• Pandemics and Climate Change
• Modern Slavery: Part I
• Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• College Athletes Making Money
• Learning to Listen with Austin Petersen
• Bezos Goes to Space, and the Whole Thing is Empty
• What is Critical Race Theory?
• Civitas Meets with Representative Bishop Davidson
• A Meeting with Bishop

St. Louis has a troubled record in the treatment of its homeless population. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently ran a story about a downtown business and a homeless settlement. Square, a tech company founded by St. Louisan Jim McKelvey, was moving employees into their new rehabbed headquarters on Tucker Boulevard. As the pandemic recedes, more workers are heading back to the office. Across the plaza from the headquarters, a group was setting up a fence, which blocked the employees from seeing the nearby homeless encampment as they entered their building. The settlement arose due to its proximity to the St. Patrick Center. Located across the plaza from Square headquarters, the Center provides services such as food and healthcare for the homeless.

A spokesperson for Mayor Tishaura Jones said the fence was there to “give a sense of privacy to the folks in the encampment.” The city plans to relocate the people in the encampment within sixty days. According to the article, when asked whether or not Square had requested that fencing be put up around the settlement, the mayor’s spokesperson said that he couldn’t speak to that. 

The above event isn’t unique to the way St. Louis treats its homeless. In March of this year, St. Louis public radio covered the relocation of an encampment to a number of hotels. A woman in the interview said she felt as if the city wanted them out of sight; they were an “eyesore.” Mayor Krewson said they were unsafe at the encampment because of the pandemic. Yet, the hotels they were sent to were unsafe with gunfire, drug dealing and attacks on residents occurring. A pregnant woman was even kicked in the stomach. In addition, the CDC recommends not moving people during the pandemic. Why does St. Louis continue to treat the homeless as if they should be invisible?

Many cities, including St. Louis, have incentives for companies to locate in their downtown areas. Square received millions in tax breaks to locate downtown. In return for all of the money, Square should give back to the city by helping the homeless population in addition to providing high paying jobs. The current state of the economy has made conditions even tougher for those experiencing homelessness, and their numbers have increased. The pandemic has made it difficult for shelters to safely house those who want to stay in them.

It will likely benefit St. Louis to have Square conduct business downtown. The city will get revenue from the company. The question is, how will Square locating downtown benefit the homeless? Will city revenue from Square go towards providing services for the homeless who are being displaced? Will Square look to rehab a building to house the homeless? Or will the money go to build more fences to hide the homeless behind?

Beginning on July 1st, 2021, the NCAA allows college athletes to “benefit from their name, image and likeness” in all divisions. It is a historic change to the NCAA’s previous stance that collecting payment while in amateur sports stops you from being an amateur. However, now college athletes and recruits can “engage in NIL (name, image, likeness) activities that are consistent with the law of the state where the school is located.” Due to the possibility for confusion between NCAA, state, and local laws, the NCAA, put out the following statement: “College athletes who attend a school in a state without an NIL law can engage in this type of activity without violating NCAA rules related to name, image and likeness,” and that “Individuals can use a professional services provider for NIL activities.”

The Chair of the Division III Presidents Council Fayneese Miller said “the [NCAA] will continue to work with Congress to develop a national law that will help colleges and universities, student-athletes” and that this policy is a good start but that it is in no way is a permanent solution to this grand issue. The NCAA says that this temporary policy will remain in place until there is a new federal or NCAA ruleset adopted. Specific conferences have the ability or power to make their policies.

With the ability for specific conferences to make their own rules, I can say that no conference will go back on this decision. Mainly because any division that increased restrictions to this would have its member schools seeing a drop in applications from top-tier athletes.
           
Now, what does this mean for current and future athletes? This means that people like Donald De La Haye, who was kicked off the UCF (University of Central Florida) football team because of his YouTube videos that involved his participation as a kicker, will be safe to make money off of their experiences. These athletes can now produce content for others. However, college athletics are still not “pay for play,” and the NCAA still “reinforces key principles of fairness and integrity” and “maintains rules prohibiting improper recruiting inducements.”

In the age of social media, it’s becoming less common to have extended dialogues with people who have opposing viewpoints. Most exchanges result in virtual shouting matches between those on the extremes. That’s why I was excited to hear from Austin Petersen, our guest speaker on July 10. While I still disagreed with him on a number of issues, I found more common ground than I thought I would.
 
