Earlier this year, activists opposing the war in Gaza marched onto the Golden Gate Bridge and Interstate 880 in Oakland. They blocked traffic for hours, some chaining themselves to vehicles or cement-filled drums. Twenty-six were arrested and charged.

Similar scenes played out across the country—perhaps most controversially on college campuses, where students found themselves banned, suspended, and expelled—in this latest chapter of the global “age of mass protests.” Participants in historic uprisings from Hong Kong to Paris to Sidi Bouzid have braved tear gas, rubber or real bullets, imprisonment, and even set themselves on fire while standing up for their beliefs.

Headline-making demonstrations raise questions about what protesting requires of us: Are huge risks necessary to engender social change? Do I personally need to step in front of moving cars, spend a night in jail, or launch a hunger strike to advance the causes that matter to me? Does my social media post, bumper sticker, lawn sign, signature on a petition, or attendance at a peaceful rally still make a difference?

According to social science, strenuous and risky protest does tend to make a bigger impact than protest involving lower effort and risk. But studies also show that slacker activists—slacktivists, who stick to low-cost, mostly online activism—play key roles in successful movements.

Costly protest, like when demonstrators suffer violent repression, sends a strong signal to the media, voters, and power holders that activists mean business. If someone is willing to spend hours of their time, endure discomfort, and even put their life on the line for a cause, their grievances come across as more genuine than those of someone who spends a few seconds typing “#MeToo” or “#BlackLivesMatter.” (One caveat is that violence initiated by protesters, albeit costly, almost always backfires—nonviolent campaigns across the 20th century were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts.)

Some protesters bear significant costs simply by virtue of their social identities. Demonstrators from minority groups frequently endure harsher repression than their white counterparts; women face backlash for daring to speak out against the patriarchy; and low-wage hourly workers pay a higher economic price relative to their income (in foregone wages, transportation expenses, etc.) to attend a protest than salaried professionals with flexible schedules. Though unfair, these disproportionate costs also empower protesters by amplifying their messages. Research by political scientist LaGina Gause reveals an “advantage of disadvantage” whereby lawmakers are more likely to support the preferences of low-income and minority protesters than the preferences of more privileged protesters. Gause highlights how protests concentrated in minority and low-income communities of L.A. after the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King exerted electoral pressure on Southern California Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis. Lewis, whose Inland Empire district sat just east of L.A., switched his normal voting behavior to endorse the Dire Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1992, a Democrat-sponsored bill to fund relief for businesses destroyed during the protests.

While costly protest packs a punch, scholars also emphasize that activism is not all or nothing. “Slacktivists” strengthen movements in two critical ways.

First, they provide numbers. Hardcore veteran activists (the type who block traffic or take a rubber bullet) are exceptional. Usually, they cannot fill the streets on their own, so they must recruit greener activists into their ranks. One study of the Arab Spring showed that turnout by “peripheral” protesters with few previous activist connections contributed more to rising protest rates than turnout by “central” protesters with numerous Twitter followers. Movements, like viruses, need “fresh blood” to spread.

Second, including casual activists in a protest or movement helps to generate common knowledge about shifting social norms. If even your politically apathetic cousin starts posting “#BlackLivesMatter,” it becomes more socially acceptable for others in their network to endorse that cause—and eventually awkward not to. While support for Black Lives Matter in the general population has dipped from its high of 67% in 2020, a majority of Americans continue to support it. Ideas that were once fringe, like gay marriage and universal healthcare, became mainstream in part through ordinary internet users normalizing them, often from the comfort and safety of their couches.

A common concern is that slacktivism breeds complacency: If people are content to blast words of solidarity with their phones, they may never feel compelled to take up more demanding modes of activism that movements also need to meet their goals. “Someone still has to go to prison,” argued techno-critic Evgeny Morozov in The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.

Fortunately, evidence from multiple countries indicates that dipping your toes in online activism makes you no less likely to perform costlier gestures such as demonstrating, attending political forums, or donating to charity. Slacktivists are not destined to remain slacktivists. Online activism can open a gateway to protesting in real life and to deepening one’s investment in a cause.

If slacktivists are ultimately harmless, and even beneficial, for social movements, then why do they get such a bad rap? For instance, some fans of Taylor Swift and other celebrities chose to unfollow their idols on social media for not speaking out forcefully enough about bloodshed in Gaza. Journalists branded these ex-Swifties as slacktivists indulging in empty virtue signaling rather than undertaking more meaningful action. Why did these former fans provoke such ridicule if they were not really hurting anyone?

The answer has to do with the fact that we are hardwired to judge others by the costs they inflict, or are unwilling to inflict, on themselves. This explains our instinctive admiration for courageous, selfless activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and our disdain for timid, “fake” activists who send nearly costless signals of their political commitments by, say, sporting an awareness ribbon or unfollowing insufficiently “woke” celebrities. Higher risks earn greater rewards.

However, as I elaborate in my new book, we would be wise to refrain from wagging our fingers at slacktivists. For one thing, most of us behave like slacktivists at one point or another. Michelle Obama and Malala Yousafzai took flak for tweeting “#BringBackOurGirls” after armed extremists kidnapped more than 250 Nigerian schoolgirls in 2014, but it is difficult to seriously question their activist bona fides. As First Lady, Obama spent countless hours on the Let Girls Learn initiative, and Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting girls’ education in Taliban-occupied Pakistan, for which she was shot by a would-be assassin.

