Thursday, May 25, 2017

A Jobless Utopia?

DAVID MCDERMOTT HUGHES
In 1905 the Spanish writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez described the horrible conditions of day laborers in the vineyards outside Jerez. Barely paid, almost starving, and sleeping on hay, the day laborers in Blasco Ibáñez’s novel, La Bodega, stumble through life as “cadavers, with twisted spines and dry limbs, deformed and clumsy.”
But Blasco Ibáñez—a sort of Dickens of Andalusia—imagines a different fate for his protagonist. Our hero escapes with his fiancée to South America, “that young world” where land ownership is not a prerequisite for a good life. “What an Eden,” the narrator interjects, “so much better for the eager and strong peasant, a slave until then in body and soul to those who do not work.” The lovers “would be new, innocent, and industrious.” The novel ends happily—there is no doubt of that—but on a mixed metaphor, with an Eden where people work hard. Indeed Blasco Ibáñez’s term for “industrious”—laborioso—also translates as “toilsome.”
What sort of Eden is this, where women and men till the soil? In Genesis, Adam and Eve simply pick fruit from orchards in perpetual bloom. At the Fall, God invents work as punishment and commands his children, “You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your own brow.” Blasco, however, views a certain form of labor as a reward, and most social critics have shared this perspective. Like most myths, Eden tolerates ambiguity.
Much of the world is approaching the end of work, in which machines and computers will replace virtually all human effort in the production of goods and services.

Now reformers everywhere may have to resolve the dilemma of toilsome versus leisurely Edens. Much of the world is approaching what Jeremy Rifken calls “the end of work” and, more recently, “the zero marginal cost society.” In a zero marginal cost society, machines and computer algorithms replace virtually all human effort in the production of goods and services.
Rural Andalusia never had much retail, but its interior villages used to grow a variety of crops under the laborious conditions described by Blasco Ibáñez. In the last two decades, however, an almost effortless form of green energy has moved in. Wind turbines now crowd the terrain and there are few jobs, agricultural or otherwise. As an anthropologist, I began visiting a village familiar with these machines, hoping to see how people live with unemployment within a landscape that has been transformed from fields into electrical infrastructure.
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In the tiny, four-hundred-person settlement of La Zarzuela, spindly poles rise up ninety meters to loom over fields exotically—menacingly to some. With a smooth efficiency, sixty-meter blades propel current to people far away. The energy is clean in every sense. Once constructed and erected, a turbine consumes no raw materials. It produces no pollution. It also requires next to no maintenance.
“They are robots,” boasted the manager of the largest wind farm. Indeed the company that owns that farm—the Spanish firm Acciona—is so confident in automation that it does not even have a twenty-four-hour control room on site. Instead screens in Mexico monitor La Zarzuela’s farm alongside hundreds of wind farms worldwide.
Meanwhile unemployed men of a certain age cluster at two bars. Supported by Spain’s social safety net, they think only sporadically about finding work. These men endured hard labor in their youth, but no one wants to return to that now. When machinery replaced the hoe and sickle, day laborers learned to drive tractors, a modest technology more like a motorcycle than a robot. But turbines upset that balance between device and operator, effectively dispensing with the latter, and as my drinking mates see it, turbines are jobs gone missing.
In a way clean energy is too clean, too divorced from the people and social context around it. Proponents of wind power—and I count myself in this group—will succeed or fail based on our ability to solve this problem. What should the balance of work and leisure be after fossil fuels? How should we imagine utopia?
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La Zarzuela huddles in a valley just north of the Straits of Gibraltar. There the pressure gradient between marine and terrestrial zones stimulates constant wind. Extending inland, two ridges frame the village in a V. They often funnel the strong, east wind, el Levante, into a howling squall. It has scoured the vegetation down to scrub bushes, the indigenous acebuche, and locals do not bother to plant trees, except for palms. El Levante creates the perfect conditions for wind power. Construction of wind farms began in 1999 and proceeded in spates.
Saving the planet from catastrophic climate change is going to be inconvenient.

