Messaging And Report Tag: inclusive democracy

Headlines about the U.S.-Mexico border continue to fill our news feeds and screens as the government shutdown provides an inexcusable vehicle for the president’s obsession with building a wall. Accompanying – and sometimes undergirding — these headlines are distortions of the truth, misleading information, and outright lies. Worse yet are the heartbreaking and troubling stories about their impacts, including the administration turning its back on refugees, imprisoning and separating families, and tear gassing asylum seekers, along with – most importantly – the tragic deaths of two children while in government custody.

These are among the reminders of why our values must not be compromised when addressing current actions, and why this moment provides us with even more opportunities to uplift our values as effectively as possible.

Below are five tips on how to discuss the border region and the broader immigration, refugee, and border policies amidst the government shutdown and other current events.

1. Balance short-term and long-term thinking. Before engaging specific topics, such as the government shutdown, the rejection of refugees, or the tragedies that have occurred, take a moment to consider the long-term strategy. Sometimes this step is skipped in the heat of the moment. Yet, it’s very important to keep the long game in mind while communicating in the moment.

• Consider the larger story we want to tell. While themes like national security and chaos dominate the headlines, providing another side of the story can help to balance audiences’ understanding of the region and its needs, and how the administration’s policies affect everyday life. Include references to the people, communities, economy, and traditions of the border region – even if they are short and in passing. It’s not necessary to tell a complete story, but setting a tone for what the border region actually looks and feels like, and what its residents aspire toward, can help strike balance with the theme of chaos that dominates many stories.
• Determine which solutions you want to highlight. It’s not enough to repudiate false or exaggerated claims about the national crisis, terrorism or smuggling. We have to talk about what really makes communities safe: properly-trained law enforcement that works with communities, zero tolerance for racial profiling, bigger picture thinking about our place in the world and our responsibilities to it. These arguments are audience-specific and we need to consider how we hope to motivate each target audience.

2. Consider your audience. Once you’ve considered the larger story, and the solutions you want to highlight, consider how your target audiences are hearing current conversations.

• If you are hoping to energize progressive audiences, for instance, a focus on the president’s harmful obsession with the region—particularly a wasteful wall—may be a good place to start. We already know that for the most part, people are not supportive of a wall.
• For less receptive audiences, a focus on pragmatism helps. What does the region really need? How do we come up with a solution that protects the commerce of the region, the rights of those who live there and those passing through, and work to make sure that all of our communities can enjoy the safety that border communities already have? For these audiences, arguing about national security is less likely to be effective because doing so just evokes ideas about the military, law enforcement, and the expensive tools they use.

3. Link the shutdown to the president, not the border. If you’re addressing the shutdown specifically, try to move discussion away from the border as much as possible.

• Frame the shutdown as an inexcusable move of a president who doesn’t understand how negotiation works and who is obsessed with over-simplified solutions that few experts agree will address the problems at hand. These tactics are currently focused on an unnecessary and immoral wall, but have been and will again be redeployed toward other pet projects he’s promised his base.
• It’s better to redirect the frustration, anger, and uncertainty many audiences are feeling about these issues back at the president rather than further associate those feelings with the border region.

4. Always humanize the discussion. When talking about border region policies, stress the impact those policies have on the people living there. Do the same thing when talking about the shutdown.

• When talking about refugee and immigration policies, show the impact – including the harms and even death caused by detention. Center on the values of compassion, dignity, respect, and that how we treat others reflects on our own identity as a country.
• When focusing on the human impact, it’s crucial to be clear that these are system-level problems that require policy-level solutions. We need to ensure that audiences understand that their feelings of horror and sadness about one story or circumstance are not enough. They have a responsibility to translate those feelings into policy change.

5. Stress that border region communities need to have a say in decisions that affect them. Border communities’ voices have been drowned out or ignored in political debates around immigration.

