civicscholars2017-blog

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By our own Sneez Nesbitt👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

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What's up guys,

Last day of my internship today - bittersweet for sure. Gonna miss the team here at Brookings but ready to come back to school and meet up with you guys in a few weeks.

Thought of you all last Saturday. I was helping to register voters with the Democratic Party of Virginia at some apartment complexes in my county and even though it was just a few hours in the morning, there were many themes that reminded me of Civic. I spoke with many people who are paying attention to the election and wish they could vote, but who can't because they're not US citizens. I felt badly for them, knowing (as they do) that the outcome of the election affects their lives just as deeply as it does those of citizens, but they can't influence its outcome in the most simple, direct way possible. I talked to a lot of people who felt their vote didn't matter or simply chose not to engage with the election or politics at all, which got me thinking about how large representative democracies can function effectively in the face of widespread complacency. I also had doors slammed in my face by some Trump supporters mid-sentence when they heard "Democratic party", when, in fact, we were registering voters regardless of their affiliation (in Virginia, when you register to vote, you don't declare party affiliation, you just register and vote however you'd like). Our efforts weren't partisan, they were a public service. Indeed, we were able to serve some people who may not have registered otherwise. I met a single mom who said she simply didn't have time or energy to remember when to register and jump through the hoops (more difficult for her because she didn't have a computer) but was glad we knocked on her door.

It was heartening at times and discouraging at others, but eye-opening always. Looking forward to unpacking experiences like these that we've had this summer with all of you soon.

SG

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My two weeks in Europe were everything and nothing I expected. I spent time in Manchester, Berlin (Hi, Norah!), Freiburg, and London, walking beautiful streets, eating eating eating eating, and reconnecting to a continent I feel deeply entwined with. 

What I hadn’t realized I was doing was taking a walk through my past lives. I spent time with my closest friends from my life in Budapest, my closest friend from my life in Kyrgyzstan, my closest friend from my high school and theatre school days in Fargo, and my closest friend from St. Louis who recently moved to Germany. Time seemed to collapse a bit as the space between these relationships became tighter, and I was reconnected to past versions of myself and the places those versions lived. The “return” on my stone of intention has taken on new meanings.

I have come back to St. Louis feeling whole, integrated, and healed. I’m really looking forward to what that will feel like as the days move on, and as we come back together this fall.

Speaking of which, I am so pumped to see you all. This blog has been such a gift, but no replacement for our time spent together. Enjoy the rest of your summers and projects. I look forward to greeting you in a few weeks!

MB

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4xdOOHkwdXbRnpUVGZEUTBDbms/view

The one and only Norah Rast made a cameo appearance in a movie about her organization this summer! Check it.

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https://www.facebook.com/scientistsofstlouis/photos/a.1735732180028327.1073741828.1735668753368003/1739272653007613/?type=3&theater

Our homegirl María was featured in Scientists of St. Louis!

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Peep this article with Su Gond on the track. 

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Hey squad, Congrats to everyone who finished last week or is finishing up this week. I've got a couple weeks left and I'm trying to get the most out of the rest of my time. Working on a bunch of health policy topics that are relevant to the election so it's exciting. Also been writing a bit on the side and reconnecting with a lot of old friends. Post med school apps summer has definitely been fulfilling in a different way than before. I've also been following the election politics super closely because the rest of my team at Brookings got me into it and I can't wait to talk about the election with you all when we're back on campus. So many themes to explore with some bright minds with different perspectives. We definitely have many more challenging conversations ahead of us. See you all soon, SG

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I'm back at home now. My internship finished up and now it's time to just enjoy summer! I have been swimming in the lake everyday and helping my parents out by getting some chores done (video from chore #63: washing the dog). My internship left me with a few questions that I started to unpack last Friday with Jenni. Questions that made me question my entire logic model😧. For example: my logic model indicates that the more money you have invested sustainably, the more impact you have. However, how you obtain that money is a different question that I hadn't thought about. That gets us into the same discussion we had in class about that trustee who obtained all his money by selling overpriced goods to people in jail (essentially profiting off of the mass incarceration system), and then how those dollars could be used to fund scholarships for underprivileged kids (many of whom may have family members who have been victims of mass incarceration themselves). Is it ethical to use that money, even if it is for a good cause? Is it ethical to work for a firm/bank that finances some really problematic things even if you are working for the sustainable investments branch? I also began questioning if AUM (the amount of money a firm has) invested sustainably is actually the best way to measure impact. Rather, should it be measured by impact per dollar invested? So many questions and so many dilemmas about how I can make the most impact with my career and still be happy and always be doing the right thing. Being a civically minded adult is a very confusing thing 😟 So that's all the stuff I have been thinking about this week, and I have to admit it has been a bit overwhelming! But yesterday I was driving and listening to NPR, and I heard a story about a woman named Janet Jones who owns a bookstore in Detroit. She was giving her list of best books of the summer and reading short excerpts from them. She read a passage from a book written by Susan Neiman that talked about growing up and I though it gave me some much needed wisdom: "Maturity means finding the courage to live in a world with painful uncertainty, without giving in to dogma or despair." And... "A grown up helps move the world closer to what it should be, without losing sight of what it is." Hopefully those words can give you guys some guidance too as you're finishing up your summers! God bless America, Nick P.S. I learned a new fun fact about my parents house! There is not a single stoplight in their entire county... #rural