When I arrived in mid-2015, almost 250 turbines were clustered within a roughly 3-by-6-mile strip. Three companies own the farms, which are called parques eolicos, since the notion of a wind “park” is meant to calm concern. But protests have dogged the turbines in La Zarzuela and in many other places as well. People object to the visual impact, the constant noise, and the strobe-like shadows cast in various times and seasons. In 2006 and 2007, as the government authorized another expansion, residents of La Zarzuela rallied against the “masificacion de molinos” (the massing of the windmills). They blocked a road, preventing construction equipment from reaching the site, rallied at the municipal town hall in Tarifa, and then lost. Big Wind—as critics term Acciona and similarly sized firms—almost always wins.
At the El Pollo bar, I found men still nursing a grudge.
“I am annoyed,” declared La Zarzuela’s mayor, a short stocky man known for blunt talk. Osvaldo Santiago (a pseudonym, as are all the names below) works as a foreman in the port of Algeciras, just across a narrow bay from Gibraltar itself.
Nadie! Nadie!” he says while jabbing at my stomach. “No one, no one” has gotten a job from these monstrous blades. Local unemployment is 40 percent, he tells me. The turbines only require a few maintenance workers—educated, skilled technicians of the sort you won’t find in rural Andalusia. Santiago, who hangs out with the captains and deck hands of container ships, cannot quite believe that such large hunks of steel can run themselves.
We can expect more such conflict and resentment. Denmark generates roughly 40 percent of its electricity from wind; Spain follows at roughly 20 percent. For now proponents and opponents agree on one tacit principle: that turbines should stay out of the way and preferably out of sight. Installers run them along ridges, in the empty spaces between settlement, or out at sea. But even this last option can provoke staunch resistance. Well-connected residents of Hyannis, Massachusetts, all but killed the 130-turbine Cape Wind project in the 2000s because they contended it would “pollute” their ocean views. Americans seem to prefer their windmills in Iowa, west Texas, and eastern Oregon, hinterlands where few people (and fewer rich people) live and vote. Unfortunately much of that electricity dies on the cables, never reaching refrigerators and light bulbs hundreds of miles away. Therein lies the problem: to power the grid with 100 percent renewables, every society will need to put wind farms and solar farms in places where the wind blows, where the sun shines, and where consumers of electricity live. Saving the planet from catastrophic climate change is going to be inconvenient.
Oil has been quite convenient, especially in terms of space. A hole in the ground less than three feet across can provide enough fuel to power a city. Even if one adds up all the infrastructure of rigs, pipelines, refineries, and gas stations, petroleum occupies very little land. Compare that modest footprint with the forests of colonial New England that were once obliterated to heat and light Boston. Those trees have returned, thanks to fossil fuels, and every Appalachian hiker benefits from that spatial subsidy (in addition to the gasoline that brings her to the trailhead). By refining compact kernels of hydrocarbon power, Americans liberated landscapes from servitude as fuel. Now, with great reluctance, we will have to reconsider this deal. Given that the arrangement will eventually cost us New Orleans, Miami, Boston, and New York, we clearly did not strike such a good bargain after all.
La Zarzuela provides a test case for a new deal between energy and landscapes. Against the will of the people, Big Wind converted field and pasture into an energy platform. The cost in acres was not immediately apparent; landowners still run cattle and plant crops around the turbines. But interior Andalusia had only recently begun attracting tourists, a promising new economic opportunity that the wind industry effectively squashed.
Labor gives us identity and, when it is good labor, the dignity and self-worth of a person fulfilled.