More importantly, shaming slacktivists can discourage them from attempting any kind of activism at all. The savvy organizer strives to make activism more—not less—accessible by sharing their wisdom with newcomers. Building a truly inclusive mass movement calls for patience and humility on the part of status-conscious movement leaders. This is its own form of sacrifice for a cause: the sacrifice of one’s ego. Community-engaged scholar Biko Mandela Gray implored fellow activists, “Let us check our egos at the door of political engagement and resistance, and remember that our wellbeing is always connected to the wellbeing of the whole.”

Some slacktivists will blossom into the next generation of devoted changemakers, whereas others will continue dabbling. And that’s OK. Both types of people have roles to play in the collective pursuit of justice.

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On May 28, 2023, the body of Martín Morales Martínez was found floating in the Gama River in Triunfo de la Cruz, Honduras. Morales Martínez was Garifuna—a people descended from enslaved Africans, Arawak, and Carib Indians. He was also a respected land rights activist who devoted his life to fighting the theft of Garifuna coastal lands by corporations, investors, and state authorities. His was the most recent in a series of murders of Black and Indigenous land defenders in the country that show how violence, economic development, and race are colliding there—and how little progress international efforts are making in building a more secure, equitable Latin America.

The Garifuna have a long history of insecurity and displacement in Honduras. Since the arrival of U.S.-owned fruit corporations in the 19th century, their communities have endured successive waves of resource extraction—from bananas to sumptuous beachside resorts—and have seen their rights, including collective property rights, increasingly eroded. In recent years, with the support of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), the Garifuna have turned to international courts to hold the country accountable. But despite significant judicial and electoral victories at a moment when the country’s human rights record should be improving, the violence against them has only worsened.

Murders of Black and Indigenous land defenders in Honduras started during the 1990s, after the country adopted economic policies designed to fuel development in tourism, industrial agriculture, and mining. The lush, water- and mineral-rich Caribbean coastline, which is home to 46 Garifuna communities, garnered the attention of investors in beach resorts and African palm plantations, including some of Honduras’s most prominent families. Land defenders fought back by retaking stolen lands and advocating, with surprising efficacy, for the legal recognition of their rights to the territory they have historically occupied. They achieved many successes, but even gaining title to their lands did not ensure they held them securely.

Tensions inflamed dramatically after the June 2009 coup d’état against President Manuel Zelaya, which thrust Honduras into a period of intensive, state-sanctioned resource plunder. Following his ouster, the government acted swiftly to overturn a moratorium on mining, passed legislation to hasten hydropower development, and in 2013 pushed through a law to incentivize foreign investment in the creation of semi-sovereign “start-up” cities in purportedly unpopulated areas of the country. Over the next decade, Honduras experienced widespread corruption at the highest levels of government and a rapid deterioration of human rights.

Amidst this political upheaval, two cases pertaining to Garifuna land rights disputes—one in Triunfo de la Cruz and the other in Punta Piedra—went to trial at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In both cases, Garifuna accused the government of violating property titles, failing to investigate and prosecute the political persecution of land defenders, and noncompliance with judicial decisions that established the communities’ prior claims over disputed lands.

In 2015, the court ruled in favor of the communities, affirming that the state had failed to protect Garifuna collective property rights. It called for several significant reparations, including returning illegally privatized land to the community and compensation for past harms. The communities were optimistic that justice would be served.

Yet the state has failed to comply with the court’s recommendations. Instead, the policies designed to foment investment and development remain largely intact. Violent attacks against land defenders have multiplied as well.

In 2019, at least 16 Garifuna people were murdered. In 2020, four community leaders from Triunfo de la Cruz were brutally abducted by men dressed in police uniform, leading many in the community to suspect direct state involvement. One of the disappeared men, Snider Centeno, was a member of OFRANEH and the acting president of the communal governing council. Meanwhile, the swelling violence and increasing death threats against activists further weakened the confidence of Garifuna in state institutions. Last year, two more land rights activists were killed in Triunfo de la Cruz—Morales Martínez and Ricardo Arnaúl Montero.

The election of left-wing president Xiomara Castro in 2021 was supposed to bring change. She ran on an anti-corruption and pro-democracy agenda that resonated among a large segment of the population—including many Black and Indigenous voters. But little has changed, underscoring the entrenched corruption within state institutions and the political and economic power of a handful of oligarchic families.

On August 29, 2023, the Inter-American Court again found Honduras responsible for the violation of Garifuna territorial rights in another significant victory. But like previous judgments, the court’s decision lacks an enforcement mechanism. Its implementation requires political will on the part of the Honduran government. That means it has not produced greater protections for Black and Indigenous Hondurans’ rights.

Due to their visible Blackness, the Garifuna people continue to be treated as non-native inhabitants without rightful claim to the lands they have resided on for hundreds of years. Change will not happen in Honduras until the state complies with the court rulings—and until the murders of Martín Morales Martínez and other Garifuna leaders are investigated and prosecuted.

