especially significant problem for mail-in voters, whose ballots might get delivered to a different shelter from the one they are currently staying in. The issue of homelessness and political exclusion long precedes the pandemic, and the difficulty of voter registration without a permanent address is just one dimension of the problem. Voter suppression tactics, such as strict voter ID requirements, disproportionately burden the unhoused population. Without a safe place to store their belongings, people experiencing homelessness are at greater risk of losing their personal identification. Documents are sometimes seized by police in homeless encampment sweeps, or thrown out when a tenant is evicted. Replacing an ID card requires proof of identity or permanent residence, which many unhoused people do not have. This leaves unhoused citizens unable to enter government buildings or fulfill voter ID requirements, which undermines access to social service agencies and to the voting booth. Homelessness not only makes it more difficult to vote, but also dampens participation in other elements of political life. Many elected officials work in government buildings that require an ID to enter. In Eugene’s experience, some facilities also limit the number of bags that a person can bring inside. These policies can bar unhoused people from public meetings, as a person cannot leave behind his or her belongings to enter a building when he or she does not have access to storage. In some instances, when unhoused people show up in civic spaces, public officials view them as a problem to be managed, not a constituency to be respected. I spoke with a community organizer in the Bay Area who brought a group of housed and unhoused Menlo Park residents to advocate at a city council meeting. Some of the unhoused participants reported that, when they had previously attempted to attend a city council meeting without the accompaniment of housed community members, the sheriff turned them away at the door. Raquel spoke of a similar experience: when she tried to bring a petition to Palo Alto City Hall, the police prevented her from entering.

“THESE RULES...FAIL TO RESPECT THE MORAL AUTHORITY OF PEOPLE EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS.”

115

HOMELESS

Even in public forums, law enforcement sometimes treats unhoused people as potential criminals, not equal citizens. Fearing that they will be mocked or disrespected, many people experiencing homelessness decide not to show up in the first place. Sam, a formerly unhoused man who eventually became a vocal homeless rights advocate in the Bay Area, spoke of his initial reluctance to get involved in community affairs once he became homeless: “It was the last thing on my mind... being politically active and shouting about homelessness. I didn’t feel up to it, I didn’t want to advertise that I was homeless.” The social stigma attached to homelessness—conveyed when passersby avoid eye contact or shout demeaning remarks, public officials use degrading rhetoric about unhoused people, or family members cut ties—makes unhoused people feel unworthy of contributing to public life and doubtful that anyone will treat them with dignity in civic spaces. The political exclusion of unhoused people echoes a deep-rooted skepticism of “transients” in American democracy. Historically, the right to vote was tied to property ownership—a restriction that traces back to medieval Britain. Only those who had “a permanent attachment to society and the state,” as property signified, were trusted to make political decisions. Ten of the thirteen colonies had property requirements for suffrage at the time of the signing of the Constitution. Although the last formal property requirements in the United States were eliminated in the 1850s, American democracy still operates on a system of place-based political rights. We are only eligible to vote in the location that we call our residence—commonly understood to mean a place where we have an enduring connection and intention to return. From the perspective of democratic theory, this system serves a legitimate purpose. If people are to have a say in the policy decisions that govern their own lives, and political affairs are carried out at various geographic subunits, then

it is justifiable to allocate political rights according to residency. This system, however, assumes that all citizens have stable ties to a physical location and can claim belonging to its corresponding political community. When people experience homelessness, they are denied meaningful control over their place of residence. They may be shuffled around from shelter to shelter, coerced out of parks where they normally sleep, or forced to move their cars in the middle of the night. Given the importance of residency in American democracy, any event that coerces someone out of their living space—an eviction, an ordinance against outdoor sleeping, a vehicular dwelling ban—corrodes their political rights, too. Viewed in this light, the CDC’s eviction moratorium is not just a public health measure: it is an important defense against widespread disenfranchisement. But this order is temporary, and its impact is limited. People experiencing homelessness will still struggle to safely participate in the political process and be treated as civic equals. The alarming prospect of mass displacement in the leadup to the 2020 election—a crisis scenario averted by federal intervention—should raise concern about the connection between housing insecurity and political exclusion, a problem that will persist in the aftermath of the pandemic. A system that ties residency to political rights, without guaranteeing that every person has a stable place to stay, fails to live up to the ideal of political equality. Looking beyond 2020, we must pursue deeper, long-term reforms that treat homelessness and housing insecurity not only as issues of public health and human rights, but also, as threats to the promise of equal citizenship that lies at the heart of American democracy. Courtney Cooperman ‘20 studied Political Science and graduated from Stanford this past spring.

13 5

STANFORD WORKERS CUT OFF STANFORDâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FUMBLED CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE HIGHLIGHTS PROBLEMS WORKERS AND STUDENT ACTIVISTS HAVE STRUGGLED WITH FOR YEARS

Kyle Wang

155

STANFORD WORKERS

s COVID-19 began to spread across the United States in late February, the contracted custodians of UG2 — a national custodial service to which Stanford subcontracts much of its janitorial work — were largely left in the dark regarding job suspensions or changes. The first inklings of trouble came when they received notices from UG2 that work in certain areas might be suspended. Jorge, one UG2 custodian who agreed to speak with Stanford Politics under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from UG2 management, remembers receiving a notice on March 6 that there was a list of 84 workers who had been suspended. Jorge, who has worked at Stanford for more than 20 years, was spared the worst, but many of his co-workers weren’t as fortunate. Those who were laid off were told that they would cease working the following Monday, giving them little more than three days to apply for unemployment insurance, a benefit with strict eligibility requirements. “It wasn’t a timely notice at all,” Jorge said. Even those who were able to continue working weren’t fully informed of the risks of janitorial work during a global pandemic. Until he heard Governor Newsom’s announcements about statewide shelterin-place orders, Daniel — a UG2 custodian who, like Jorge, agreed to an anonymous interview with Stanford Politics for fear of retaliation — didn’t realize the risks he was taking by continuing work. When he confronted the UG2 about it, however, he received a lukewarm response. “They told me they weren’t forcing me to work — I could stay at home,” Daniel said. “But if I wanted to keep getting paid, I’d have to use either sick days or vacation days.” In early April, the Daily reported that workers had been given cloth and hairbands with which to make makeshift masks; UG2 Director Grover Brown justified his decision in a statement to the Daily, noting