Alejandro Baptista knows about this defeat firsthand. His family owns the Doña Lola Hotel, a coastal resort, as well as the two-and-a-half-mile wind strip between the Atlantic and La Zarzuela. In 2004 the municipality surveyed that strip as a “vacation city.” Baptista dreamt of building holiday chalets and even a golf course, developments that would have employed the people of La Zarzuela. Tourism promised jobs and garnered local support, while the landowner stood poised to cash in.
Then turbines spoiled the vista. Baptista, who cannot imagine that a tourist would appreciate the whirring blades, opposed the turbines and joined the protest—up to the last minute, when he capitulated. Now he collects an annual rent, calibrated to the generating capacity of each of the fourteen turbines on his property. The money—approximately $2,500 per machine—falls far below what he might earn from tourism. But it vastly exceeds what any individual in La Zarzuela takes home.
Local residents believe that Baptista sold out. Big Wind cost Baptista his view and his reputation. Meanwhile turbines did nothing good for the local economy. The industrious Eden—possibly something like Blasco Ibáñez’s New World utopia—slipped away.
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But what is utopia to the men of La Zarzuela? Sugar beets used to be a major crop in the village, but they are tedious and arduous to grow. As a root crop, sugar beets require men to bend at the waist, manipulating the tuber in the soil with a long-handled hoe. First workers thin the crop, cutting out three of every four roots. Those gaps allow workers to then reach the roots when, some months later, they are harvested.
At El Pollo Diego tells me that the labor was “insoportable” and “durísima” (unbearable and hard). In the ninety-degree heat of summer, day laborers would load sugar beets directly onto trucks all day long. Using my pen and notebook, Diego does some calculations. Each truck would carry 20,000 kilograms, and a team of eight could fill two trucks, meaning each laborer would harvest 5,000 kilograms (or 11,000 pounds) per day. It sounds like a Herculean feat to me, and Diego looks me in the eye to convince me that he is not exaggerating. Next to him another veteran of the beet harvest runs fingers down his face, mimicking perspiration.
In a way clean energy is too clean, too divorced from the people and social context around it.

Still in disbelief at such a hellish outdoor sweatshop, I check with Baptista, who grew sugar beets from 1975 to 2009, long after other growers had given up. I expect him to understate the drudgery he imposed on day laborers, but instead he warms to the topic. Day laborers loaded and cleaned the beets at a pay rate of 1.10 peseta (about a penny) per kilogram. I get confused, thinking he has said 100 pesetas per kilogram. No, Baptista laughs gleefully, 1,100 pesetas per ton.
“Loaded and cleaned,” he repeats with enthusiasm.
When La Zarzuela’s men refused to break their backs in this way any longer, migrant laborers from Granada took over the harvest. Eventually the crop shifted to northern Spain, where it grows more economically, under irrigation and mechanical harvesting, and the Baptistas moved on to other crops, to hotels, and, of course, to turbines.
With little sadness, hard labor in La Zarzuela went extinct, but there is still nostalgia for less onerous forms of labor. In the Gazguez bar, just up the road from El Pollo, painted tiles show men cutting wheat with sickles and women carrying it away, and the barroom’s conversations about grain differ in tone from those about beets. A man named Jaime smiles, recalling how horses trampled the harvest. Men would then toss it in the air using pitchforks while women carried out drinks to them. This harvest brought families and neighbors together. Old men crowd around Jaime and me, describing their personal experiences, while those middle-aged or younger recall stories from their parents. Mateo explains that one winnowed wheat when el Poniente—the weaker, westerly wind—was blowing. Stronger gusts would have blown away the kernels with the chaff.
Although this work also took place in summer, no one recalls the heat or any sense of oppressive toil. No one mentions teams of workers, tonnages, or piecework, although I am speaking to the same men who had also handled beets. These men, mostly in their seventies, know a kind of work that adds to human dignity, family bonds, and the spirit of community. Pepe pays for my drink as he leaves, evidently pleased with our chat.
Hand winnowing ended in the 1960s with the arrival of a fixed threshing machine. Then, from 1975 onwards, combine harvesters took over. On the surface, wheat went the way of sugar beets, but no one in La Zarzuela sees them as parallels. Winnowing began as a task and became an expression of social life and environmental knowledge. It must have been arduous work sometimes, but not all the time. The painter of Gazguez’s tiles, for instance, overlooked the sweat on the brows of the men cutting and tossing grain. Between utter toil and joblessness lies this remembered Eden of labor. Can people in La Zarzuela fight their way—past combines and turbines—back to that utopia? Should they?
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Wind farms appear more restful than industrious. Workers do not surround the turbine or coax it to spin as do, say, drillers on an oil rig. Proponents argue that the expansion of the wind industry will generate hundreds of thousands of green jobs in the United States alone—far more than are now found in coal—as electricians, crane operators, and so on still have to install any given turbine. The “clean energy revolution” will bring a construction boom lasting a decade or two, they argue. But then the turbines will virtually run themselves.
With little sadness, hard labor in La Zarzuela went extinct, but there is still nostalgia for less onerous forms of work.

