Banned: Abortion in Nicaragua

My final piece as a research associate/intern at COHA was press released a few days ago. A link to it is below:

To Risk Not Saving a Life: Abortion Ban in Nicaragua and Its Societal Implications

Check it out and give me feedback. Criticism is always more than welcome.

It was a really interesting piece to write, as the abortion ban encompasses a lot of issues (religion, public health, gender roles, etc.) that Latin America is facing as it tries to balance its traditional values with a growing desire to modernize and adapt to technological advances. In this case, obviously, the traditional values won out, but this balancing act is anything but over.

Contrast This

"Compare and contrast." As a student, it seems that nearly every assignment I've ever had to complete deals with comparing and contrasting one person/issue/text to another. The question seemed to come up again on Thursday, this time when Mitt Romney made his speech, "Faith in America" at George Bush Sr.'s Presidential Library in Texas about being a Mormon running for president. A lot of people immediately rushed to make comparisons to JFK's speech (also in Texas) regarding his running for the presidency while being a Catholic.

Even Romney, in his speech, couldn't get away from the supposed comparison:

"Almost 50 years ago another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for President, not a Catholic running for President. Like him, I am an American running for President."

However, beyond that, there are few similarities between the two men or their speeches. Kennedy, although a proud Catholic, did not want to bring faith into his campaign, since he believed that there were more pressing practical issues that faced the nation:

"I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida--the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power--the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms--an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space."

A bit dated, yes, but the message still rings rings very loudly and clearly. JFK, who went on in his speech to talk about how much he revered the concept of separation of church and state upon which this country was founded did not want faith to play a pivotal role in the election.

Romney, however, in his speech, demonstrated that he thinks otherwise:

"I'm moved by the Lord's words: 'For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me...'"

Faith, he made clear, is an inherent part of America. I couldn't care less that Romney happens to be a Mormon and is running for president. What I do care about is whether or not his idea of America is one that includes all Americans. He says on Thursday, "We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders...I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'" He went out of his way to isolate certain segments of the American population (namely atheists) in order to make the bond between religion and the state even stronger, something to which the Founders were very opposed.

This is not what JFK did. Kennedy was a religious man, but he was a tolerant man. He understood that religion was private and that it need not be imposed on others. Most importantly, he used his Texas speech about religion to emphasize that religion should not be made into an election concern; communism, poverty, and the elderly were simply too important. Romney, on the other hand, must think otherwise. Even spoke 18 more minutes longer than Kennedy, he didn't mention domestic or international issues after the first minute. To him, religion and its attachment to the state is just as important as any other issue in the election.

Compare and contrast Romney to JFK? In order to compare the two, we would first need to find some commonalities, and other than the Massachusetts connection, it's gonna be a while before any more of those pop up. Meanwhile, the contrasting could go on forever.

A New Domain and an Old Game

So, after a lot of time (and help from the Blogger help board), I finally have registered www.michaelglenwick.com and made it the home for my blog. Going to livefromthemountaintop.blogspot.com will still take you to my (hopefully) weekly posts, so it's your call. The new domain won't change much, just the fact that no one else with the same name--yes, you, the one with the sex podcast--has the rights to michaelglenwick.com

I recently finished reading The Thumpin' by Naftali Bendavid about how Congressman and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chair Rahm Emanuel led the Democrats to victory in the '06 congressional races. Aside from highlighting Emanuel's unique nature as a politician, Bendavid explored in (sometimes too much) detail how elections are won and lost. In 2006, they were often out of even savviest Democrats' hands; according to Bendavid, one of the biggest reasons why Emanuel was able to end the "Republican Revolution" was because of Republican mistakes, not Democratic advances. From New Orleans to Baghdad (and don't forget about corruption scandal after corruption scandal), the Republicans' reputation was its worst in more than a decade, and the Democrats were in a unique position to take advantage of that.

At the same time, however, Bendavid notes--in his most important paragraph--that only a select number of politicians would have been able to utilize and stretch the resources the DCCC had and gain 30 new House seats. For two years, Emanuel's life revolved around the '06 election. He didn't get more than four hours of sleep a night, his health suffered measurably, and he barely got to see his wife and kids. But he was committed to the Democratic cause like no one else, which is largely why Baltimore-native Nancy Pelosi (who knew that a Democratic victory would make her the first female Speaker of the House) entrusted him with heading the DCCC.