that these instructions were “consistent with CDC recommendations” even as workers continued to express their concerns about a lack of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and inadequate cleaning supplies. On April 11, UG2 confirmed that a service worker had tested positive for COVID-19. “Effectively, it’s revealed a certain carelessness on the part of the company,” Jorge said. “[At first], they didn’t tell us directly if some workers were sick or if some work areas had been exposed [to sick workers].” In the absence of a timely response to workers’ basic needs in the midst of a global pandemic, the undergraduate student organizers of Students for Workers’ Rights (SWR) took action. They began fundraising, reaching out to alumni on social media, and publishing a series of op-eds in the Daily outlining their demands. Their goal was to use mutual aid to provide laid-off workers with an immediate financial lifeline, and to collectively gather the voices of students, faculty, and alumni to pressure Stanford to change its policies and offer both financial support for laid off workers and better protections for those still working on campus. Since then, UG2 has implemented several precautions to help prevent the spread of the virus: it has limited workers’ gatherings and enforced other social distancing measures while asking its workers to wear masks. The workers who test positive for COVID-19 — as well as any coworkers who have come in close contact with them — are asked to go home and quarantine for 14 days. Even still, most of the warnings and rules were implemented only after workers like Daniel approached management about the dangers of working during a pandemic. “We [the workers] knew about keeping social distance and wearing masks because we’d hear about it on the news,” Daniel said. “But the company was consistently late in implementing the rules and protections.”

STANFORD WORKERS COVID AND THE CURRENT CRISIS In contrast to UG2’s delayed response, Students for Workers’ Rights moved quickly when the pandemic began. It started with a meeting in Ethan Chua’s (’20) room near the end of winter quarter (Chua, like the other organizers, doesn’t hold a formal leadership position in SWR, since the organization follows a horizontal leadership model). Chua — who has been organizing with SWR since his junior year — and the others had gathered to debrief each other on the results of their organizing throughout winter quarter, but soon reached a consensus that the pandemic and the likely implications of Stanford’s yet-to-be-announced response for campus service workers was a far more pressing concern. That Saturday, March 7, the group members coordinated a strategy over GroupMe and drafted a petition with a series of demands regarding worker treatment based on language from the University’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 2007. The demands — which included looser restrictions on paid sick leave, more transparent communications about the risks of working during COVID-19, and commitments to confer any benefits given to regular employees to subcontracted workers as well — were then published in The Daily in a March 8 op-ed with an accompanying petition that garnered more than 650 signatures from Stanford affiliates in a few short days. The speed with which they mobilized, Chua said, was crucial in setting the tone for future conversations with the administration. “We moved really quickly, even before the administration announced some of their next steps,” Chua said. “The March 7 demands that we came up with collectively preempted a lot of our future conversations, and we anticipated some of the ways admin might be inequitable or disappointing in how we rolled out COVID-19 relief.” By March 9, the students had gathered 741 signatures. They delivered the petition in hand to the President and Provost’s office, expecting a response of some kind. When none came, they planned a sit-in for the following day, but arrived to find out that both offices had been closed, ostensibly because of the administrators’ busy schedules. SWR pressed on. They escalated their demands with another petition demanding hazard pay and pay continuance which would allow all non-essential hires to shelter in place until June 15. They began reaching out to famous alums on Twitter and Instagram and organizing phonebanks and mass email campaigns to the Stanford administration. Their social media following grew rapidly; on Instagram, their follower count grew from several hundred in late August 2019 to 2500 by early September. On Thursday, April 23, SWR held a press conference, which attracted speakers ranging from

former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro (’96) and Rep. Joaquin Castro (’96, D-Tex.) to Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs (’12) and Bernie 2020 California Political Director Jane Kim (’99). Jianna So (’21), who had taken a step back from SWR’s organizing throughout much of her junior year, suddenly found herself compelled to rejoin the group’s activist efforts as the pandemic began. “When I saw everything that was happening, I just knew I wanted to be part of the group again,” So said. “They did amazing work this past year and really inspired me even when I wasn’t working with them.” Using her experience as a graphic designer, So created content for and helped manage SWR’s social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram, whose reach and influence had grown rapidly since the pandemic began. Eventually, in the wake of the press conference and SWR’s continued = phone banking and emails, the university administration was forced to respond. In a faculty senate meeting on April 16, Provost Drell verbally committed to supporting “all workers,” while an email from two days earlier had only promised pay continuance for all “eligible” service workers until June 15. Despite the apparent victory, SWR’s organizers remained dissatisfied. The email had been sent to students first — not the workers or union it nominally claimed to support — and provided little specificity as to how that support might actually materialize. It was only on May 27 that the university — in an email from President Marc Tessier-Lavigne — formally committed to pay continuance until August, and even still the means through which that pay continuance might be implemented appeared murky. Getting the university to verbally commit to these basic demands took months of sustained organizing; each time the organizers and workers seemed to score a victory, there seemed to be a new catch.