The stakes are high, and global: Many Garifuna have fled to the U.S. searching for a stable future that is increasingly hard to imagine back home. Our thirst for infinite economic growth is not only fueling our climate and biodiversity crisis, but also the displacement of and violence against environmental defenders in Honduras, Latin America, and around the world. From Standing Rock to Triunfo de la Cruz, Black and Indigenous activists are often on the front lines of fights against the expansion of extractive industries and the destruction of ecosystems. The Garifuna peoples’ struggle to defend their territories is just one theater in a shared global struggle over the future of the planet and who gets to share in it.

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On July 12, 1898 John Henry James’ body, riddled with bullets, hanged from a locust tree. The Virginia man had been in the custody of the Albemarle County sheriff, awaiting grand jury action on a rape allegation, when a mob of 150 people kidnapped and killed him.

James, the story went, sexually assaulted one Julia Hotopp. (I belabor here, in confirming your suspicion that James was Black and Hotopp white.) There were doubts surrounding Hotopp’s allegation. Still, a newspaper applauded the mob, noting that “the people of Charlottesville heartily approve the lynching.”  The grand jury, determined to have its say too, over a corpse no less, issued a posthumous indictment.

For more than a century, James was an accused rapist. He obtained a minuscule measure of justice on July 12, 2023—the 125th anniversary of his death—when Albemarle County prosecutor James Hingeley asked a circuit court to revisit the indictment, and judge Cheryl V. Higgins, at long last, dismissed it.

These officials are to be commended; criminal indictments do their best work in the universe of the living. James’ is an easy and instructive case, illustrating with blinding clarity the umbilical link between illegal lynching and state-sanctioned rape executions, two corporeal atrocities that were, infamously, pretty much reserved for Black males—boys, as well as men.

James’ exoneration is also a prophetic case. It demarcates a path forward for a crucial American reckoning with a thousand-plus state executions of Black males accused of assaulting white females, mostly in latter-day Confederate states, at the hands of a supremacist legal regime.

That John Henry James’ indictment came after his lynching may seem absurd—but in 1898, and for decades thereafter, such was the symbiotic common ground between the county courthouse and the lynching locale. Legal officials raced against the mob to confer upon these killings the stamp of validity, and lynching parties, enacting “lynch law,” adorned their proceedings with the rituals of the courtroom. Lynchings were extensions and expressions of the administration of justice, not estranged from it. A case in point: in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1917, a group of men known as the Shelby Avengers announced their intention to lynch a man charged with the sexual assault and murder of a white teenager, giving people ample time to reach the location where, they promised, justice would be dispensed. After the man was burned, decapitated, and dismembered, the Commercial Appeal reported, “throughout the entire proceedings there was perfect order …  and none offered violence not countenanced by the summary court.”  The newspaper also complimented the Avengers for having the forethought to appoint a treasurer to secure compensation for those participants who had absented themselves from work to search for and lynch the man. Jury duty.

This pattern persisted from the end of the Civil War until the early 20th century. Beginning around 1909, with the introduction of the electric chair, the numbers of legal executions rose, slowly replacing extralegal lynchings, at least in Virginia.  Some scholars of lynching—Fitzhugh Brundage, for example—have expressed skepticism that a rise in legal execution in the early 20th century correlated with a decline in extralegal lynching. But the historical record is replete with evidence that executions were understood to be a replacement for the mob, particularly in Virginia.

From 1880 to 1909, 27 Black men were lynched in Virginia for rape or attempted rape, while just seven were lynched in the four decades that followed. From 1908 to 1965, Virginia executed 56 men on non-lethal sexual assault charges. All of them were Black. These numbers are not anomalous: 19th-century versions of the state’s rape laws explicitly split white rape from Black rape. Before the Civil War, only “free negroes” charged with assault against white females were subject to the death penalty; the penalty for white males was limited to a 10- to 20-year prison term.  Over its entire 400-year history, the state killed just three white men for rape, all before 1868, and no white man was ever put to death for attempted rape while 36 Black men suffered that fate—one as late as 1940.

In 1921, the state’s highest court made the connection between the rise in executions and the decline in lynching explicit. In Hart v. Commonwealth, a case sanctioning the execution of a 21-year-old for attempted rape and rejecting his argument that the sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment, the Virginia court opined that “the likelihood of the resort to lynch law, unless there is a prompt conviction and a severe penalty imposed. . . is well known to exist.” (Indeed the state apparently deemed attempted rape more heinous than attempted murder—an offense for which no one in Virginia, Black or white, was executed after 1863.)

For decades to follow, Virginia’s Supreme Court—comprised entirely of white male jurists—aided and abetted what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun later described as a “machinery of death.” From 1908 to 1963, the court wrote opinions in 73 capital and non-capital cases of rape and related crimes; they reversed the sentences of approximately one-quarter of Black defendants compared to nearly two-thirds of white defendants.

Other states enforced similar laws. Louisiana also ran a two-tiered legal regime for rape prosecutions, effectively reserving its capital penalty for Black defendants charged with sexual assault on whites. Since 1900, the state has executed around 40 defendants for aggravated rape; all but two were Black. It has never executed a white man for the rape of a Black woman.  South Carolina has, since 1900, executed around 66 people for sexual crimes, of whom 61 were Black.  Florida has executed 48 men for rape and related crimes, of whom 44 were Black. And in Georgia, since 1900, 87 of the 93 men executed by the state for rape have been Black.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty for rape unconstitutional in 1977. But its decision in Coker v. Georgia hinged on the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and never addressed the penalty’s longstanding racial intent and impact.  Had it done so, lower courts might have been on notice to protect against unconstitutional bias in the administration of rape laws by, for example, ensuring fair and deracialized jury selection, protecting against discriminatory prosecution, and guarding against the race tax in sentencing.