• Underscore that any policy must be responsive to the expressed needs of border residents. Too often, their voices are drowned out by political discourse and their needs sacrificed for impractical and harmful solutions to exaggerated problems.
• It’s also important that we lift up the voices of our partners and impacted people in the region and listen to the solutions they are calling for. Some attempts to appeal to swing and conservative voters will start by acknowledging the need for border security. However, doing so suggests that the border region needs more security, which it does not. As our friends at the Southern Border Communities Coalition point out:

The longstanding national dialogue about “the border” has centered almost exclusively on notions of “security” and “enforcement” that should be addressed through increased militarization and a wall. Under this narrative, people outside of the region can only imagine a barren, dangerous, and chaotic wasteland — a patently false narrative that some policymakers and pundits exploit for political gain and to advance policies that are detrimental to the civil rights and quality of life for the millions of people who live, work and travel through the borderlands.[1]

Messaging Examples

On the border region:

The U.S. Southern border region is one of the most diverse, economically vibrant, and safest areas of the country, home to about 15 million people who aspire to enjoy life in a safe and prosperous environment. The Southern Border is a key engine of economic growth; an international trade hub that creates jobs and generates.

– Southern Border Communities Coalition

For more than a decade […] the U.S. government has failed to invest in border communities’ prosperity, opting instead to expand military-style, discriminatory policing of communities in the government’s 100-mile zone and deepen private prison corporations’ reach into taxpayer pockets through costly criminalization and incarceration of migrants—many who find themselves left with few options to return home to the U.S. citizen children and family they love.

– ACLU Border Rights Center

On the shutdown:

In 2013 during the government shutdown, we lost $1 million in federal revenue that we never recovered. We also lost medical providers because they didn’t realize their employment was predicated or dependent upon federal dollars.

– Aaron Payment, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians

So far, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have stood strong against Trump’s bullying tactics and we urge them, as well as other members of Congress, to continue to listen to the voices of borderlanders and resist Trump’s destructive wall. The southern border is a place of hope and opportunity, not fear and conflict. It is one of the safest regions in the country, rich with culture, commerce and growth. We stand ready to work with legislators to ensure that border communities are not jeopardized by any further militarization of the region.

– Vicki Guabecca, Southern Border Communities Coalition

This government shutdown is due solely to Trump’s border wall obsession and his refusal to abandon his anti-immigrant agenda, even at the cost of denying hundreds of thousands of federal workers their holiday paychecks and impacting operations at several federal agencies. As negotiations continue, Congress should hold their ground against the border wall, stand up for border and immigrant communities across the country, and continue to reject Trump’s extortionist demands in any future funding negotiations.

– Lorella Praeli, ACLU

---

[1] https://www.southernborder.org/border-issues

The First Step Act, which recently passed the Senate with wide bipartisan support, can and should represent change in how our nation thinks, talks, and acts on criminal justice issues. While The First Step Act contains modest positive reforms that are welcomed, it is important to also address the act’s limitations. In particular, the act does not directly address issues of racial bias within the criminal justice system. Because it does not openly address the racial bias in the system, there is a risk that it will exacerbate existing racial disparities. This document provides advice for talking about the limitations of The First Step Act as they pertain to race.

1. Lead with Values, such as Equal Justice, Dignity, and Fairness.

Research and experience show that it is more effective to lead with shared values in advocating for criminal justice reform than policy details, statistics, or political rhetoric. When talking about The First Step Act and race, begin by uplifting the values of Equal Justice, Dignity, and Fairness. Highlight how positive criminal justice reform will uphold our society’s commitment to Equal Justice for people of all races. The First Step Act should aim to ensure that the criminal justice system treats individuals with the dignity and fairness we all deserve. Discuss how everyone should be able to benefit from the provisions of the act, including the many people who are currently incarcerated because of racially discriminatory policies.

2. Focus on Obstacles rather than Outcomes.

Experience shows that most criminal justice problems cannot be truly fixed without addressing questions of race. However, when talking about race, discussing racially disparate outcomes without a greater discussion of the obstacles or problems that lead to those outcomes may cause the listener to respond from an individualistic frame. This makes the listener more likely to blame the individuals adversely affected by the system instead of motivating them to address a problem with the system
itself.

Rather than leading with evidence of unequal outcomes alone, we recommend focusing on the obstacles people of color frequently face that lead to harsh and unequal treatment by the criminal justice system and provide concrete examples of these barriers. Discuss the structural and systemic barriers that have led to racial profiling, racial discrimination in how prosecutors choose whether to charge an individual with a crime, and racially discriminatory sentencing outcomes. These are systemic and structural issues that stem from implicit bias, a history of harshly policing communities of color, and widespread use of policies that do not adequately address either of these issues. Explain the need for additional legislation that openly aims to address racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, thereby better promoting equal justice.