THE SHADOW OF SUBCONTRACTING Part of the problem was systemic: much of the janitorial staff at Stanford is not hired directly, but instead has been hired through a system known as subcontracting. Jorge, for instance, has worked at Stanford for 21 years but has never been considered a direct employee of the school, instead working through several subcontracting companies. UG2, the current company which employs many of the janitors, has been at Stanford for roughly three years. In recent years, subcontracting has grown increasingly popular on university campuses across the United States. Essentially, these practices — which are used disproportionately to hire low-wage laborers such as janitorial, dining hall, and security staff — allow universities to shift the responsibilities and liabilities of being an employer onto external

STANFORD WORKERS companies. As sociologist Corey Payne explains in “The School of Subcontracting,” subcontracting allows universities to “circumvent labor laws and pay lower wages.” A study conducted among the UC schools, for example, found that subcontracted workers earn up to 53 percent less in wages than direct hires, in addition to receiving lower benefits and fewer job protections. With growing pressure from university boards in recent years to promote cost-cutting measures, crack down on campus activism, and combat union influence, subcontracting has emerged as an enticing alternative to standard hiring practices. Given the nature of most subcontracting agreements, subcontracted workers — including many of those hired by UG2 at Stanford — have limited recourse in legal disputes. For instance, many subcontracted workers have come to accept racial discrimination and harassment as inevitable consequences of their work. While such instances aren’t necessarily commonplace, Daniel said, the workers can do little when confronted with such injustices: many of them don’t speak English or are unaware of their legal rights; even those who are aware “push it to the back of our minds, or walk somewhere else, or pretend we aren’t listening — really we can’t do anything or complain to the company. They’re not going to care.” In addition to the already precarious nature of subcontracting, however, a large number of subcontracted workers — both at Stanford and across the country — face an additional obstacle to fair treatment: many of them are undocumented. A 2016 study surveying the state of Texas, for example, estimated that undocumented workers account for up

to 8.5 percent of the workforce overall and up to 25 percent of the construction industry, where subcontracting practices are common. Bill Beardall, the Director of the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin, explained that subcontracting agreements allow employers to evade culpability when indirectly hiring undocumented laborers, since employers “have no obligation to check the work obligation of someone they engage with as an independent contractor.” Consequently, labor exploitation and wage theft practices run rampant throughout the subcontracting industry. Subcontracted workers in Texas often report receiving minimal payment — if any payment at all — for their work, despite the initial promises made by their employers. While the situation at Stanford is, admittedly, far less predatory on its face, many of its janitors, such as Daniel and Jorge, face the same challenges as other subcontracted workers across the country. “Because we work with these contracting companies, our situation is always a little delicate,” Daniel said, “because many of us subcontracted janitors and laborers are undocumented.” This not only limits the leverage that many subcontracted workers have in labor disputes, but complicates any efforts to combat workplace harassment, discrimination, and mistreatment: ultimately, subcontracted workers have minimal leverage. “The truth is we can do very little,” Daniel said, “because a lot of us don’t speak English, or don’t know our rights, such as how to defend against an accusation, or in the face of a situation of racism or discrimination.” As a result, subcontracting companies — as well as Stanford, more broadly — are seldom held accountable for such incidents.

STANFORD RESPONSE TIMELINE The Boston Globe reports that MIT has agreed to pay continuance for its food service workers through May 22, as Duke and UChicago adopt similar plans.

SWR releases its first petition, calling for clear communication with service workers, paid sick leave, and hazard pay.

MAR. 07

MAR. 09 SWR delivers their petition by hand to the president’s office, recieving no immediate response.

MAR. 22

APR. 11 UG2 confirms that a service worker has tested positive for Covid-19

STANFORD WORKERS “Lamentably, we’re in the dark about the exact reason why Stanford subcontracts its janitorial services,” Jorge said. “But the logic is that they do it to evade responsibility.” Both Daniel and Jorge were reluctant to speak further on the matter, afraid to endanger their colleagues. As a consequence of subcontracting practices, Stanford’s lack of responsibility and accountability for its subcontracted workers has presented an ongoing challenge for both SWR and Stanford’s workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. One consistent frustration centers on a pledge which Stanford made earlier in the summer to “fully support all its workers” and provide pay continuance until August 31. Despite this initial promise, however, many of the workers were only paid until June 15. When Stanford Politics inquired about the reasons for this apparent renegement of the initial pledge, university spokesperson E.J. Miranda provided the following response: “Stanford continues to uphold our current commitment to contract workers through August 31…. As the contracting firm, UG2 coordinates the financial assistance from Stanford for UG2’s employees. We needed information from them to determine the amount to pay. They have provided the information and we have sent the payment to UG2, who will distribute it to their employees.” Stanford Politics also made multiple requests for comment to Grover Brown, Director of Operations for UG2 at Stanford; though he initially agreed to an interview, he did not reply to any further questions. Chua himself has expressed his and SWR’s mounting frustration with Stanford’s consistent lack of transparency. Since Stanford announced its initial policies on pay contin-

The Provost commits to pay continuance for all “regular Stanford employees” until June 15, and notes that employees who “work in contingent roles that are not eligible for pay continuation”, i.e. subcontracted workers, can apply for a grant.

APR. 14

uance, Chua, along with many of SWR’s other organizers, has repeatedly emailed University administration to seek more clarity on the policy’s implementation. “There’s no accountability when it comes to subcontracting,” Chua said. “Things are very decentralized, which is really infuriating, but it speaks to the larger issue around why subcontracting is so insidious — and there are many reasons, but one of them is precisely that this accountability can be passed on like a baton.” And although the issues with subcontracting certainly aren’t unique to Stanford as a university, Stanford nonetheless remains an outlier in providing support for its subcontracted workers. Other institutions such as Duke, the University of Chicago, and MIT all committed to paying their subcontracted workers until the end of the 2019-20 academic year by mid-to-late March; Harvard followed suit soon after. Stanford, by contrast, did not announce their preliminary plans to support workers financially until April 14, and even those plans only provided support for “regular Stanford employees (both full-time and part time benefits-eligible).” According to the Provost’s initial email, subcontracted workers — the vast majority of whom are not “regular Stanford employees” — would be able to apply for a new grant program which would provide financial support to “eligible Stanford employees.” The email did not specify how eligibility would be defined. Even now, many of the workers remain unpaid despite Stanford’s more recent promises to pay all service workers. Jorge, for his part, believes there needs to be a more thorough investigation: “Stanford has to investigate because

President Marc Tessier-Levigne restates the University’s commitment to pay all benefits-eligible employees through June 15 and notes that Stanford will extend pay continuation through August 31st to workers who would normally work during the summer.