Like any sport, a good team wins by playing well but also by having a committed player or two being in a position to take advantage of the other team's mistakes (advice my beloved NY Knicks would do well to heed). Whether or not we want to admit it, politics is a sport in many senses like any other, and in '06 Emanuel was that player. Liberals didn't like him for pushing more conservative Democrats in many of the more moderate races, and conservatives despised him for his recentnesses in pursuing the Democratic cause.

But he didn't care.

Emanuel couldn't have done it on his own, but the Dems couldn't have retaken the House without him either. With Congress up for grabs again in '08 (yes, there is more to the '08 election than the presidential race), reading Bendavid's book is the least that we--Democrats and Republicans--can do to prepare us for what is sure to be an exciting political season.

Argentina and Its Minorities (or Lack Thereof)

On Thursday, my latest piece for COHA--coauthored with Director Larry Birns--was released online. It was a really interesting (and fun) piece to write, and it was definitely a good experience researching and learning about an issue (or two) with which I wasn't too familiar a few months ago. It took a while for us to get the piece out, but I hope/think it was worth the wait.

Hopefully there will be a longer post in the next week, but for now, I've got tests and essays to focus on.

Check out the link above--feedback appreciated as always.

Thanksgiving can't come soon enough!

Values Turned Upside-Down

It's finally November, the time where, in previous years, primary season tended to heat up. This time four years ago, stories about Howard Dean, John Kerry, and John Edwards and the fight for the 2004 Democratic nomination were beginning to get coverage, and eight years ago, there was talk on the Republican side about who would challenge the relatively obvious choice for the Democratic nomination, Al Gore. This time around, however, we've been talking about '08 since November '06, basically a year ahead of time.

Obama and Hillary. Guliani and Romney. On the one hand, it seems like they've been getting all the airplay and all the media's attention. On the other hand, however, if one only listens to the talk around a college campus and browses some of the internet's most popular news sites, it becomes clear that we have a few other (apparently more important) things on our mind.

Like Hollywood.

In a relatively simple--but still revealing--graph made by Google Trends, I compared the volume of online news hits between Hillary Clinton and Britney Spears over the past twelve months. Like her life, Britney's graph has plenty of highs and lows (with her "high" following her MTV VMAs embarassment), but it's been consistently above the number of news hits for Hillary. Meanwhile, in another graph comparing the number of news hits for Republican front-runner Rudy Guliani to Harry Potter--who isn't even a real person--one gets the same results. I don't know about most people, but the fact that more people seem to care about a wizard's quiditch skills than a potential president's foreign policy is a bit disconcerting, to say the least.

Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert's unofficial primary election Facebook group--1,000,000 Strong for Stephen Colbert--has more than 1.3 million members. The group that inspired the Colbert group was Barack Obama's One Million Strong for Barack, with not even 400,000 members. Even a similar group protesting supposedly polarizing Hillary (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary) just recently celebrated making it halfway to one million. The pro-Obama and the anti-Hillary group don't even come close to combining to surpass the total's for Colbert--a fake candidate running a fake campaign in a single state.

What does the fact that Britney, Potter, and Colbert have generated more excitement and online hits than our country's potential future leaders mean? I'm not quite sure, but it's definitely worth thinking about. Will more people vote in the next American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, or whatever show some TV station comes up with next than the '08 pimaries?

Priorities and values are key insights into what a society is about. And right now, our priorities and values are mixed up, and it's about time we took notice.

Escaping Retirement in BMore

With his second CD coming out since his so-called "retirement", Jay-Z seems to have been unable to move beyond what was considered before his retirement to be one of the most successful rap (and maybe music) careers in the past fifty years. He made his name largely off of the same themes and beats as other rappers, but, due to a lot of skill and a little luck, he rose above them all.

And then, in 2003, Jay retired as a solo artist, committing himself to collaborative work (an album with the rock/hip hop group Linkin Park), entrepreneurial endeavors (heading Def Jam Records and having a partial stake in the NJ/Brooklyn Nets), and activism (supporting the UN's Water for Life Campaign). He had found other things to do, and seemed relatively happy...having Beyonce around probably didn't hurt either.