Instead, the execrable history of lynching and execution continued to infect rape prosecutions. Until DNA forensics became widely available about 20 years ago, countless innocent Black men were wrongly convicted for sexual assault.  Just 10 years ago, Black people were almost eight times more likely than white people to be falsely convicted of rape. And just last year, the National Registry of Exonerations reported that Black prisoners incarcerated for sexual assault are over three times more likely to be innocent of the crime than white prisoners—and generally received far longer sentences than white exonerees.

This is not just a Virginia problem. But Virginians are grappling with this history head-on, and could lead the nation in a project of redress.  The state recently abolished the death penalty, in 2021. That year, then-governor Ralph Northam posthumously pardoned seven men who were executed after conviction on a 1951 rape charge that attracted international protest. Descendants of the Martinsville Seven, as the accused were known, had campaigned for the pardon. Northam was careful to specify that the pardon was not an exoneration; it was an acknowledgment that the men did not get a fair trial. “We all deserve a criminal justice system that is fair, equal, and gets it right,” he proclaimed.

This illustration was part of a 1951 Michigan petition mailed to then-Virginia Governor John S. Battle to save the “Martinsville Seven.” Their executions were carried out despite pleas for mercy from around the world. Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia.

By that measure—one none could quarrel with—there are, nationally, 1,073 rape executions that deserve posthumous redress. States could aim to correct these travesties by executive pardon, as with the Martinsville Seven, or by judicial action, as with John Henry James.  The U.S. courts might start admitting their own complicity in rushing Black men to their deaths. Localities might consider how prosecutors’ offices, like that of Albemarle County, can review historical cases to determine how many were rushed to judgment to avert mob violence, or otherwise shortchanged the process that was the defendant’s due.  They might also examine the actions of police, who often railroaded accused men by threatening to turn them over to the mob if they did not “confess.”

Manifestly, not every Black man executed for rape was innocent of the charge. But because none of these men got the due process or sentencing justice they deserved, perhaps all their cases must be re-examined. All of these men were hostages in the war for white supremacy. All of them were subjected to the meta-law of race. And all of them experienced law as a political weapon, rather than a set of neutral evidentiary rules.

State-endorsed redress and remedial measures, while inevitably insufficient, will help. They would also expiate slanders and stereotypes that, even in today’s courts and prosecutors’ offices, render the Black male “naturally” a potent threat to white females. When Dylann Roof shot down parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, his battle cry evinced the abiding nature of this group libel.  “Y’all are raping our white women, y’all are taking over the world,” he yelled, as he slaughtered.

The new sits solidly on top of the old here; race is the beginning and the end of this ongoing horror story. There is work to do, and Charlottesville prosecutors have sharpened their pencils and stretched their (and our) imaginations. The James case makes clear that the crimes of racialized justice must be lifted from the pages of books, criminology journals, and amicus briefs and placed in the public square. There, they can stimulate a community’s “ongoing commitment to . . . racial justice” and demonstrate the “importance of community remembrance projects,” as Hingeley, the prosecutor who helped clear James, observed.

The more of these historical travesties we tackle, the better off our legal system, and our nation, will be.

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Can democracy stand the test of time? Many factors have triggered the deep schism in American politics today. But a root cause of our faltering democracy may be our failure to grapple with the truth about the nation’s history of discrimination and institutionalized racism. Because Americans can’t even agree on basic truths about our history of exclusion, slavery, and Jim Crow segregation, we have become mired in contentious debates about what role, if any, the government should play in addressing past injustices and their present-day legacies. To forge a path ahead, Americans must acknowledge our problematic past and collectively commit to upholding the principle of liberty and justice for all.

Where could we possibly start? As a first step, we can look to other nations that were once deeply divided, and learn from their efforts to address their difficult histories in pursuit of accountability and justice. The United States might do well to consider transitional justice approaches—the political, social, and legal processes societies use to respond to legacies of systematic or serious human rights abuses, primarily during periods of political transition like changes in leadership after a period of civil war or conflict, or the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic political system. These temporary judicial and non-judicial mechanisms and practices include criminal trials and prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, and institutional reforms to help transform a society and reestablish the social contract. The United States is not undergoing a political regime transition, but transitional justice tools can still help us promote national reconciliation and reinforce our democracy as we reckon with the truth of our history and legacies of systemic harm and oppression.

The “Human rights, universal challenge” room at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, showing a map of human rights abuses around the world. Courtesy of Warko/Wikimedia Commons.

The truth commission is a widely used transitional justice instrument—and one that can offer the most insight to Americans looking to reshape the collective memory and conscience of our nation. These official fact-finding bodies investigate, document, and disseminate accurate information about past wrongdoing and human rights violations authorized or carried out by the state. The United States can certainly learn a great deal from the successes and failures of these commissions in countries like Argentina, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Morocco, Peru, South Africa, South Korea, and Timor-Leste (East Timor).