APR. 23 SWR live-streams a press conference with speakers such as Julian Castro (‘96). Workers report that despite the Provost’s initial promises, almost all of the university’s subcontracted workers remain unpaid.

MAY 27

JUNE 30 Six weeks after the Provost’s initial announcement, UG2 janitors receive their first pay installment.

SWR’s May Day Rally in May, 2019

UG2 is not complying. If Stanford said ‘I’m going to pay until August 31’, the question is why didn’t UG2 comply? Did UG2 pocket that money, or is it that Stanford has lied? Who is hiding the truth?”

WORKER’S RIGHTS BEFORE COVID Though SWR was less visible on campus before the COVID-19 pandemic, SWR’s efforts to improve working conditions for campus workers began long before the current crisis. Before COVID, SWR — which was previously known as the Campus Workers’ Coalition — had focused its efforts on a series of initiatives targeted at improving the quality of life of service workers: combating workplace harassment, building affordable housing (many workers commute from places as far as Sacramento, where housing prices are far cheaper than in the Bay Area), and piloting a new bus line from East Palo Alto to Stanford, where many other workers reside. Working with the local union, SEIU Union 2007, SWR planned teach-ins and rallies to help educate and

mobilize students in the months and weeks leading up to contract negotiations. On May 1, 2019, hundreds of students gathered in White Plaza for SWR’s May Day rally, marching alongside service workers to University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s office where they presented a list of demands. Despite the ostensible success of the rally, however, SWR continued to face a series of challenges following the contract negotiations that summer. They spent much of Fall and Winter Quarter pushing for a bus pilot from East Palo Alto to Stanford, only to have the pilot cancelled abruptly by Stanford Transportation, who had fully supported the initiative just days before the pilot. In January, organizers learned that Stanford was contracting Core Management Services, a “janitorial and custodial consulting company,” to conduct a “time and motion study,” threatening to increase the workloads of an already-overworked janitorial staff; when SWR tried to glean more information about the study and its approach, however, it received only a token response from Residential & Dining Enterprises. It was in the wake of these challenges that SWR’s planning around COVID began. Chua, who had read the Collec-

STANFORD WORKERS

JESSICKA ANTONIO

tive Bargaining Agreement between Stanford and SEIU 2007 over winter break, said that his familiarity with the CBA allowed him to help SWR draft specific demands based on existing language from the agreement. So, who had helped create content for SWR’s social media accounts, noticed a sudden explosion in engagement immediately after they started posting graphics about COVID-19. Further support from alumni such as Michael Tubbs and Julian Castro only amplified their messaging and reach. But the network and infrastructure which allowed SWR’s organizing to take root during the pandemic had been built through years of organizing. Student organizing groups had existed since Daniel and Jorge first arrived, even though their presence wasn’t always as visible as SWR’s in the current moment. In Daniel’s early years, when he worked as a janitor for the night shift, student activists played a vital role in circulating fliers and reaching out to local publications to support service workers in contract negotiations. More recently, with the May Day rally, for example, student activism also helped shed light on the ongoing struggles many service workers continued to face due to unfair working conditions

and unlivable wages. “The students have always been a pillar of support on which we have relied,” Jorge said. “They help us feel like we’re not alone.” More importantly, Daniel said, they also helped the service workers feel like part of a community. Though the overall engagement of student activists often varies between years, students have consistently made an effort to invite service workers — and their families — to different student events, such as Day of the Dead festivals and poetry readings. “It’s small,” Daniel said, “but it makes us feel good. It makes us feel like we don’t just work here taking out the trash — like there are people who care about us having a good time.” Nevertheless, because students generally spend only four years on campus, sustaining long-term student activism has often been difficult. Both Daniel and Jorge noted that many of the victories they secured often took many years of organizing, longer than the typical undergraduate career. Before Students for Workers’ Rights officially formed, there had been other campus activist groups focused on workers’ rights initiatives: in 1998, the Stanford Labor Action Coa-

STANFORD WORKERS lition (SLAC) formed during a joint action conference that year; it quickly morphed into his course Scholarorganized by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán ship and Activism, which brought together students who (MEChA) and Students for Environmental Justice At were involved with organizations such as SWR, Fossil Stanford (SEAS). While SLAC’s activity and membership Free Stanford, and SCoPE 2035. fluctuated from year to year, they had established a strong Rehm, who himself was not directly involved with campus presence by 2014 when they officially changed drafting the letter but helped circulate it among faculty their name to SALA (Student and Labor Alliance) to members, sees his role as providing support to the stuavoid confusion with the linear accelerator laboratory dent organizers spearhead and lead these movements. He on campus. Soon first became involved after, there was anwith labor organizing other name change, efforts as an underand for a while SWR graduate at Princeton was known as the while working at a loCampus Workers’ cal bakery, and has reCoalition — a name mained connected to which Chua said the campus activism since organizers decided arriving at Stanford in to change given that 1990. “The administrathe majority of its tion has to pretend to membership was still listen to students, who composed of stuprovide the universidents. ty’s public raison d’etre. Given the chalSometimes the adminlenges facing student istration really does organizers, teachers listen — I’m not cynand faculty have also ical, but we know that played a vital role in depends on all sorts sustaining long-term of things,” Rehm said. activist efforts. When “The problem is that COVID-19 first hit, students come and go, several professors so the key is that there — Jonathon Rosa, is continuity in student David Palumbo-Liu, movements.” Allyson Hobbs, “I would put it this and Rush Rehm — way—SWR is part of helped draft a letter the Stanford commuof support for laidnity. SWR and faculty off service workers, working together got which garnered 104 hundreds of signatures SWR’s May Day Rally in May, 2019 | Therese Santiago signatures from faculfrom all over campus— ty around campus in less than 24 hours. Palumbo-Liu, hundreds more than we could have expected,” Palumwho knew some of the students who were involved with bo-Liu said. “There is tremendous goodness in people, SWR and had spoken at the May Day rally the previous but again we have become accustomed to think of ouryear, had already been in contact with student organizers selves in very individualistic ways. SWR was a catalyst when the pandemic first began. Following the election of that unleashed the potential for Stanford to be its best. I Donald Trump in 2016, Palumbo-Liu had created a camthink the more that faculty and students both work topus-wide initiative called StandFor which emerged from gether on these issues that affect all of us the better—but an Anti-Fascism and Anti-Racism course he’d taught first we need to understand what we mean by ‘all of us.’”