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California Adventures

I spent the last two weeks in California visiting old friends and favorite places.  I moved to CA after graduating from college.  It holds so many precious things from my history, my first job, my first apartment, people who have watched me become over the last 15 years. I go back every year, and this year felt so whole.  I was worried I would miss Monty while I was there because so much of our relationship is tied up in that place, but instead he was celebrated in conversations with all of the people I saw and I felt more connected to him.

My last day in CA I visited my very first supervisor.  She asked me what my personal elevator speech is right now (I thought of you all ideabouncing) and then chastised me for being too obtuse.  I now have homework to create a more specific elevator speech that truly outlines what I bring to the world.  I was duly called out and now have work to do (really I have to submit ideas to her in the next two months).  

I got caught in the SouthWest computer outage on the way home and had to spend the night at the LA airport.  It sucked, but my situation was far better than the 8 year olds on the little league team that was trying to get to the Little League World Series (who knew that took place an hour outside St. Louis).

It is good to be home.  

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STL sculpture park

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My last two weeks have been full of beaches, rivers, mountains, trees and people who soothe my soul.  I love that so many healing things are in one place, things that draw me closer to myself. I love breathing the air of the redwood trees. - jlh

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Last week, I lobbied on the Hill with other young Texan women pushing for reproductive justice. One was a Harvard Kennedy School masters student interning at the Center for Health ANd Gender Equity (CHANGE) and the other was a Syrian immigrant interning with Amnesty International. You could say we were a pretty unique sampling of Texans... We were meeting with legislative aides in the offices of Representative Sam Johnson (R-Plano, TX), Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), and Senator and former presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX) to discuss two pieces of legislation: one bill vying for comprehensive sex education, and one that would codify a prohibition of the Global Gag Rule.

(Feel free to skip this, but it’s an explanation of each bill: The former would create a pool of federal funding for comprehensive sex ed programs. States could then choose to opt in to comprehensive sex ed and would gain access to this funding pool. We tried to sell this as a states’ rights booster, providing financial options that would increase states’ political autonomy when choosing which sex ed programs to implement. The other piece of legislation is more international in scope and more explicitly connected to abortion rights. The Global Gag rule, an executive order that each president can either repeal or instate, prevents any foreign NGO that receives U.S. funding from using its OWN time or money to speak in any way about abortion. To be clear, this does not touch the Helms Amendment, which expressly precludes U.S. foreign aid from going toward abortion services. The Gag Rule takes things even further, restricting free speech in a manner antithetical to democracy merely in order to further conservative political interests.)

Anyway, I was surprised to find Senator Cornyn’s chief of staff to be an incredible listener, respectful debater, and impressive analyst. I explained to him that comprehensive sex education matters to me because I see survivors of violence whose capacity to consent is severely restricted by their lack of knowledge, and whose knowledge of resources is severely restricted by the taboo of sex. (Of course, violence is deliberate and unavoidable in many instances; however, I do believe that institutionalized ignorance is partly to blame for some aspects of sexual violence). He inquired further, telling me that Senator Cornyn cares deeply for survivors and would be interested in hearing that perspective. I know the senator will not support this bill, but I respect his office and his viewpoints so fervently after that meeting.

The last office we visited was Ted Cruz’s. Each of us introduced ourselves and said where we were from. When I said I was from Coppell, the legislative aide lit up and said: “I grew up there too! I went to elementary school there!” I asked her where? Cottonwood Creek. No way. That school is two streets away from my house, and my brother and I both went to school there. Needless to say, that was absolutely the only thing we connected on... But still, I was again shocked to learn that Ted Cruz’s top domestic policy aide went to the same elementary school as me, grew up in the same neighborhood, had the same teachers, and yet the political abyss between us bred some serious hostility -- or discomfort, I suppose. Just a fun little story!