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is one of the best-known national truth-telling and reconciliation processes and has been the model for several other truth commissions. In 1995, South Africa’s newly elected democratic, multicultural Government of National Unity established the TRC to investigate serious human rights violations perpetrated under the apartheid regime from 1960 to 1994. Apartheid was a brutal system of white minority rule and legally enforced racial segregation that formalized and expanded white supremacist and segregationist policies that had existed since the period of colonial rule. Institutionalized racism stripped Black South Africans and other non-whites of their civil and political rights—including their citizenship—and created extreme inequality and poverty. Anti-apartheid protests, demonstrations, and strikes organized by freedom fighters were met with swift and ruthless repression, and an estimated 21,000 people, the majority of whom were Black South Africans, were killed in the political violence during the apartheid era.

The primary purpose of the TRC was to promote reconciliation and forgiveness among all South Africans, while holding perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable for their actions. The commission’s work involved a systematic process of investigating human rights violations, organizing public proceedings where victims and perpetrators could testify, offering reparations to victims, and granting amnesty to perpetrators under specific, limited conditions. The TRC’s mandate covered both violations committed by the state and by anti-apartheid liberation movements. In its comprehensive final report, which the government endorsed, the truth commission outlined detailed recommendations for reforming the political system and civil sector, which included financial and symbolic reparations. President Nelson Mandela also apologized to victims on behalf of the state.

The TRC faced some criticism for its amnesty provision and the limited identification of perpetrators, among other things. Many South Africans later railed against the government for its delay in implementing the TRC’s recommendations, including the reparations program. But despite these critiques, the TRC succeeded in making sure the crimes of apartheid would be fully documented so that South Africa’s horrific history would never be forgotten. And in the decades since, the TRC’s broader emphasis on truth-telling, social transformation, and national reconciliation have made it a standard for other justice and accountability efforts around the world.

Inspired by truth and reconciliation processes in other countries and recognizing the need to educate Americans on the historical context for current racial inequalities, in early 2021, Rep. Barbara Lee (CA-13) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) called for the establishment of a national truth commission in the U.S., proposing legislation to create the United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation. The history Americans must reckon with is not as immediate as South Africa’s, and our political system is not in a moment of democratic transition. But similar efforts have succeeded in non-transitional societies, notably in Canada, which established a truth commission in 2008 to investigate, document, and educate Canadians about the abuses that occurred in the Indian residential school system for Indigenous children over the 19th and 20th centuries (between 1894 and 1947 attendance was made compulsory). These residential schools are a legacy of Canada’s colonial system and have been described as a form of “cultural genocide” because of their explicit goal of cultural erasure, and forcible assimilation of Indigenous peoples. The Canadian TRC documented widespread physical and sexual abuse in these schools, and officially recorded the deaths of 3,201 students, though concluded the actual toll is much higher. As part of its work, the commission hosted national events in different regions across Canada to support public education about the residential school system, pervasive discrimination, and the lasting trauma for survivors and Indigenous communities.

Citizens march for justice following the Greensboro Massacre of 1979. Twenty-five years later, community leadership organized the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Project to uncover the full harm done to victims of the domestic terrorist attack. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In the United States, there have been similar initiatives, organized by grassroots groups, to address abuses and wrongdoing at the local level. In 2013, the state of Maine’s Office of Child and Family Services with the support of the Wabanaki Tribes established the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission (MWTRC) to investigate and document state child welfare policies, their compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act, and their effects on the Indigenous Wabanaki people. The commission collected testimony and found compelling evidence of public and institutional racism toward the Wabanaki people, documenting how Native children in Maine were placed in the foster care system at a rate of more than five times that of non-Native children, and concluding that the administration of child welfare by the state constituted a form of cultural genocide. The commission wanted to provide opportunities for truth-telling and healing, give voice to the Wabanaki people, establish a more complete account of the history of the Wabanaki people, and foster deeper understanding and reconciliation between Wabanaki people and the state of Maine.

The city of Greensboro in North Carolina also embarked on a notable truth and reconciliation effort, modeling the 2004 Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the South African TRC. Greensboro created its commission to investigate and document the underlying causes and consequences of a single event:  the “Greensboro Massacre,” a confrontation between members of the Communist Workers Party, the American Nazi Party, and the Ku Klux Klan on November 3, 1979. During a “Death to the Klan” rally, Klansmen and neo-Nazis shot into the crowd, killing five demonstrators and wounding 10 others. Suspiciously, there was no police presence at the rally, even though the Greensboro Police Department knew about the planned attack. Despite eyewitness accounts and videotaped evidence, the Klansmen and neo-Nazis claimed self-defense and were acquitted of all charges by all-white juries in two separate criminal trials. During a civil trial in 1985, the Greensboro Police Department, the Klan, and Nazi Party members were found liable for one of the deaths.

After about two years of collecting evidence and holding public hearings, the commission concluded that the decision of the police to stay away from the rally was a significant factor in the violence that unfolded. The commission also found that the police department and city managers deliberately misled the public in order to absolve the police department of any responsibility. They found fault in the two criminal trials as well: Neither jury was representative of Greensboro residents and community members, which contributed to impunity for the killings, distrust of the police department, and further strained race relations. The Greensboro truth commission’s goals were multifaceted—to pursue the truth about racially motivated political violence; to foster healing, reconciliation, and social transformation; and to learn from other truth and reconciliation processes.