ORGANIZING FOR A BETTER FUTURE

n his 20 years at Stanford, Daniel has worked both on the night shift — work he performed for his first three years on campus — and day shifts. Though working conditions have improved somewhat in his time on campus, Daniel maintains that there remains much work to be done; the current pandemic has merely re-exposed existing structural flaws in the university’s organization and structure. Workers, for example, are often given assignments in which maintaining social distance is virtually impossible, despite company guidelines. Often, Daniel said, multiple workers have to clean a confined space — such as an empty dorm room — at the same time in order to finish the work on time. “What the company, or Stanford, has to understand is that they can’t order us to clean this much space in one day — ‘oh, you have to clean 10 dorm rooms,’” Daniel said. “Because if we want to maintain social distance, we can’t have several janitors in the room at the same time — one dusting the furniture, the other vacuuming, and so on.” Jorge, for his part, had been assigned to a cleaning shift in Green Library. When he spoke to Stanford Politics, he had just finished a shift cleaning four floors, disinfecting the chairs and desks where students might return and study in the near future. When the pandemic first began, the Stanford Daily reported that UG2 had released instructions to workers on how they might make their own masks at home, in lieu of providing masks themselves. While the company has since provided gloves and masks of its own, Jorge noted that many of his coworkers have still been forced to buy their own protective masks, because the ones provided by the company often don’t offer adequate coverage or protection. Instead, many of the workers — who are, according to Jorge’s estimate, covering twice or three times as much space as they normally would — have been given knee pads to help expedite their cleaning. Further complicating matters are the company’s current policies on sick leave. Under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which lasts until 2024, workers accrue roughly one sick day per month and (since sick days and vacation days accumulate based on hours worked). When the pandemic occurred in early March, most workers had thus earned, at best, a total of two or three sick days in 2021, meaning Harvard, by contrast, has given all of its employees the opportunity to use up to 14 days of additional sick leave during the pandemic in order to quarantine or care for sick family members, even if they haven’t technically “earned” them yet according to University policy. In the past, these stringent sick leave policies meant that workers often showed up even if

they felt ill, as long as they didn’t have a flu or fever. “Why? Because if we don’t work, we don’t get paid,” Daniel said. Even now, workers like Daniel and Jorge continue working with a sense of trepidation. Many have already used up their sick days, and so a 14-day quarantine would force them to use whatever vacation days they might have remaining — and possibly go several days, if not weeks, without pay. “What do we expect? To be told ‘ok, do you feel sick? Don’t worry, you’re going to have a salary’ — that would be ideal,” Daniel said. “But the problem is that if we’re at home in quarantine, we’re not going to get paid.” In the wake of Stanford’s apparent renengement of its promise to provide pay continuance to all laid off workers until the end of August, SWR has continued its social media campaigns with a new message: #StanfordLied. Earlier this summer, two members of SWR, Sefa Santos-Powell and Armaan Rashid, wrote a piece for the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity on re-imagining the future of labor at universities like Stanford. Coupled with skyrocketing housing prices in the Bay Area — which have forced countless workers to commute from places as far as Sacramento — and the already-pernicious system of subcontracting, COVID-19 exacerbated structural inequities which have forced “those at the bottom of Stanford’s race and class hierarchies to choose between health and economic security,” they wrote. Though their efforts are currently focused on providing temporary financial support for workers like Daniel and Jorge, Rashid and Santos-Powell wrote that the mission of SWR extends far beyond COVID-19: “In many ways, our organizing is a kind of counter-organizing — that is, challenging the existing organization of society that Stanford and institutions like it produce, reflect, and, it must be said, often work to ideologically justify through forms of knowledge production….We can only hope new forms of organizing ourselves emerge from this moment of crisis, so that theory and practice need not lie so far apart.” Despite their efforts, however, they continue to face an uphill battle: Stanford has yet to formally respond to their latest social media campaign, and a recent petition for hazard pay signed by custodians was, as Jorge noted, rejected by UG2 management. As the pandemic continues, the situation appears increasingly bleak for the University’s service workers. “With Stanford, we don’t have any protection, because the company has the final say,” Daniel said. “Stanford doesn’t care about us.”

Kyle Wang ‘22 studies English and Mathematics and is a staff writer for Stanford Politics

WANT YOUR AD HERE? ADVERTISE WITH STANFORD POLITICS. To place an ad in future print issues, our weekly newsletter, our podcast, or on our website, email info@stanfordpolitics.org. 25

AI PREDICTION TOOLS CLAIM TO ALLEVIATE AN OVERCROWDED AMERICAN JUSTICE SYSTEM...

BUT SHOULD THEY BE USED? Alexandra “Mac” Taylor 25

n 2013, the state of Wisconsin charged Eric Loomis with five criminal counts in connection with a drive-by shooting. Loomis eventually accepted a plea deal and pled guilty to several lesser charges: attempting to run from a traffic officer and operating a motor vehicle without owner’s consent. Before Loomis’ sentencing, a Wisconsin Department Corrections officer produced a presentence investigation report that included a risk-assessment score to help predict Loomis’ recidivism rate — his potential chance of reoffending in the future. The introduction of this algorithm would dramatically change Loomis’ case. This risk-assessment score was computed by Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS)—a privately-owned algorithmic system, designed by the company Equivant, that produces recidivism predictions based upon public data and answers from a lengthy questionnaire. Once formulated, Loomis’ COMPAS score identified him as high risk for violence, high risk for recidivism, and a high pretrial flight risk. Before a COMPAS score was introduced into Loomis’ case, the prosecution and defense had agreed upon a plea deal of one year in county jail with probation. However, at Loomis’ trial, the trial court referred to the COMPAS-generated risk-assessment score as a judicial tool to help in its sentencing determination. The court classified Loomis as high-risk of re-offending based in part on this score, and proceeded to sentence him to six years of imprisonment and five years of extended supervision. Loomis filed a motion for post-conviction relief on the grounds that the court’s reliance on the COMPAS score violated his due process rights. While the Wisconsin Supreme Court ultimately denied Loomis’ motion, their closing remarks reflected the growing sense of skepticism that surrounds COMPAS and the role of risk-assessment technologies in the American legal system. “While our holding today permits a sentencing court to consider COMPAS,” the court said, “we do not conclude that a sentencing court may rely on COMPAS for the sentence it imposes.” The essence of these closing remarks is simple: according to the court, risk-assessment algorithms like COMPAS are not a replacement for human judgement.