The lobbying was great. It was also a refreshing shift away from my work environment, which is always interesting and engaging content-wise but often organizationally VERY frustrating. My supervisor is nearly non-existent, and very little of my communication is reciprocated. I am agitated to realize that I will not produce much concrete material in my time here, seeing as my boss rarely stays in touch and seems very consumed with coping with her own jadedness, which I genuinely empathize with but also find off-putting. But I’m saying it here so that I do not forget it: I am learning learning learning. I LOVE this organization and the relationships that exist within it. The way people are committed to the mission of CAP so wholeheartedly confirms for me the existence of a professional world where profit is not the bottom line for everyone -- or anyone. I am content with the imperfection of my position here, and I am so grateful for all of the joy I have found outside of work this summer as well. If anything, this is a lesson in patience, self-directed motivation, and work-life balance. I will certainly be sad to leave, but I can’t wait to get back to all of you.

^Verbose, per usual... My apologies...

~Snez~

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The last week has gone by so quickly. I'm afraid the next two weeks will too. I cannot believe it is nearly the end of the summer. I'm currently waiting for my flight back to STL. I have been in Memphis for the last few days at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital where I presented my research on women's reproductive health and the impact it has on infant mortality rates. The National Research Symposium was a great opportunity for me to practice presenting a poster and delivering an oral presentation (while trying to control my sweat glands hehe). It was also a humbling experience. Some of the research that others presented was brilliant and in all honesty, I knew very little about it. This weekend I learned that there is so much that I don't know. The picture above is from the Lorraine Hotel, which is now the National Civil Rights Museum. This is where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. I was struck by how themes of racism, injustice, and brutality that he witness then still endure today. I felt so enriched after I left; my knowledge about the civil rights movement expanded so much yesterday. I was once again reminded that there is so much that I do not know. I do know, however, that our work and the work of our peers is of utmost importance. This is not history; it is happening.

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A panel discussion on the value of “Sustainability Ratings” from a conference I attended on Thursday (you can see me in the front row on the left). 

This summer I have meet so many amazing people who work in this field, and I have learned so much from talking to them and listening to them. Thus far, I have learned what sustainable investing looks like in the real world, and paired with my conceptual understanding of sustainable investing that I built in Civic, I am starting to be able to comprehend how I could make a difference with my career in this field. 

Based on my observations and conversations with professionals, it seems this sector is in need of leaders who are critical thinkers. People who understand not only the complexities of markets but the intersectionality of society’s greatest issues; people who have the credibility and business experience to run a lucrative firm, and the logic modeling experience to actually achieve strategic impact on a systemic scale.

Hopefully someday I can be one of those leaders. Thankfully, this summer is helping inform me about what I need to do and what I need to learn in order to do just that.

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PC to the one and only Megan Magray

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Hey everybody!

I also owe you all a blog post and it’s been several weeks since my last post :( And after an appropriate mini-shaming from Maria at yesterday’s get-together with Jenni, I decided to get it together and finally get in a long overdue post.

After last week’s events in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to come together and how communities can truly unite. When people seem divided not only on solutions but even perceptions of the problem itself, that task seems particularly impossible. Different life experiences lead to drastically different civic philosophies, ones that seem irreconcilable. My Facebook news feed continually reminds me how wide that gap is, with one friend’s post labeling BLM as a terrorist organization that encourages violence against cops followed by another friend’s post showing a picture of their presence at a BLM protest accompanied by a lengthy paragraph detailing their outrage with seemingly never-ending police shootings. Hearing and reading those starkly different voices is disorienting and completely overwhelming.

I can’t help but feel that my now three-year old wish to somehow connect my more homogenous, white, conservative Texas world with my far more diverse and leftist WashU world is impossible and even naïve. There aren’t just differing life experiences but even different languages from both those worlds affecting how any major news event is understood. It makes me feel that any call to unity or to harbor a sincere hope that we can work towards a world where such violence doesn’t regularly occur seems irresponsible and empty. Though each place is far more complex than a simple binary suggests, my experience in both places marks them as completely different in my head. Both places contain people I love deeply and both places influenced me greatly as a person. I have no clue how to bridge those two worlds and reconcile them in reality, let alone within myself. After all, the feeling that I can even occupy space in both worlds and believe that they can be reconciled is admittedly a result of the privileged identities I carry.

I talked with Jenni both on Friday and Saturday and she helped me rethink some of the confusion I felt (per usual she is the real mvp). As she reminded me, we all need the opportunity to heal in a manner that works best for us. What that healing looks like and what we’re healing from will of course differ. But the fact that such personal and communal healing can occur is what still ultimately gives me hope. Sending love out to each of you :)

P.S. Since this post was pretty heavy, I attached two pictures of Zoey, Jenni’s cat: one where she looks utterly disgusted with me on a personal level and the other where she finally seemed to settle in. Also these pictures show up better on the Tumblr app just as an FYI!