Upon joining the Zoom, I expected to feel awkward, but Austin broke the tension right away. He told us his life story, from busking on the street as a struggling actor in New York City to running his own radio show, becoming, in his words, a “mini Tucker Carlson.” Austin Petersen is a radio host who ran in the Libertarian Party’s presidential primary in 2016. He also entered the Republican primary for Missouri’s Senate seat in 2018. In both cases, he lost. Prior to his candidacies, he worked as a producer for Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch on Fox News. 
 
Austin spoke about his belief that the government should have as small a role as possible in citizens’ lives, only controlling police, courts, and the military. In addition, Austin talked about his views on two hot-button issues in Missouri: abortion and gun control. Like most Libertarians, Austin strongly supports the Second Amendment. He even gave away guns in a raffle as a part of his campaign. However, unlike most Libertarians, he is pro-life, despite not belonging to any religion. He explained to us that, upon reflection, he believes life begins soon after conception. That life has rights just like any other human, and so it must be protected.
 
Before our meeting, I was expecting to be frustrated with Austin, as we do not see eye to eye on many issues. Luckily, that was not the case. I think it's important for people and groups who disagree to sit down and really listen to what one another has to say. Most of the time, when I hear about the positions of conservative politicians, it comes from left-leaning sources, which means the author filtered those positions through their more liberal lens. Hearing opinions directly from the source means you’re hearing what the speaker truly intended. Even if you disagree with what they say, it’s still important to hear their viewpoint, because you will become more educated and be better able to have a discussion about the topic with others. I hope to have more conversations like the one we had with Austin in the future. These conversations are vital to help heal the partisan divide, and they can hopefully lead to more cooperation in the future.

Well, he did it. Jeff Bezos (net worth: $209,000,000,000) made it to space. I’m told that congratulations are in order, despite the achievements being completed decades ago by a nation which no longer exists.
 
Astronaut is one of those “special” jobs. The ones that kids so eagerly throw out when asked what they want to be when they’re older. Astronauts are cool. They get the sweet, orange jumpsuits; they get to go out and explore space; and they get to fly a rocket ship. What more could a kid want?
 
I don’t want to be an astronaut anymore. I haven’t wanted to be an astronaut since the sixth grade. That’s fine, I don’t have any qualms about “losing a dream” or anything; I was more interested in the exploration, not the cosmos itself. But Bezos and Branson both went to space, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about how we got here.
 
How did we get here?
 
Jeff Bezos is the richest man alive, with an amount of money that’s effectively impossible to conceptualize. Say Bezos took out his entire net worth in the form of $100 bills. He offers you $15 an hour to count every single bill for him. Using the latest line in Amazon Basics Human Needs Collection, you will not need to eat, sleep, or drink while you do this. It takes you one second to count a bill. It would take 66 years to count all his money. Bezos is only 57 years old. To say Bezos is absurdly wealthy is an understatement.
 
But this is not about his wealth. This is about a billionaire going to space because he wanted to.
 
The first man to ever go to space was Yuri Gagarin, Soviet Cosmonaut. Born in 1934, his early life was marked by turmoil. The Germans invaded the same year he began school; the building was burnt down. The Gagarins were forced to farm to feed the occupying troops. His home was occupied, and his family lived in a tiny, mud hut. At the age of 7, Yuri began sabotaging German equipment after a soldier tried hanging his younger brother, who was 5. The child Yuri became was fascinated with planes at the time. After the war, he was taught to read from old military manuals. After grade school, he was trained to be a tractor engineer. He worked at a dock and learned to fly at a local flying club. He joined the Soviet Air Forces and was selected to be a cosmonaut because of his 265 hours of flight time and because he was only 5’2”. Gagarin would orbit the earth in a cramped capsule for nearly two hours. The son of a carpenter and a dairy-farmer, Gagarin got to space after years of dedication.
 
Bezos got there because he was filthy rich. Space is just another playground for him.