***

COMPAS is one of the most widely used algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system and it has been applied

or adapted by many states, including New York, Wisconsin, Florida, and California. COMPAS uses public criminal profile data and answers from a 137 interview questionnaire to generate a risk score. The questionnaire gathers information on past criminal involvement, relationships, lifestyle, personality, familial background, and education level. It produces scores grouped by risk level, ranking defendants on a scale of 1-4 Low Risk; 5-7 Medium Risk; or 8-10 High Risk. First developed in 1998, the algorithm has now assessed over one million offenders. The recidivism prediction component of COMPAS, known as the Violent Recidivism Risk Score (VRRS), has been in use since 2000. However, despite the algorithm’s widespread use in courtrooms across the country, it is largely considered to be a black box: though its basic input information is available, the weighting of these inputs within the algorithm are proprietary, and thus not available to the public., Risk-assessment algorithms like COMPAS have the potential to be beneficial tools of justice for the American criminal justice system. Much of this potential stems from their technical and data-based foundation—many scholars contend that formal, actuarial, and algorithmic methods of prediction perform better than intuitive methods used by judges or other experts. According to Adam Neufeld, a senior fellow at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Technology Policy and Law, the systemic benefits these tools provide are abundant: risk-assessments can efficiently and effectively reduce costs, reduce crime, and do not waste human potential when implemented in the criminal justice system. An example of the possible benefits of this technology is bail. Data from the Prison Policy Initiative shows that releasing a low-risk defendant on bail can reduce their recidivism rate, while detaining these individuals or individuals with similar profiles contributes to an estimated cost of $13.7 billion in annual jail fees in pretrial detention. Neufeld argues that the human potential of every individual offender released on bail is not wasted—both keeping that offender from spending (perhaps undeserved) time in jail while awaiting trial, and also by reducing a recidivism cycle that might result in that offender returning to jail in the future. One study in particular—the National Bureau of Economic Research’s 2017 publication, “Human Decisions and Machine Predictions”— found that in New York City’s pretrial decisions, an algorithm’s assessment of risk would far outperform judges’ track records. The study further concluded that if New York relied on an

COMPAS nt’s right to protect its own intellectual property (a point the algorithm to aid in bail decisions, an “estimated 42 percent state of Wisconsin supported in its decision to reject Loomof detainees could be set free without any increase in peois’ appeal claims). Unless taken to court on charges such ple skipping trial or committing crimes pretrial.” This study as impropriety—if, for example, there is suspicion that an supports the assertion that risk-assessment use in New York ethics or standard of conduct violation has occurred in the would indeed reduce costs, reduce crime, and would not company’s product or process—Equivant is unlikely to rewaste human potential when implemented as a judicial aid in linquish details pertaining to the system’s internal function. decision-making. For a judge who might encounter any one University of Maryland Law Professor Frank Pasquale of the 30,000 people arrested daily in America, a tool like this believes this secretive aspect of COMPAS is concerning thus offers a cost-effective and efficient aid in adjudication. because it refuses a courtroom actor an answer to the folRelying on an actuarial tool to provide a risk score with lowing question: “How is the algorithm weighting different profound, life-altering implications, however, might make data points, and why?” Each aspect of this inquiry is crumany people justifiably uncomfortable. Yet, Neufeld insists that cial in relation to two core legal principles: due process, though it may seem “weird to rely on an impersonal algorithm and the ability to meaningfully appeal an adverse decision. to predict a person’s behavior given the enormous stakes... the Judicial processes are generally open and explicable to the gravity of the outcome—in cost, crime, public. Even after juries have deliberand wasted human potential—is exactAll members party to a ated, judges themselves are required ly why we should use an algorithm.” give an explanation for their rulcase...are largely unable to Neufeld offers a convincing case ings, particularly when adjudicating for the benefits of using these algo- to question, challenge, or sentencing. When an algorithmic rithms—saved money, saved time, risk-scoring process like COMPAS request a reassessment of and some needed support for an alis kept secret, it becomes impossible any algorithmicallyready strained criminal justice systo challenge key aspects of that score tem. But as with any growing field of generated score. because the system’s internal functechnology, issues arise when these tion remains protected. Subsequently, technologies become a depended-upon component of a sysall members party to a case—from the judge to the defentem like the criminal justice system which, according to the dant—are largely unable to question, challenge, or request a Prison Policy Initiative, annually jails 443,000 people pretrireassessment of any algorithmically-generated score. al alone. What is at stake here is not simply systemic efforts As a result, any judge seeking to use COMPAS as a juto reduce costs and time; it is the ability of each individual to dicial aid cannot, at this moment, understand fully how a have access to a fair, equitable trial and sentence in an AmerCOMPAS risk-assessment score is developed, nor how facican courtroom. tors about the defendant’s profile were weighted to arrive at Did Eric Loomis receive this treatment? The Wisthe given risk score. Not only does this prohibit judges from consin court ruled he did. However, pressing concerns still properly understanding a judicial tool meant to assist their exist around whether or not the COMPAS algorithm is caprocess, but it might also deny the defendant the ability to pable of providing the type of fair and unbiased judicial aid identify a fair trial outcome, should the judge base their final that the court claimed it could. ruling in any way upon a score they both cannot fully comprehend. This issue of miscomprehension follows the defendant into the appellate arena, where higher circuit courts In 2016, the non-profit newsroom ProPublica launched conceivably face the same confusion. a study of Florida’s COMPAS system and found that the The secrecy surrounding COMPAS also leads to a failure formula was especially likely to mark black defendants as of ‘narrative intelligibility’ — when outcomes create confufuture criminals, mislabeling them at almost twice the rate sion between involved parties regarding a decision, where a as white defendants. White defendants, on the other hand, decision came from, or how it was reached. For a jury’s were identified as low risk more often than black defendants. verdict to be narratively intelligible, the judge, defense, ProPublica also found that the risk scores were unreliable in and prosecution must forecasting violent crime, with 80 percent of the people pre- clearly understand the dicted to commit violent crimes not actually doing so. procedure the jury Part of the reason why COMPAS is susceptible to bias is a lack of transparency, a factor that is due in part to Equiva-