But only a few years later, he pulled an MJ and came back from retirement. Now, with his second post-"retirement" album on the way, he's doing a mini-tour, travelling to the five most important cities in America: New York, LA, Chicago, Philly, and, of course, my adopted home of Baltimore. How much could such a concert cost? $30? $50? $75?

$100.

That's right, $100. Like Jordan, he might not have the same game he had when he retired. But also like Jordan, he's still go the same name and the history to boot. And it's making me consider shelling out a hundred bucks to see him. Am I crazy? Probably. Alicia Keys' upcoming concert in DC is "only" $50, and Jay probably isn't twice as good (although that could be debated).

But how often does such an opportunity come around? He's up there with the greatest, and it'd be unlikely that I'd ever get to see him again. Tickets for Game 7 of the World Series on StubHub are going for a minimum of $850 and most others in the four (or even five) digits.

I don't splurge often, but if I travelled to DC from New York to see Jordan in a Wizards uniform one last time (even if it wasn't the same guy who hit the game-winner against the Jazz in '98), why not do the same to see Jay-Z before he hangs it up (even if he isn't the same guy from the classic Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life, which also came came out in '98)?

Hey, it just might be worth it.

The State Department and I

So finally the whole COHA-Haiti drama appears to be over. More than a month after my piece on Préval was published, the article was taken down from COHA's website due to the negative responses to my criticism of the Aristide government. (Remember, the piece wasn't even about Aristide but Préval.) COHA's director (my boss), Larry Birns, wrote an apologetic piece praising the criticism of me and disassociating himself and the organization from my views. Meanwhile, my original piece is all over the internet anyway, which, for better or for worse, cannot be erased. All in all, I'm happy with the ending. COHA did what it believed was necessary to preserve its reputation, and I had the opportunity to stand by my work. There are two sides to any story, and maybe this was the best possible compromise.

Most interesting, however, was NarcoNews' response to Birns' piece. (NarcoNews, if you remember, put out the original criticism of my work.) In the piece--which, overall, was complimentary of Birns' retraction (and COHA itself) but critical of the writing and editing process that goes on at COHA--the writer, Dan Feder, couldn't resist attacking my work again calling it "...another report full of dishonest rhetoric and innuendo better suited to the State Department than a critical organization purportedly committed to the defense of democracy in the Carribean and Latin America."

Talk about a loaded sentence fragment! First, if Feder believes all of my work was dishonest rhetoric and innuendo, then he might as well check the 99% of my article that dealt with my analysis of the current state of democracy in Haiti, which no one at NarcoNews has addressed. And if anyone's guilty of biased rhetoric and innuendo, that would be the radical, ideologically driven folks at Narco and not me.

Second, and most interestingly, was the comparison between my work and that of the State Department and the suggestion that the State Department isn't committed to democracy. As someone who would love to one day work at the State Department to help promote democracy in our own hemisphere and elsewhere, could I have received a better backhanded compliment? Rather than post online ramblings forever (which is what the people Narco seem content to do), I hope to to be in a position in which I can actually impact international society and support both the strengthening of democracy and America's reputation abroad. What better place to do that than in the State Department?

So thanks, NarcoNews. You might not have realized it, but you made my day. It's only a few Metro stops and a quick transfer from COHA's office to the State Department's headquarters so, hey, you never know.

Guilty and Charged

So I was reading the Times today, and as I tend to do, I drifted toward the op-ed pieces and came across this article by Thomas Friedman on the role of our generation (Generation Q, in his terminology) in effecting change in global society. On the one hand, as he points out, we do more than should be expected of us given the in-many-ways depressing state of global affairs; from building homes in El Salvador to working in AIDS clinics, members of our generation do a great deal to assist the rest of the world in bits and pieces.

But that's where it ends.

Beyond that, we are helpless. When we see a problem with society, we sign a petition or write a blog (case in point). We turn inward and do something on an individual level, seemingly oblivious to the power that a mass movement can have. From climate change to the growing deficit, there are a number of causes worth fighting for, but how far do we go in that fight? I agree with Friedman that we don't go as far as we can, but I don't know that a return to the '60s-style protest movement would be either practical or successful.

The question, then, is what can be successful? How can we mobilize one another to step out of the library (something us at Hopkins--including myself--do all too infrequently) and create meaningful change? The Iraq War might be a starting point, and obviously the anti-Vietnam War movement would be the model; however, there isn't going to be a draft anytime soon, so it's doubtful that most of us would get up off the couch for that. This is sad, since it suggests that the only causes society finds worth fighting for are the ones that directly impact us as individuals, and there aren't many of those that are shared by enough people to generate a movement.