Clean energy is structured that way. Karl Marx, who knew nothing about turbines, described labor as “a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates, and controls the metabolism between himself and nature.” That metabolism converts raw materials into products and, also, into waste. Miners, for instance, extract iron ore from the ground; further work is required to refine it into workable metal and still more to manage the discarded rock.
A turbine is utterly different. Its raw material—if one can even call it that—blows downwind. No one needs to dig for the breeze. Kinetically-charged air simply arrives and turns the blades, and electricity flows to the grid. There is no product to carry and certainly no pollution to cart off, bury, or otherwise handle. The dirt, the dust, the pile, the load—the physical signs by which we know the dignity of labor—are all missing here. Where is the work?
With some effort on my own part, I find technicians around La Zarzuela. After driving my rental car through the wind farms, ignoring the warnings that say “Authorized Personnel Only,” I encounter Ramiro, a ruddy, bearded man in his fifties dressed in a blue uniform. He and his partner are sitting in their truck at the top of a rise, enjoying the view of La Zarzuela and the sea. I ask him about his job. It is great, he tells me. They pay whether he has to do anything or not—much better than working with “pico y pala,” pick and shovel. He also enthuses about nature, the view, and the tranquility of his wind farm. We chat for half an hour as blades swoosh gracefully around us. Then he drives off for his lunch break.
A few days later, I meet up with another technician named Jorge in Tarifa, the larger municipality to which La Zarzuela belongs. Jorge is active on social media, posting photos he takes of the turbines as well as photos of the view taken from atop them. He drives a black BMW, which I follow as he takes me to the beach outside town. We lean on the hood of his car, framed by waves on the west and bladed hillsides to the east. Jorge—who likes his job at least as much as Ramiro does—works on contract doing the infrequent refurbishing of the turbines. He is now fielding inquiries from as far away as Chile. Twenty-six years old and handsome, Jorge likens himself to a soccer player resting between global tours. Friends drive by and wave as he talks about nature, each of us gazing up at the turbines along the ridges.
Meanwhile electricity is surging from those turbines. On one of the arrays outside La Zarzuela, twenty machines generate two megawatts of electricity each. Only five technicians service those turbines, which means each worker produces eight megawatts of energy—with time leftover to shoot photos and take in the scenery. In the blow-zone of the straits, technology is enabling a lifestyle of relaxation, enjoyment, and beauty. Some might even call it a utopia.
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To live comfortably with wind power, we will have to set aside deep-rooted biases. From Marx to Blasco Ibáñez to Barack Obama, observers of society have hewed to what Max Weber called the Protestant Work Ethic: one should toil industriously, make a product, and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Leisure must be earned. Perhaps because of Eve’s trespass, readers of the Bible feel they do not automatically deserve idleness or even hobbies. Labor gives us identity and, when it is good labor, the dignity and self-worth of a person fulfilled.
By refining petroleum, we liberated landscapes from servitude as fuel. But given that the arrangement will cost us our coastal cities, it was not such a good bargain after all.