***

COMPAS followed to reach the verdict and what that verdict means. When this process is transparent and easily explainable, a defendant’s due process rights are not plausibly at risk; if the defendant can understand the ways in which a verdict was reached, they can choose to pursue legal action to appeal on those grounds. Pasquale argues that COMPAS fails to be narratively intelligible. COMPAS is neither transparent nor easily explicable to a judge or defendant, let alone to the public. A defendant might be unable to clearly understand how they have been “risk-assessed,” and so they might encounter difficulty in challenging the score should they disagree with it. As a result, risk scores can function like an algorithmic brand: no matter the effort, a defendant is largely unable to change or eliminate it from their profile for the offense at hand. Risk-assessment scores could also create problems for judges, who also encounter difficulty when trying to question a risk score’s authenticity, origin, or algorithmic weighting. Without this investigation, judicial dependence on these algorithmic scores could lead to automation bias—judges, like all humans, might defer to the technology without questioning its validity, accuracy, or possible biases. Automation bias is an issue both inside and outside of courtrooms. Research on the biases involved in algorithmic decision-making systems reveal that human decision-makers frequently rate automated recommendations more positively than neutrally, even if they are aware that these recommendations might be subject to inaccuracies or error. If left unchecked, automation bias is quite challenging for a human actor to shake, creating scenarios in which people have difficulty refuting automated recommendations. This can lead to a judge in sentencing relying heavily upon a risk score without questioning its legitimacy. Along with the potential for automation biases, it is unclear if COMPAS scores themselves are even constitutional. In particular, the potential for COMPAS to arrive at results by disproportionately or inaccurately weighing factors like socioeconomic status, gender, or race cannot be ignored. COMPAS takes into account a holistic life view of the defendant into its risk-assessment score that extends beyond a specific criminal incident—personal details ranging from gender, age, race, education level, familial background, social capability, and more are considered. University of Michigan Law Professor Sonja Starr writes in her paper, “The New Profiling,” that as a result of this holistic practice “judges and parole boards are told to consider risk scores that are based not only on criminal history, but also on socioeconomic and family-related disadvan-

tages as well as demographic traits like gender and age.” Notably, gender-based sentencing that occurs as a result of COMPAS scores can intensify the incarceration rate of young and poor men of color. Indeed, risk-assessment instruments like COMPAS seem to specifically deem defendants riskier based on indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, deem males riskier over females, count crime victimization and living in a high-crime neighborhood as risk factors, and also include assessments of the defendant’s attitude or mental health as risk factors. Often, Starr points out, the familial and neighborhood-related factors that these procedural instruments consider are highly race-correlated. Sentencing decisions made in the criminal justice system which consider race and gender are explicitly defined as unconstitutional practice under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. Starr argues that by allowing judges to generate a ruling based in part upon such factors, the state itself might be endorsing a practice that allows certain groups of people to be considered “high-risk” or more likely to engage in violent crime because of factors they have no control over. These are judgments based upon the characteristics of who a person is, not what actions they have done. In this respect, when a judge uses a COMPAS risk-assessment score which seems to label defendants as higher risk based upon identity characteristics like socioeconomic status, race, and gender, this judge is allowing discriminatory factors entry into the legal arena. Such practice is, at its root, unconstitutional. By using the technical language of a risk-assessment score to obscure discrimination in this manner, unconstitutional judgment practices are able to enter legal ruling in ways that would otherwise be unacceptable if stated outright. COMPAS’ potential to produce bias and discriminatory results, and further, to then allow these results access into adjudication as a formal risk-score a judge may rely upon, is not only ethically concerning; it is also outside the bounds of constitutional practice. COMPAS, and risk-assessments like it, have the potential to be beneficial tools of justice. Yet, it is still unclear whether the COMPAS algorithm is ready to serve American courtrooms. A judicial aid should be transparent, narratively intelligible, and constitutionally sound. These factors promote a judicial aid’s chance of supporting a judge in reaching a morally and legally defensible decision. It also boosts the public’s confidence in the ethicality of a judge’s decision in sentencing. Without certainty that COMPAS is able to ad-

COMPAS

here to these principles, a judge’s ability to reach a fair and just decision could be in jeopardy. Until this certainty arrives, the use of COMPAS, and risk-assessments like it, should be heavily scrutinized by courtroom actors.

***

In their opinion for Eric Loomis’ case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court wrote that “it is incumbent upon the criminal justice system to recognize that in the coming months and years…the system must keep up with the research and continuously assess” the use of tools like COMPAS. Yet, while these technologies are scrutinized and debated, there’s a lot at stake—the future lives of individual defendants; unbiased procedure in criminal justice sentencing; public confidence in the criminal justice system at large; and the integrity of a judge’s discretion in sentencing. Whether or not the judge is able to make a sound decision on another’s livelihood relies on this discretion remaining intact. Should an algorithm designed to help alleviate a strained system do so at the potential cost of individual justice? This question ultimately remains unresolved and will face increasing scrutiny in the near future. However, until COMPAS and other similar risk-assessments are proven to consistently advance justice for the individual, courtroom actors must employ strong caution when engaging with them. Risk-assessment tools do hold an important place in the future of automated justice efforts. Yet, using these tools before they are ready could effectively hinder a proper delivery of justice in American sentencing procedures. Alexandra “Mac” Taylor ‘20 studied Political Science and Art History and graduated from Stanford this past spring.