3. Discuss Solutions, Not Just the Problems.

When discussing the various problems with The First Step Act, provide solutions that demonstrate the concrete ways Congress should build upon and fix the act.

A. Electronic Monitoring

The act relies heavily on relatively new and substantially unregulated electronic monitoring. This newly advanced, but little studied, method of supervised release tracks individuals’ daily movements and often requires that they ask for permission from a judge or probation officer to leave home. This type of intrusive monitoring perpetuates comic disparities in the system by making it difficult for individuals to maintain employment and requiring individuals to bear the costs of maintaining the monitoring system. Currently there is little regulation controlling the use of the electronic monitoring as a form of supervised release. The use of this technology on people of color creates an additional law enforcement intrusion into the very communities that are already over-policed because of racially biased policies, and may result in a new form of incarceration that will expand in time.

Consider highlighting the following solutions when discussing electronic surveillance:

• Supervised release programs should avoid invasive monitoring techniques that are overly restrictive and replicate the conditions of incarceration.
• Electronic shackles should only be used—if at all—once significant constitutional safe-guards and procedures for monitoring racial bias in implementation are put in place to protect against the misuse of this technology.
• People should never have to pay for electronic monitoring. Electronic surveillance needs more flexibility to allow people to maintain employment and costs of maintaining the system should never be placed on the individual.

B. Racially-Biased Risk Assessment Tools

The act supports the use of risk-assessment tools that rely upon “evidence-based” algorithms to predict the likelihood an individual will commit crimes in the future. While the use of these tools originally aimed to eliminate the bias of judges and prosecutors, research has shown that the algorithms themselves may be tainted by the implicit bias of the creator, which in turn may perpetuate those biases. Thus, the algorithms often unintentionally give higher risk scores to people of color than to otherwise similar whites.

Further, risk-assessment tools, as currently designed, fail to consider the unique circumstances and traits pertaining to an individual. The use of risk assessment tools should be used very cautiously, and the algorithms that are the basis of these tools should be transparent and adjusted with community consultation. Risk-assessment tools should facilitate release and reduce racial bias, rather than exacerbate it.

Consider highlighting the following solutions when discussing the use of risk assessment tools:

• The data and algorithms that underlie risk assessment tools should be transparent and available for community commentary.
• Risk assessment tools should be subject to community input and eliminated or adjusted where there is evidence of racial bias in their implementation.

C. Sentencing Carve-Outs

While the act provides meaningful incentives for individuals to earn credit to reduce their sentences by participating in programming aimed to prevent recidivism, a large number of individuals, including immigrants, will be excluded from this opportunity. Excluding individuals convicted of more serious crimes and immigrants from eligibility to participate in programming to prevent recidivism ignores the very individuals who can benefit most from such programming. Our communities may be adversely affected by this exclusion.

Consider highlighting the following solution when discussing the excluded offenses:

• Everyone deserves access to healing and justice. The First Step Act should be improved to expand the opportunity to earn time-off credits to all individuals who are incarcerated.

D. Lack of Fairness: Retroactivity

Criminal justice reform should benefit everyone—including those currently incarcerated as a result of racially biased policies, including racially discriminatory sentences. While the act provides some much-needed sentencing reform, only one of the sentencing provisions applies retroactively. Because many people were initially incarcerated due to racially discriminatory policies, without retroactive application, the act fails to remedy past racial injustices.

Consider highlighting the following solution when discussing the lack of retroactivity:

• It’s only fair that people who are incarcerated get access to relief and sentencing reductions provided by reform legislation. Accordingly, all of the sentencing reform provisions should be retroactive.

E. Highlight the Demand for Equal Justice.

While it is imperfect in many ways, The First Step Act is the result of the advocacy of many groups and individuals who are committed to equal justice. Moving forward, we need to acknowledge that even though the Act has passed the Senate, there is still a need for continuing systemic change, and more can and should be done. The next step is for legislators and policymakers to continue to improve upon The First Step Act by explicitly addressing the racial discrimination that exists within the system.