Some have dissented. In 1883 the Cuban-born writer Paul Lafargue advocated a “right to be lazy.” Modern machines, he found, produced enough to support both those working with them and a greater population made redundant by them. Lafargue, who married Karl Marx’s daughter after emigrating to London, also argued for shortening the work day. By 1930 the economist John Maynard Keynes was on board as well, predicting a machine-driven, post-work society. “Three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us,” he wrote, referring to the farmer after the Fall.
Some critics of capitalism now call for a “multi-activity society,” one that supports hobbies, sports, art, political action, and caring for children and parents. My state, New Jersey, has already embarked down that road—in an ecological fashion. The electrical grid pays me for doing nothing, though the transaction is complicated. In 1999 the Board of Public Utilities established an incentive program to encourage homeowners to install solar panels. As a beneficiary of this policy, I consume free electricity equivalent to my generation, meaning that I almost never pay an electric bill. But I also sell the “environmental attributes” of that electricity, known as a Solar Renewable Energy Certificate. I earn a certificate with every zero-carbon megawatt-hour I generate, which I can then auction to power companies so that they can include it in their quota of renewables, as mandated by state law. In other words, I get electricity for free and I earn more than $1,000 per year from my 22 rooftop panels. That second benefit compensates me, not for work or investment, but for environmental stewardship.
That planet-saving principle is sound, but other people deserve these payments more than homeowners in New Jersey. As they lose their jobs to solar power, coal miners and plant workers are reducing carbon emissions dramatically. Under the logic that pays me, they surely deserve their own, larger share of the $400 million annual market for New Jersey solar certificates. If I get a check for raising kids under my roof on a sunny weekend, then coal country ought to claim a subsidy for its no-wage, multi-activity society.
To agree to that transfer of resources, politicians and the public have to accept a place such as La Zarzuela for what it is. Many in the United States are likely to agree with hard-driving Santiago, the mayor in La Zarzuela, who cannot bear what he sees as idleness. He would prefer that his neighbors load freight, assisted by petroleum, from port of port. One should make something or move something—or, at the very least, perform a service that others value enough to pay for. We have been taught that we earn money “by the sweat of our own brows,” as God allegedly put it at the Fall. We should not, as before the Fall, simply receive bread because there is enough to go around. As long as this insistence upon production prevails, we will remain mired in a system of industry and energy completely unsuited to today’s ecological conditions. Perhaps, in order to relinquish fossil fuels, we need to learn to forgive ourselves and others for not working.
At El Pollo unemployed men and women come to drink beer and coffee. They pay with welfare money or wages from last summer’s tourism and they are, by and large, content. Nearby, the Caseta Municipal, the local club, offers free yoga classes for adults, soccer games for kids, and flamenco festivals for everyone. All the while massive robots do the serious, manual work. Some La Zarzuela residents might object to their appearance, but the turbines do their work without changing the climate—and to some, they even change the landscape for the better. To me, these circumstances seem as close to utopia as I could ever to expect to witness.
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An internal Google email shows how the company cracks down on leaks