LEBANON

Changes in Government Leadership Won’ t Solve Lebanon’s Corruption Gabby Conforti 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the Port of Beirut on August 4th, killing at least 200 people and wounding thousands more. The devastating effects of the explosion left more than 300,000 people stranded without homes. More than half of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, needs to be rebuilt or repaired. There is no information at this time suggesting that the explosion was intentional or anything but a catastrophic accident. The word “accident,” however, does not reduce the culpability of the Lebanese government. Criminal negligence kills, too. Less than one week after the explosion, former Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced that he would step down from his role as Prime Minister following pressure from the Lebanese people. Diab stated in his resignation speech that the blast was caused by corruption that is “bigger than the state.” Diab’s statement about rampant corruption in Lebanon rings true, but many refuse to laud his recent resignation as positive political change. Diab’s resignation has rather been interpreted by the Lebanese public as him taking the fall for the real power players in the country: President Michel Aoun of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri of the Amal Movement. The FPM and the Amal Movement, along with Hezbollah, entered into a political alliance in 2006 and now control the majority of the seats in the Lebanese Parliament. President Aoun and Speaker Berri have resisted calls to resign, and there is no indication that they will step down from power. Yesterday’s designation of Mustapha Adib as the country’s next Prime Minister has solidified Aoun and Berri’s positions, although Adib’s designation seems promising at first glance. Adib has served as Lebanon’s ambassador to Germany since 2013, and he may be perceived as new blood. In his acceptance speech today, he promised to spearhead the reforms necessary to resuscitate Lebanon’s economy and to restart negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which reached an impasse in July. Adib also visited

Scenes of Beirut days after the explosion

Gemmayzeh, a neighborhood close to the port which was severely damaged in the explosion, and chatted with residents there. He’s the first Lebanese political leader to do so. Yet hope in Adib’s appointment may be misplaced: after all, he is a member of Lebanon’s reviled political establishment. He served as an adviser to former Prime Minister Najib Mikati for twenty years, and he is viewed as having close relationships with the country’s main political parties, according to Al Jazeera. In today’s vote, Adib received about three-quarters of the support of Lebanese members of parliament (MPs), mainly from MPs who represent the FPM-Amal-Hezbollah alliance. Support from this powerful alliance means that Adib will ultimately have to answer to Aoun and Berri. Without their blessing, Adib will not be able to implement any major economic or political reforms – reforms that the two men and their parties have opposed for months. In many ways, the political aftermath of the Beirut explosion epitomizes exactly what is wrong with Lebanon’s political system: the country’s politicians are unwilling to reform, and the country’s citizens pay the price for their failings, time and time again. Throughout the country’s ongoing economic collapse, the “price” paid has been in the citizens’ hard-earned dollars. The Lebanese economy is effectively a “…regulated

UKRAINE

Ponzi scheme,” run by the country’s politicians and banks. The government’s financial malfeasance dates back to the 1990s, when the government went on a spending spree after the civil war ended and leveraged the country’s future to foot the bills. Lebanon has been in a constant state of catch-up since then and is now the third most indebted country in the world. More recently, the government failed to implement the reforms that the IMF required in exchange for international aid. The economy finally came down on the heads of the Lebanese people last year. The effects have been disastrous; the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) reported last week that the country’s poverty rate has nearly doubled in one year, from 28% to 55%. The country’s currency has lost 80% of its value since this time last year, resulting in people losing their entire savings. At the same time, the cost of goods have skyrocketed. People have begun to barter clothing and household items for food and diapers. Lebanon’s economy entered hyperinflation this past July. The price of the government’s mismanagement this time around was hundreds of lives: the youngest victim of the explosion was only two years old. “My government did this,” reads graffiti on the side of the highway overlooking the destroyed port. Lebanon’s centennial is today, September 1, but for many Lebanese, there is little to celebrate. The loss that

the Lebanese are experiencing is unimaginable, and the uncertainty that they face is daunting. “To be Lebanese is to be broken-hearted,” wrote Nasri Atallah in a recent article for GQ Middle East. The country’s economy is collapsing, its political system is failing, and, in the wake of the explosion, the Lebanese face a massive humanitarian crisis. Adib has no real mandate to bail out the sinking ship that is Lebanon, thanks to the constraints placed on him by the FPM-Amal-Hezbollah alliance. By resigning, President Aoun and Speaker Berri could usher in an era of political change that could bring Lebanon back from the brink. Real political change would entail a new, independent government, free from corruption and a sectarian power-sharing structure. Yet there is little faith that salvation is on the horizon. Lebanon’s political elite have gambled with the lives and wellbeing of their citizens for years; the explosion is only the most recent example of their carelessness. Aoun and Berri have swapped out the minor characters (Diab for Adib), but they continue to be the stars of the show. And for them, the show must go on. Gabby Conforti’22 studies Political Science and Islamic studies and is a gap year senior.

STANFORD POLITICS THANKS FOR READING. FOR THOSE ON STANFORD’S CAMPUS, WE WOULD APPRECIATE IF YOU LEAVE THIS COPY IN A PUBLIC SPACE WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED SO OTHERS MAY ALSO ENJOY IT.

Stanford Workers Cut Off

Articles inside

STANFORD WORKERS CUT OFF

AI PREDICTION CLAIM TO ALLEVIATE AN OVERCROWDED JUSTICE SYSTEM... BUT SHOULD THEY BE USED?

CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT LEADERSHIP WON’T SOLVE LEBANON’S CORRUPTION

UNHOUSED AND UNEQUAL

FROM CUFFS TO CONVICTION