I am as guilty as anyone of contributing to the aforementioned problems. The blogs won't go (sorry), but hopefully we can find an additional way or two to take things to another, more effective level that unites--rather than isolates--a very critical generation.

P.S. Don't expect any more baseball pieces for a while now that the Yanks are out. The salaries of three of the four teams (Cleveland, Arizona, and Colorado) have a combined salary less than the Yankees do (while the Yankees are debating shelling out more than $30 million next year to resign A-Rod). Worth noting? I think so.

Weathermen Don't Determine the Seasons

It might still be hot here in Baltimore, but fall is officially here. The baseball playoffs got started this week with some regular faces but a few unusual ones. My hometown team, the $195 million (that's excluding Roger Clemens' pro-rated $28 million contract) Yankees, made it into the postseason, with the usual fanfare; if they don't make it all the way to Broadway for a ticker-tape parade, the season will be declared a failure. Meanwhile, the $54 million Colorado Rockies, $52 million Arizona Diamondbacks, and $61 million Cleveland Indians are all in the mix, too, all with a legit shot of making noise this October. Three teams--all in the bottom half in the majors in terms of team salary--with a shot at winning the World Series...sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?

As much as I want my Yankees to win (and I do), there is something attractive about the fact that a few of these second-tier teams are at least competing with the likes of the Yanks, Red Sox, Angels, and Cubs (all with salaries at or above $100 million). And, along with the fact that the $100+ million Mets, White Sox, Dodgers, and Mariners are all sitting at home this October, I think it's a compelling enough reason to silence any arguments in support of a salary cap. The playoffs are always interesting, regularly competitive, and most times exciting, due in part to the unique nature of the teams' economic (but also historical and regional) relationships with one another.

So now, fourteen days or so after the calendar said so, fall is underway. I'll still be rooting for the Yankees--seven years without a 'chip is seven years too many--but I hope the frugal Rockies or D'Backs make a run for it, as well. (I can't say I feel the same way about the Indians, whose series with the Yanks gets underway in fewer than 24 hours.) Money is one of a number of powerful tools in both baseball and life, and only time will tell if is powerful enough to vault the Yanks back into the late-October limelight.

A Tricky Balance

The other day, David Simon—creator of HBO’s The Wire and former writer for the Baltimore Sun—came to speak to the Johns Hopkins and greater Baltimore communities about his thoughts on the state of the media in America. Surprisingly, given the changes that the Internet and digital cable have brought in expanding the variety of options people have, Simon was quite pessimistic. He painted a depressing picture of the media (one of the beauties of HBO is the fact that no one has to worry about commercials and how the viewers will react to a commercial break). On a larger scale, however, he was pessimistic about the future of the city that he loves and, to an extent, the country.

Why does Simon, known more for the unique characters and plotlines he devises in The Wire than for his political savvy, believe Baltimore is headed (or already in the midst of) a downward spiral? According to him, it is no longer guaranteed—as he thinks was the case fifty years ago in this city—that people who work hard and honestly will be better off than their parents and grandparents were. Industries (like some revolving around the longeshoremen in the Baltimore ports that Simon covers in Season Two) are going by the wayside, and there don’t appear to be replacements at the ready.

Technology and globalization were two of Simon’s reason for the stated trend. With cheaper labor elsewhere and mechanized labor in other places, it has become easier and easier to lay workers off and replace them with others in other countries. Globalization has obviously been a big boon for the world (and certainly most Americans); we can buy more goods at cheaper prices, and our quality of life has risen accordingly. Thanks to globalization, most members of American society can do things we never could have dreamed of in the yesteryear to which Simon refers. In addition, many members of world society have prospered and owe their newfound wealth to what Thomas Friedman would call the “flattening” of the world.

But what about those other people, right here in our own cities, our own country? What are we to do with those who can’t hold on and are living in an endless cycle of poverty and despair? One answer might be to just let them go, but that seems—to me at least—to be too easy. The question, then, is what do we do, and how do we balance our desire for a globalized world with the need to protect our own country’s citizens? Or do we actually need to, if we truly consider all human beings equal? Is there a difference between hardworking man in Nairobi and a man looking for employment in Baltimore? To be honest, I’m not sure, but it’s a question that we as citizens of the United States (but also of the world) will have to grapple with in the 21st century.