-JM

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Contains some disturbing content and some really empowering words, especially for white folks who do not know how to articulate our responsibility for the violence that we keep seeing. Transcribed:

Another Black man has been murdered in our streets, and I am white as a ghost, haunting my own grave, thinking who am I to feel grief – thinking my god who am I not to.

I am writing to tell you about 1998 when Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man from Laramie, Wyoming, was tied to a fence, beat with the butt end of a pistol till the skull cracked, left for eighteen hours in Wyoming’s frozen cold, his face entirely covered in blood except for the places his tears had washed clean.

I am writing to tell you I was in a coffee shop in Seattle holding my love’s hand when I heard the news. The grief tsunami’d – from my eyes immediately down to my knees. I could feel them buckle, each one of them like a Bible belt snapping around the neck of an eighteen hour scream.

On the street outside the coffee shop, I could feel my last bit of unburied faith reaching for the shovel in the dug-out grave of my chest. I could feel my own mother kissing Matthew’s forehead in a hospital where she knew even the doctor’s god was rooting for a flat line. For weeks, I couldn’t look at anyone I loved without imagining Hate crushing their spines into a powder that would be snorted at a party after a football game.

Four months prior, James Byrd Jr., Black man from Jasper, Texas, had been chained to the back of a truck, dragged for miles along the concrete – conscious the entire time till his head was severed and his remains were found in eighty one separate places along the side of the road.

I am writing to tell you that I do not remember where I was or how I felt when I heard that news. For a lot of our community, 1998 was the year only Matthew Shepherd died.

I am writing to tell you, I have been spending a lot of time thinking ‘who are my people? What determines whose death will storm my chest, will flood my eyes, will make me wanna burn down a fucking city and pray with every ounce of my winded grace that more than the smoke will rise?’

Last year, an older gay man in my neighborhood shot himself in his head in his own bed. After his family refused to attend the funeral, refused to collect his belongings from the home, the mattress was hosed off, tossed in the backyard and his house was foreclosed.

I heard a rumor that the house was gonna sell for an incredible deal. I immediately imagined flocks of straight people going on and on about how his grave would look fabulous with a granite countertop. I kept picturing the holiday party they would throw in the bargain of his unlivable pain – his life nothing but a stain to them, nothing but something to scrub into the rug in the new nursery.

I had walked by his house for weeks, imaging an SUV full of soccer cleats running back and forth over his ghost in the driveway. I had been up all night, picturing what I would say to whatever thief would have the audacity to rip up his garden and plant Bermuda grass when I finally said to my friend: ‘ya know, I have been writing for sixteen years, and the word ‘gentrification’ has never made it into a single one of my poems.’

Who are my people? Where is my rage when they are stealing brown and black people’s homes?

Last week, someone posted a comment on my Facebook page that said ‘you’re the kind of bitch it would be a pleasure to hang.’ And that was tucked in between thousands of other comments, equally as fucked, some of them like yours from people in the queer community who furiously disagreed with the post I wrote about Mike Brown being murdered by a white supremacist system designed to murder the hearts, bodies, and spirits of people of color.

Something sickening to stomach in this life is the fact that we are all going to learn and grow at a pace that will hurt people, but right now, I am writing to tell you that I am furious with my own pace – furious that I could be holding the candlestick of a microphone for this many years and haven’t burned this far down without shining a hell of a lot more light on the truth of what I know white is. You wanna know what white is? White is having somebody tell you you’d be a pleasure to hang, having a whole lot of people agree, and not even thinking to lock your fucking door that night. White is knowing that if somebody is going to be hung, you are not the one. White is having all of Eric Garner’s air in your lungs no matter how queer you are, no matter how anything you are.

If you are white, you have Eric Garner’s air in your lungs tonight and that means your breath is not yours to hold. That means our exhale is owed to mercy, to the riot of our unowned hearts, to the promise that who we weep and fight and tear down the fucking sun for will not only be our own faces in the mirror. To the knowing that we cannot be married to apathy without wearing the rings of the fucking poplar tree when our country is still lynching, is still calling the hung bodies shade. When our country is right now rolling a red carpet from the blood that pours and people are dying for us to notice our footsteps are red. Our silence is not a plastic gun. It is fully loaded. It has lethal aim. It is 1998 and James Byrd Jr. is not yet dead.

He is walking from a party towards his house on the other side of town, and you and I are somewhere. We are somewhere, pouring what we will pour into the cups of our hearts, spilling what we will spill into the screamed open Earth.