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Nonetheless, emerging adults are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. Though they make up just 10 percent of the U.S. population, they make up around 1 in 5 adult prison admissions. This is a tragedy. Data show conclusively that prison has a uniquely negative and often lifelong effect on young people. Prison rips emerging adults away from the peers and social environments they rely upon to grow up in a healthy way. It causes isolation, illness, disruption of education, and permanent disadvantages in job seeking. It can make young people vulnerable to mental and physical illness for years to come. And they are not the only victims: Children of incarcerated adults face a host of health, economic, and educational risks.

In the aftermath of a pandemic that devastated their job and education prospects, emerging adults must become a policy and budget priority. The nation’s future depends on it.

Two hallmark characteristics of emerging adults—their love of taking risks and their intense need for social activity—too frequently put them in conflict with the law. These traits are by no means flaws, however. Risk-taking peaks during this period for a reason: to help young people to strike out on their own, create autonomy from their parents, explore new experiences, and maybe even start families. The pull toward peers allows young people to build a new network of support. Both are needed for healthy development; they lead to a path of mature independence.

Privileged emerging adults have always been more likely than their disadvantaged peers to live in a specific environment that has been tailored to their developmental stage: college. University life surrounds young people with peers who are likely to become a helpful network later in life. Campus disciplinary codes generally keep punishments for minor law breaking, such as drug- or alcohol-related offenses, out of the formal legal system.

But less wealthy Americans, including many Black and brown young people, don’t get such nurturing. Even minor offenses can land them in prison. Incarceration then throws a wrench into the work of entering fully into adulthood: Regimentation, rather than exploration, shapes the experience. Unable to bond with long-term friends or a partner while incarcerated, they also find more obstacles upon release, like parole restrictions on whom they may associate with or where they may live, that keep them from forming groups around common interests or goals.

When emerging adults are removed from places and people that encourage their development, they suffer. So do their communities, which lose the potential of the energy and passion of this group. During the pandemic, the emerging adults of Generation Z became catalysts for change, fueling an upsurge of support for Black Lives Matter and other anti-racist activism. Another way of saying “risk-taking” is “brave.” Another way of saying “susceptible to peer influence” is “eager to act in solidarity with others.”

It’s not easy growing up today. Milestones associated with “settling down,” like finding a life partner, having children, and committing to a profession are all happening at later ages than they once did. The process of establishing an independent life takes longer, and the path is not nearly as clear as it once was. Someone coming of age in the 1960s might spend their adult life working for a single employer, in the community where they were raised, with wages sufficient to support children and own a home. Today’s young people, facing more tenuous employment options and more expensive housing, typically struggle to find a foothold. Emerging adulthood is marked by higher unemployment than later life, and the number of adult children moving back to their parents’ homes has been rising throughout the 2000s as marriage declined and wages failed to keep pace with housing costs. 

And that was before COVID-19 exacerbated these trends and brought the problems of incarcerated emerging adults to peers everywhere. Much like prison, the pandemic imposed upheaval, scarcity, and stress. Students suffered and were cut off from the world when their schools and universities shut down or shifted awkwardly to online learning systems. They lost academic benefits and opportunities to build social and career networks. Research shows that emerging adults experienced increased anxiety and depression during the pandemic, both of which are barriers to healthy development.

COVID-19 upended normal business routines and hiring, too. Unemployment reached almost 15 percent during the pandemic, presenting first-time job seekers with dismaying odds, and forcing many young people to move in with relatives. By July 2020, 52 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds in the U.S. were living with one or both parents, according to the Pew Research Center. This development is problematic. Though some emerging adults may thrive, others struggle with returning to the nest at a stage when they were establishing independence. Their presence can also strain their already overwhelmed families, and at least one study has linked the return to the parental home with depressive symptoms.

It may be difficult for emerging adults to recover lost economic ground after COVID. Research shows that entering the job market during a recession is associated with lower earnings for a decade or more, and even higher divorce rates and earlier death. Furthermore, the economic uncertainty of the moment may inspire older workers to stay on the job longer, which will mean fewer openings for young people. More than ever, policy should adjust to support emerging adults through historic challenges. The harms that have befallen young people in prison have become the woes of young people everywhere.

In 2016, my colleagues and I started the Emerging Adult Justice Project, which aims to promote effective and fair justice policies for 18- to 25-year-olds in the criminal legal system that will allow them to grow into healthy, functional adults. We advocate for a variety of research-informed changes, including placing emerging adults in the juvenile justice system, which is more developmentally appropriate and has a much better track record of producing successes in the classroom, workplace, and family. We also work to change public perception about this life stage.

The post-COVID period is poised to be a difficult one for Generation Z. The coming hardships could threaten their development from impulsive-and-passionate teens to responsible-and-measured adults. No other cohort since World War II has faced such odds, and as such these young people deserve the functional equivalent of a GI Bill to ensure they get the education they need to be successful. Student loan forgiveness, national service, universal high-speed internet access, and extended paid internships that would allow people to simultaneously learn and earn should also be part of forthcoming legislation.