Walking in with a polished blue suit, a neatly kept beard decorating his youthful face, Representative Bishop Davidson paid a visit to the high school and college interns for CIVITAS on a Monday morning. Having been elected to the Missouri State House as a Republican before turning 30, Representative Davidson conveyed both a relatable image and an energetic disposition that deviated from the usual proclivities of career politicians. His mission, he told CIVITAS interns, is to restore conservatism by once again educating people on what it means to be conservative. A history major in college, his reasoning cites extensive historical precedent, making his explanations but intellectually stimulating; and to the Representative, being conservative means believing in institutions outside of government to perform the work of the people, such as the family, which Representative Davidson regarded as the preeminent institution in contemporary society. He argued that the government had stultified the family institution by transferring many of the functions that the family once performed to the government, cultivating a society of people who are more lonely and depressed than ever before. Under suave rhetoric, he hid an argument that many CIVITAS interns later found problematic, the notion that social welfare programs such as social security and Medicare should be administered by the family, not the government. Relying on inherently conservative beliefs, Representative Davidson contended that government is the problem, not the solution, so therefore less government would ameliorate the lives of people in the U.S. While Representative Davidson demonstrated a strong willingness to respond to questions, that didn’t stop interns from exploring controversial topics. Interns focused extensively on questions about the second amendment, given the fact that Representative Davidson had been a co-sponsor of the Second Amendment Preservation Act, which recently got signed into law. In his trademark historical style, Representative Davidson traced the history of the second amendment to the founding of the United States, reminded the interns that the U.S.’ political structure relies on checks and balances, elucidated the difference between the second amendment and the right to bear arms, and conceptualized the second amendment as the ultimate check of the people against a tyrannical government. While his logic made sense, the interns still bombarded him with questions about how many people die from gun violence every year, an argument that Representative Davidson simply dodged by saying that the bigger problem responsible for these deaths is mental health not the existence of guns. Davidson also discussed what it’s like to form part of the supermajority in Congress, why he’s sometimes not taken seriously by his caucus because of his relative inexperience in Congress, and how he’s working to address the issue of the desire by many conservatives to ban critical race theory and the 1619 Project from schools. In the end, Representative Davidson provided interns with a new perspective of politics from a young person’s eyes, and allowed a vastly liberal group to encounter a conservative mind face to face. 

History repeats itself is an oft-repeated phrase used by everyone from young kids to PhD candidates in history. Paired with an often blasé delivery, the line is usually meant as a closing statement, a way to move past an event without having to delve too deeply into it. It effectively ends a conversation, summarizing everything unspoken, left between the lines of whatever event is repeating itself.
 
I bring this up because, as a history major it was all I could think about during our visit with state representative Bishop Davidson. Not that he ever said the phrase, but, as a fellow history major with a bachelors in the subject from Mizzou, Davidson made sure to leave a historical trail throughout his conversation with Civitas. Addressing the topic of division, Davidson referenced Federalist No.10, written by Madison to address the problems of political factions in America. He used examples of fishing interests and farmers, keeping things historical throughout his answer about political division today. Throughout the hour-long conversation that covered topics ranging from the pandemic to the critical race theory debate and the potential banning coming out of the state house. Davidson, when pressed upon issues like the 2nd Amendment Preservation Act, defaulted to historical explanations for his sponsorship of the bill. The political topics debated in the state capitol represented questions of historical theory for Davidson. Which, don’t get me wrong, there is a historical component to all the topics and issues debated in Jefferson City. There has to be context and history to warrant someone sitting down, researching, writing, and then debating a bill—no one can create something entirely out of thin air. However, that theory and historical context can never overshadow the real people affected by the issues debated in the capitol and who will be impacted by the solution.
 
As Davidson was speaking about simply adding more hospital beds or training more emergency nurses to deal with COVID numbers, or even delivering a complicated breakdown about what the 2^nd Amendment historically meant, one felt that blasé feeling that comes with the phrase history repeats itself. And maybe it’s unfair to judge from only an hour conversation, but Davidson seemed more concerned with the history than the real people affected by the issues he was elected to represent. Follow up questions were asked about the 2^nd Amendment Preservation Act, especially in light of the lives lost to gun violence, and Davidson defaulted away from the personal experiences to the historical trends of decreasing gun violence. The historical dominated the present, and the personal, connections, creating an element of hands-off, can’t-be-changed within the issues being discussed. History repeated itself in the theory Davidson offered up as an answer to every question, creating a narrative of minimal change and a separation of people’s realities from the perceived historical context.