The Beauty of the First Amendment

As some of you might know, I've been interning for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs for a short while now. The Council (or simply COHA) aims to provide its readership with a sense of what is going on in the Western Hemisphere--from Canada to Chile--politically, economically, and socially. So far, it's been an incredible experience; I've learned an incredible deal about what goes into producing internationally reputable work on a subject I'm interested in, and I recently published my first piece for COHA, something which I was very excited about.

It's titled "Préval of Haiti--A Provisional Report Card: Grade B+" and goes into a fair amount of detail analyzing the current state of the Haitian government and the status of democracy and democratic institutions there. In doing so, I aimed to provide a bit of context to set the stage for the Préval government. I hoped to show the bleak landscape that awaited Préval after his election a year ago. Both heads of state (President Aristide, who was ousted in a coup, and Prime Minister Lartortue, who ran an interim government following that coup) failed miserably at their jobs. Neither garnered the respect of the international community, and both are considered miserable failures.

A week after the piece went up, a quick Google search led me to an article in the radical Narco News--this one a direct rebuttal to my own article. In it, the writer, Joe Emersberger, ignores the main point of my article (that Préval has done an infinitely better job of leading a government that is much more democratic in practice than did either of the past two leaders). Instead, he focuses on how I characterize the Aristide and Latortue regimes: "Citing no evidence, Glenwick equates Aristide to Latortue by writing that Aristide’s time in office was an 'equally rocky period.'" First and foremost, I’d hope that citing Haiti’s rigged elections in 2000 that led the United States, Europe, and the International Community in general to withdraw aid would be enough evidence. Second, the folks at Narco seemed to be under the impression that I came down easy on Latortue; in describing his term, I wrote of the “hundreds—if not thousands—of opposition party members [who] were murdered.” I don’t know what Emersberger thinks, but that’s not exactly high praise in my book.

Neither Aristide nor Latortue were quality leaders. In fact, they were far from it. Both had dictator-like moments, and neither reflected the democracy that is a fundamental part of the Haitian constitution. It was not my goal to determine which ruler was worse than the other; they both were extremely flawed, governed poorly, and did not gain the respect of many people outside of their own party. All I intended to convey was the fact that Préval had a lot of work to do. How that is interpreted is up to the reader, but I believe I did my job. Lastly, my piece was about Préval, not Aristide or Latortue. For the people at Narco to not even mention the focus of my article is a disservice to their own credibility and, more importantly, their readership.

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. It’s what has separated our country from so many others for so long and is one of the biggest reasons why I am so proud to be an American. Do I support Narco News’s right to criticize my article? Absolutely. Do I agree with Emersberger’s criticism? No, and I believe that his criticism is severely flawed, misconstruing my minor points and ignoring my main ones.

P.S. My newest piece, on microcredit in Latin America, is now up on http://www.coha.org/. Let the criticism (and maybe even some praise?) begin!

The Name, The Photo, The Blog

So there might be a few things that need to be clarified before this blog gets going.

First, yes, I am the real Michael Glenwick, rather than a man of the same name residing somewhere in Texas who has a sex podcast. I do not know this man, and I have nothing to do with him. A google search will bring up his podcast before anything having to do with me...I can only hope that this blog gets more hits than his online sex talk sooner or later. I do not know how this 26-year old Dallas-native got his name, and I couldn't care less. All I know is that this is where you will find the real Michael Glenwick's thoughts. And, yes, Jordan is my middle name.

Second, and most importantly, the name of my blog--Live From the Mountaintop--is a reference and a tribute to the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his final speech, given in Memphis on April 3, 1968. In that speech, . King said he had reached the mountaintop, looked over, and saw the promised land. He said he might not get there with the rest of us, and he was right. But what he might not have known is that today, in 2007, we are in, many aspects, in the same place, treading water before getting to that promised land. Certainly, we've made tremendous gains, but we've still got a lot of work to do. According to the Census, 37 million Americans are impoverished and 47 million citizens are without healthcare. These are just some of the problems we still have to face, and those are just two of the reasons why we are still very much hovering on top of the mountain., unable to journey down.