Most urgently, we can end the mass criminalization of emerging adults by including more of them in the juvenile justice system. We can and ought to afford a 19-year-old minimum wage earner as much grace and as much opportunity to recover from a mistake as we do a college student. And we should put policies in place that ensure no emerging adults are punished because they grew into adulthood during a time of scarcity and disruption. We should capitalize on their strengths—their passion for social justice, their technological acuity, their willingness to try new things—to ensure they fulfill their promise as stable and productive adults for decades to come.

The post Can We Reimagine Juvenile Justice for Gen Z? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

We Californians are fortunate that we receive so much guidance, official and unofficial, about how to respond to these emergencies. All we have to do is follow it. Which is easy-peasy, if you are broad-minded (and we do have a reputation for being broad-minded).

For starters, go outside. You must avoid the indoors, because COVID spreads best in enclosed areas. Spending time outdoors now is good for your health.

Also, don’t go outside. Don’t you know there’s a pandemic on, and you should isolate yourself? Plus, with six of the 20 largest fires in California history burning, you’ll just be breathing smoke. Spending time outdoors now is bad for your health.

By the way, it’s important that you see family right now. Particularly if they are elderly or in a facility. Because you know what’s the biggest killer out there? Loneliness. That’s the real epidemic.

Just one caveat, though: don’t see your family. It’s too dangerous. Public health officials, even the governor, say family gatherings are where the virus spreads. Haven’t you heard the latest PSAs on the radio? If you visit your mother or grandfather, it’s pretty much murder.

Speaking of matters of life and death, you shouldn’t call the cops unless you’re absolutely sure there’s a crime or emergency; try to deescalate matters yourself. Cops carry dangerous biases, so your call puts vulnerable people at risk. And, big picture, we should defund the police, and have other kinds of experts handle crime.

Of course, though, you should call the cops. Violence and property crime are up. This is a heavily armed society. If something suspicious occurs, a trained law enforcement professional—not you—should be the one responding. We already have too many vigilantes out there. Haven’t you seen the signs? “See something, say something.”

Speaking of say something: You must speak out. In this moment of reckoning, silent isn’t just assent; it’s complicity in injustice. We need whistleblowers to call out wrongdoing. We need to hear from people of color, whose stories and perspectives have too long been ignored. White people have a special obligation to challenge racism. And mass protest is essential to keep the pressure on unjust systems and people in power.

Still, don’t speak until you’re sure you’re adding to the conversation. There are already so many voices talking that it’s hard to hear ourselves think. White people need to stop talking about the cultures and histories of other people. People of color shouldn’t have to keep explaining themselves. And mass protest is dangerous—don’t you know there is a pandemic on?

In raising our voices, it’s important to remember not to attack people personally. We are confronting systems of oppression, that hurt all people. Focus on ending those systems, and replacing them with better systems, designed for equity. That’s how you get unity, which is vital.

And never forget that this is about individual morality, not systems. When people misbehave or say the wrong thing, they need to be called out forcefully, and held to account, no matter if they’re in power or not. This is about changing individual behavior. And if that’s divisive, so be it—unity is overrated.

Because this is a moment to choose sides and rally your base.

Because what better time than now to reach out to people who disagree with you—that’s how we change things.

Just don’t reach out on social media—those companies are doing terrible things to our democracy, and making us anxious and even sick.

But we need to use social media because it empowers citizens, and allows us to go around the corrupt corporate media.

On social media, you must speak your own truth, and recognize that your lived experience is what counts.

But we can’t rely on anecdote or emotion; we need to make decisions based on facts and data.

In this pandemic, it’s essential that we trust our scientists and public health officials.

But we can’t trust our scientists and public health officials, who are compromised by politics and corporate money.

Speaking of business, you need to open yours as soon as possible. We need some semblance of normalcy, and we must bolster the economy, so that people have jobs and income to pay rent, and there are enough tax dollars to recover from all these crises.

Of course, you should keep your business closed, so that you don’t contribute to COVID’s spread—and so that you protect yourself and your employees, too.

And if you live or work in a dense city, you might want to leave the metropolitan area and head somewhere with fewer people and less COVID, especially if you’re in an at-risk category.

At the same time, you shouldn’t move to far-out or exurban places on the urban-wildland interface—you’re just putting yourself in the path of fire. Instead, embrace the density of our cities!

Wherever you’re living, your kids need to be back in school immediately. Pediatricians say getting back to class is crucial. Kids are losing educationally and socially when they’re at home. Kids who miss months of school end up less educated, less wealthy, and less healthy. You don’t want to shorten kids’ lives, do you?

But be careful: Sending the kids back to school is a rotten idea. Look at the outbreaks at universities that reopened. Kids can be spreaders, too. And we have to protect our educators, who didn’t sign up to risk their lives. You don’t want to shorten teachers’ lives, do you?

If you’re a parent, now is the time to step up and prioritize your kids; find ways to collaborate with other parents to make up for the lack of in-person instruction and socialization, maybe even hire teachers so kids can gather in small groups.

But don’t do too much, and don’t just focus on your kids. When privileged parents intervene, they worsen inequality.

And kids, you need to avoid sitting in front of your screens for hours. Screen usage is up, and it’s bad for your eyes, your body, and your mental health.

Also, kids, you must be diligent about distance learning, and you need more time with your teachers online—even if it means sitting in front of your screen for hours.

Remember, we’re all in this together. We have to stay connected and help one another.

But don’t forget, to survive this, we must isolate ourselves. Keep your distance.