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge


Google is facing a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court alleging that the company has fostered a culture of secrecy and fear. Leaks to the media are forbidden, and employees are encouraged to monitor their colleagues for leaks, according to the suit, which was filed in December by an anonymous ex-employee who claims they were unjustly fired.
We’re now seeing some of the first evidence to support those allegations. Earlier this month, attorneys for the plaintiffs entered an email as an exhibit in the case. The May 2016 document — one that has been previously quoted from in the lawsuit but not published in full — describes the result of an internal hunt for a leaker, mentioning a dedicated “stopleaks” internal email address, presumably directing to a team that the lawsuit claims is tasked with such investigations.
The story behind the all-staff email starts with an incident from last year. In April, Recodepublished internal, employee-generated memes roasting Nest CEO Tony Fadell for a decision to shut down products from Revolv, a company acquired by Nest. In response to the criticism, Fadell gave a talk at the company’s weekly TGIF meeting and claimed Nest’s culture, another subject of criticism, was “improving.” The transcript from the talk was then also published byRecode.
The internal email was sent a few weeks later, on May 6th, with the subject line “the recent leaks.” Written by Brian Katz, a former State Department special agent who now runs “investigations” at Google, it begins with a stern warning: “INTERNAL ONLY. REALLY.”
Katz introduces himself as the head of the “stop leaks” team, a group of employees that the lawsuit claims is tasked with tracing the source of information that makes its way to the public. Katz writes that the company identified and fired the leaker for “their intentional disregard of confidentiality.” As a result of the leaks, Google stopped publishing transcripts of its TGIF talks, opting for a live stream instead. (The plaintiff who brought the suit says he was falsely accused by Katz of being the source of the leaks.)
“We’ve all worked hard to create an environment where we can share information openly,” Katz writes. “Our culture relies on our ability to trust each other — we share a lot of confidential information, but we also commit to keeping it inside the company. We don’t want that to change.” He went on to encourage employees to share concerns with managers or through the human resources department, rather than airing them publicly. The Information noted in a story last year that, around the same time, Katz allegedly told employees in a webcast “to look to their left and look to their right,” saying one of those people may be leaking information.
Katz ended by writing that the conversation had turned “less than civil” inside Google, and points to conversations on internal Google tools like Memegen as problems. “Memegen, Misc, Internal G+, and our many discussion groups are a big part of our culture — they keep us honest — but like any conversation amongst colleagues, we should keep it respectful.”
The lawsuit alleges that Google’s leaks policy covers essentially all company information and prohibits reasonable discussion about company activities. The stop leaks team is a primary object of criticism in the suit, which alleges that the team encourages employees to report any suspicious activity from their colleagues and streamlined the leak-reporting process with a dedicated URL. The email references a dedicated email address as well: “stopleaks@”. Google declined to elaborate on how the stop leaks team works. An attempt at emailing the group resulted in a bounce.
related case was also recently brought to the National Labor Relations Board.
“We're very committed to an open internal culture, which means we frequently share with employees details of product launches and confidential business information,” a Google spokesperson told The Verge in a statement. “Transparency is a huge part of our culture. Our employee confidentiality requirements are designed to protect proprietary business information, while not preventing employees from disclosing information about terms and conditions of employment or workplace concerns."
The full text of the email is copied below.
Subject: The recent leaks
From: Brian Katz
To: Googlers
INTERNAL ONLY. REALLY.
Hi there. I’m Brian. I lead the Investigations team, which includes stopleaks@.
At TGIF a few weeks back we promised an update on our investigation into some recent leaks, and here it is: We identified the people who leaked the TGIF transcript and memes. Because of their intentional disregard of confidentiality, they’ve been fired.
We’ve all worked hard to create an environment where we can share information openly. Our culture relies on our ability to trust each other—we share a lot of confidential information, but we also commit to keeping it inside the company. We don’t want that to change.
That said, we’ll be making some changes to TGIF to help keep the information shared internal-only, starting by no longer posting the written transcript to go/tgif. Instead, you’ll be able to watch a live stream, and for those who can’t tune in live, we’ll be offering the full video with Q&A.
We’ll continue to share information internally because the vast majority of Googlers and Characters respect our culture and don’t leak—thank you for that. That commitment toward a common vision and goal makes this a special place to work.
Please remember: whether malicious or unintentional, leaks damage our culture. Be aware of the company information you share and with whom you share it. If you’re considering sharing confidential information to a reporter—or to anyone externally—for the love of all that’s Googley, please reconsider! Not only could it cost you your job, but it also betrays the values that makes us a community. If you have concerns or disagreements, share them constructively through your manager, HRBP or go/saysomething.
Which brings me to my final point: some of the recent discourse on Memegen and elsewhere within the company has been, shall we say, less than civil. Memegen, Misc, Internal G+ and our many discussion groups are a big part of our culture—they keep us honest—but like any conversation amongst colleagues, we should keep it respectful.
Brian Katz
Director, Protective Services, Investigations & Intelligence
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Wednesday, May 24, 2017

POWER POSES ARE NONSENSE

Research shows that, while people feel more in control after a "power pose," there are no significant changes in their overall behavior.


