Gotta be something to all that Malcolm Gladwell/James Surowiecki/Freakonomics stuff, right?
In a couple of weeks I'm going to have the chance to play host to some visitors from Germany. I've been asked to keep the details confidential -- to discourage gatecrashers, I guess. What I can say is that our visitors are looking for ideas on how to counter right-wing extremism.
Truth to tell, I feel that maybe we should be asking them. On the one hand, we recently had a Presidential election where the candidates of a major party shamelessly used race-baiting talking points. On the other hand, they lost.
On yet a third hand, right-wing hate-jocks are still on the air. So is the glass half full, or that other thing?
Still, here's what our visitors would like to do:
Explore how community organizations, advocacy groups, academic institutions, and government bodies work to foster democratic equality and tolerance in U.S. society.
Discuss law enforcement techniques for identifying, investigating and prosecuting hate crimes.
Discuss ideas and strategies for hate-crime education and prevention.
Anybody out there have experience with these issues? Anybody have questions they'd like me to put to our visitors, so that I can share the answers later?
Grateful for ideas, leads, resources, opinions, information...