In these unprecedented times, we must comply with all of these clear directives, in service of stopping disease, preventing catastrophe, and insuring justice. When you don’t follow all these messages, you are putting everyone else at risk.

In these unprecedented times, it’s impossible to comply with so many mixed messages. Whatever you do, you will be wrong. So prioritize taking care of yourself. All anyone can reasonably demand is that you do the best you can.

The post California, Where Whatever You Do, You Will Be Wrong appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

A few years later, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire judge, in a modern version of excommunication, ordered a Labrador mix named Prince to vacate the city after killing a rooster.

And in 2014, a pit bull named Dream that bit a child was executed in Denver while an appeal was pending, apparently due to a courthouse paperwork mix-up.

In a large number of these cases across the United States, it is the canine itself on trial. The dog, not the owner, is charged. The dog, not the owner, is convicted. And the dog, not the owner, is punished for its crimes. When it comes to capital punishment, dogs sometimes attain a human-like standing in our courts. This practice may feel decidedly modern and particularly American, the inexorable dark side of our excessive pampering and “humanization” of our furred friends. At a glance, it isn’t even that different from pet boutiques, gourmet food, luxury lodging, and the like. But scholars trace the roots of humans putting animals on trial back millennia, long before we began showering creature comforts on our canine companions.

One remarkable case involves crops, disease, and some especially pernicious rats in 16th century France. Rodents descended on Autun, a medieval town near Dijon, destroying the barley crop and multiplying rapidly. In 1522, after numerous extermination attempts had failed and Autun was on the verge of a famine, residents turned to the only option they had left: They put the rats on trial. They took their case to the town magistrate, who relayed it to the bishop’s vicar, who ordered the animals to appear in court. The vicar also appointed one of France’s rising legal stars to defend them, a Burgundy-born jurist named Bartholomew Chassenée.

Chassenée was no fool. He knew he was fighting an uphill battle. The power of the Church was supreme, and the voracious rodents didn’t exactly make sympathetic defendants. (This was two centuries after their ancestors had brought the Black Death to Europe.) So Chassenée did his best to delay and derail the trial. He argued, for example, that the rats were too spread out to have heard the summons. In response, the vicar asked every church in every parish harboring the animals to publicize the trial.

When the rodents still didn’t show, Chassenée claimed that the journey to into town was too dangerous. Not only would the rats have to travel vast distances to reach Autun, they’d need to avoid the watchful eyes and sharp claws of their mortal enemy, the cat. Surely the vicar was aware, he said, that defendants could refuse to appear at trial if they feared for their own safety.

When that didn’t work, Chassenée appealed to the court’s sense of humanity: It wasn’t fair to punish all rats for the crimes of a few. “What can be more unjust than these general proscriptions,” he asked, “which destroy indiscriminately those whom tender years or infirmity render equally incapable of offending?” The vicar, whether moved by Chassenée’s words or simply exhausted by his objections, adjourned the proceedings indefinitely.

This was just one in a long line of cases of Europeans taking animals to court. The earliest incident dates back to 824, when an ecclesiastical judge excommunicated a group of moles in Italy’s Aosta Valley. In 1314, a French court sentenced a bull to hang for goring a man with his horn. In 1575, the Parisian parliament sent a donkey to the stake for having sexual relations with a man. And in 1864, a Slovenian pig was tried and executed for biting the ears off an infant.

In hundreds, perhaps thousands, of proceedings throughout the continent, animals were treated just like human defendants. The courts appointed them lawyers, heard testimony from witnesses, and considered the possibility of pardon or parole. Even the punishments were surprisingly human—though not particularly humane.

Some creatures were drawn and quartered. Others were stoned to death. And still others were tied to the rack, their cries a form of confession. Due process for animals was so highly valued that when a hangman in Germany took matters into his own hands before the trial of a sow had commenced, he was permanently banished from his village.

What was the point of these trials?

Scholars disagree. Some say they were merely a way to dispatch troublesome animals. But why all the pomp and circumstance? Why not just run a sword through them (or sic a cat on them) and be done with it? Others say the proceedings were an attempt to impose order on an increasingly chaotic world—a means to assert man’s god-given dominion over often unpredictable creatures during a time when we were living in closer quarters with them than at any point in our history. By putting animals on trial, we ascribed them rational thought, and thus we were able to make better sense of their actions. And still other scholars claim that our forbearers simply made less of a distinction between man and beast than we do today, at least for legal purposes. Animals were given human trials because they had human standing in a court of law.

Today, we put a different animal on trial, but the reasons appear remarkably similar. We dragged rats and pigs before judges in medieval Europe because they had violated the cosmic order. Today, we have a new cosmic order: a world where pets are family. When dogs treat us as enemies instead of as friends, they violate this order. And we punish them in kind. We put them on trial in an attempt to restore the world as it should be—or at least, as we would like it to be.

The way we punish these dogs also shares similarities to the penalties of the past. Today’s sentences may be carried out with a lethal injection behind the closed doors of a city shelter, but are they so different from the hanging of bulls in the town square? In the case of Taro the Akita, justice took a more favorable turn: In 1994, after three years and more than $100,000 had been spent on the case, the state’s new governor—acting on a campaign promise—pardoned the pooch.

The post Why Do Americans Put Pets, Not Their Owners, on Trial? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.