WHAT THE MEDIA SAYS

In December, Elite Daily touted "seven ways power poses can improve your health and your work life," citing a 2012 TED Talk given by the Harvard University social psychologist Amy Cuddy. The article reached millions of readers online; Good magazine followed up in January with a breathless post about Cuddy's "secret to self-confidence." This is just the latest exposure for power posing, which has garnered attention from outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as television shows like Brooklyn 99.

WHAT THE RESEARCH FOUND

Cuddy based her talk on studies of mock interviews. In one example, 66 Columbia University students were told to maintain either "high-power" (expansive, open)—à la Wonder Woman—or "low-power" (hunched over, closed) postures for several minutes while preparing a speech about their qualifications for their dream jobs, which they then presented to two hiring professionals. As Cuddy and her team predicted, participants who struck high-power poses "performed better and were more likely to be chosen for hire."

WHAT THE MEDIA MISSED

In 2015, a team led by University of Zurich researcher Eva Ranehill attempted to replicate Cuddy's study with a greater number of participants. They found that, while test subjects said they felt more powerful after posing, there were no significant changes in their behavior. A year later, University of Pennsylvania researchers studied the effects of power posing after a tug-of-war competition. Among both winners and losers, high-power poses had little to no effect on feelings of power, raising doubts about Cuddy's notion that posture can help you "fake it till you become it." One of Cuddy's co-authors even posted on her faculty page: "I do not believe that 'power pose' effects are real." Throughout it all, Cuddy has stood behind her research. So, strike poses if you like—but know the jury is still out on their tangible effects.
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TRANSCRIPT OF NEW ORLEANS MAYOR LANDRIEU’S ADDRESS ON CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS

Just hours before workers removed a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee — the fourth Confederate monument to be dismantled in New Orleans in recent weeks — Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave a special address at historic Gallier Hall.
Here’s a full transcript of Landrieu’s remarks:
Thank you for coming.
The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way – for both good and for ill.
It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans: the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Color, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of Francexii and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.
You see: New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures.
There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum — out of many we are one.

