What is solidarity?

Aug 13

Summary

In this episode, Sarah Stachowiak joins Carolina and Vidhya in reflecting transparently on our financial relationship. How does the owning class’s control over manufacturing processes and products show up in the knowledge economy and the evaluation of public and nonprofit/ nongovernmental programs? What does it mean for the “raw material” (data about/ from program participants)? For the “independence” of knowledge workers, who market ourselves in terms of how much more value we produce for the people who pay for our goods and services? Can we think of financial exchange differently? How could we organize accountability in knowledge work horizontally across class status—not necessarily around shared experiences of oppression, but rather around shared resistance against it?

⁠⁠Episode 4 transcript⁠

Notes

1:30: In solidarity with the Duwamish, we lift up this petition for federal recognition as well as their reparations program, Real Rent
6:47: The 2014 Statement against Grand Jury Verdicts that the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Critical Educators for Social Justice Special Interest Group (SIG) made is no longer available online, but the American Educational Research Association (AERA) made another statement on the Charleston Shootings and Racism in America in 2015
8:47: AEA Sends Condolences to Mass Shooting Victims and Community

The American Evaluation Association is deeply saddened by the recent mass shootings that took place earlier this month in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Our thoughts, prayers, and support go out to the victims, their families, and their communities.

AEA’s vision is to foster an inclusive, diverse, and international community of practice, positioned as a respected source of information for and about the field of evaluation. We value excellence in evaluation practice, utilization of evaluation finding, and inclusion and diversity in the evaluation community.

Our collective work as an association supports our mission, vision, and values. Therefore, we do not condone organizations or behaviors that support supremacy, separatist, or nationalist ideologies.

Our mission includes supporting the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action. Authoritarian values and actions that devalue any member of society are not supported by the American Evaluation Association.

Many of our members are improving programs that unite communities, whether through overcoming tragedy, poverty, civil rights violations or diversity issues, to name a few.

If you are working in Texas or Ohio to support the recovery efforts of these mass shootings, please contact AEA Executive Director, Anisha Lewis, so AEA can share your story and connect you with others who may wish to contribute.
10:12: It was more like 6 weeks later, not 6 months later that the Advocacy & Policy Change TIG issued a statement!
11:35: The only other statement that we are aware of AEA having made was issued in 2003. It advocated for methodological pluralism, in response to the federal government’s privileging of randomized controlled trials. Our understanding is that this statement was not universally supported by membership and some people left the professional association as a result. It seems to no longer be available on AEA’s website.
33:11: Former President George H. W. Bush's rhetoric about a “Kinder, Gentler Nation” contrasts sharply with his campaign as well as his domestic and foreign policies when he was in office.
35:29: Less profit/ income/ wealth means lower tax payments for businesses or individuals whose tax bracket (which is based on income) is high enough that they list out expenses on their taxes to reduce how much they pay in taxes to support public goods and services. Tax codes encourage philanthropic foundations to grant 5% of their wealth, which allows them to grow the remaining 95% of their wealth without paying taxes on their accumulated wealth. Wealthy families created this tax code in the middle of the last century to minimize their tax burden while allowing them to continue to influence society by shaping education, public health, social policy, etc. in ways that serve their exploitation of labor and extraction of land.
35:48: Especially without state regulations, when very few people own everything involved in the way that things are made and distributed, including whether for profit and who gets that profit, those few people control how and how much things are made and who makes them. But they also control civil society and the state. So, democratizing ownership can redistribute and decentralize both economic and political power (Gamble & Kelly, 1996).