But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.
America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.
So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.
And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.
So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.
There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it. For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.
As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other.
So, let’s start with the facts.
The historic record is clear: the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.
First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy.
It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.
These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.
Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy.
He said in his now famous ‘Cornerstone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears, I want to try to gently peel from your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us and make straight a wrong turn we made many years ago so we can more closely connect with integrity to the founding principles of our nation and forge a clearer and straighter path toward a better city and more perfect union.
Last year, President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments about the need to contextualize and remember all of our history. He recalled a piece of stone, a slave auction block engraved with a marker commemorating a single moment in 1830 when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood and spoke from it.
President Obama said, “Consider what this artifact tells us about history … on a stone where day after day for years, men and women … bound and bought and sold and bid like cattle on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. For a long time the only thing we considered important, the singular thing we once chose to commemorate as history with a plaque were the unmemorable speeches of two powerful men.”
A piece of stone – one stone. Both stories were history. One story told. One story forgotten or maybe even purposefully ignored.
As clear as it is for me today … for a long time, even though I grew up in one of New Orleans’ most diverse neighborhoods, even with my family’s long proud history of fighting for civil rights … I must have passed by those monuments a million times without giving them a second thought.
So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race. I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes.
Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it?
Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too?
We all know the answer to these very simple questions.
When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can’t walk away from this truth.
And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.
This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and, most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong.
Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division, and yes, with violence.
To literally put the confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future.
History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.
And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African Americans — or anyone else — to drive by property that they own; occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd.
Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place.
Here is the essential truth: we are better together than we are apart. Indivisibility is our essence. Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world?
We radiate beauty and grace in our food, in our music, in our architecture, in our joy of life, in our celebration of death; in everything that we do. We gave the world this funky thing called jazz; the most uniquely American art form that is developed across the ages from different cultures.
Think about second lines, think about Mardi Gras, think about muffaletta, think about the Saints, gumbo, red beans and rice. By God, just think. All we hold dear is created by throwing everything in the pot; creating, producing something better; everything a product of our historic diversity.
We are proof that out of many we are one — and better for it! Out of many we are one — and we really do love it!
And yet, we still seem to find so many excuses for not doing the right thing. Again, remember President Bush’s words, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other. We justify our silence and inaction by manufacturing noble causes that marinate in historical denial. We still find a way to say “wait, not so fast.”
But like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “wait has almost always meant never.”
We can’t wait any longer. We need to change. And we need to change now. No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well. If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain.
While some have driven by these monuments every day and either revered their beauty or failed to see them at all, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans see them very clearly. Many are painfully aware of the long shadows their presence casts, not only literally but figuratively. And they clearly receive the message that the Confederacy and the cult of the lost cause intended to deliver.
Earlier this week, as the cult of the lost cause statue of P.G.T Beauregard came down, world renowned musician Terence Blanchard stood watch, his wife Robin and their two beautiful daughters at their side.
Terence went to a high school on the edge of City Park named after one of America’s greatest heroes and patriots, John F. Kennedy. But to get there he had to pass by this monument to a man who fought to deny him his humanity.
He said, “I’ve never looked at them as a source of pride … it’s always made me feel as if they were put there by people who don’t respect us. This is something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It’s a sign that the world is changing.”
Yes, Terence, it is, and it is long overdue.
Now is the time to send a new message to the next generation of New Orleanians who can follow in Terence and Robin’s remarkable footsteps.
A message about the future, about the next 300 years and beyond; let us not miss this opportunity New Orleans and let us help the rest of the country do the same. Because now is the time for choosing. Now is the time to actually make this the City we always should have been, had we gotten it right in the first place.
We should stop for a moment and ask ourselves — at this point in our history, after Katrina, after Rita, after Ike, after Gustav, after the national recession, after the BP oil catastrophe and after the tornado — if presented with the opportunity to build monuments that told our story or to curate these particular spaces … would these monuments be what we want the world to see? Is this really our story?
We have not erased history; we are becoming part of the city’s history by righting the wrong image these monuments represent and crafting a better, more complete future for all our children and for future generations.
And unlike when these Confederate monuments were first erected as symbols of white supremacy, we now have a chance to create not only new symbols, but to do it together, as one people.
In our blessed land we all come to the table of democracy as equals.
We have to reaffirm our commitment to a future where each citizen is guaranteed the uniquely American gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That is what really makes America great and today it is more important than ever to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one. That is why today we reclaim these spaces for the United States of America.
Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all, not some. We all are part of one nation, all pledging allegiance to one flag, the flag of the United States of America. And New Orleanians are in, all of the way.
It is in this union and in this truth that real patriotism is rooted and flourishes.
Instead of revering a 4-year brief historical aberration that was called the Confederacy we can celebrate all 300 years of our rich, diverse history as a place named New Orleans and set the tone for the next 300 years.
After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration. After public hearings and approvals from three separate community led commissions. After two robust public hearings and a 6-1 vote by the duly elected New Orleans City Council. After review by 13 different federal and state judges. The full weight of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government has been brought to bear and the monuments in accordance with the law have been removed.
So now is the time to come together and heal and focus on our larger task. Not only building new symbols, but making this city a beautiful manifestation of what is possible and what we as a people can become.
Let us remember what the once exiled, imprisoned and now universally loved  Nelson Mandela and what he said after the fall of apartheid. “If the pain has often been unbearable and the revelations shocking to all of us, it  is because they indeed bring us the beginnings of a common understanding of what happened and a steady restoration of the nation’s humanity.”
So before we part let us again state the truth clearly.
The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered.
As a community, we must recognize the significance of removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments. It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history. Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul-searching a truly lost cause.
Anything less would fall short of the immortal words of our greatest President Abraham Lincoln, who with an open heart and clarity of purpose calls on us today to unite as one people when he said:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to do all which may achieve and cherish: a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Thank you.
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