City Clicks #4: Hatch Act, Tracking Racist Monuments & COVID Projects Edition
Main Street Storefront: Cincinnati, Ohio Photo: City Ombuds
“House numbers exist not to help you find your way,” Mask writes, “but rather to help the government find you.”
“It’s solidarity not charity.”
Welcome to City Clicks! These clicks take you to articles, blog posts, podcasts, and other curiosities with novel, interesting, &/or useful takes on problem-solving, governance, culture, and generally making life better.
Hi, it’s been a while. I’ve saved up some great reading material for you. I started this as a post-election City Clicks — and then it wasn’t — and now it finally is.
How much do you know about the Hatch Act and other rules that restrict the political activity of public employees? City Ombuds is non-partisan and sat out the election. First, because the fundamental nature of an ombuds is neutral. Second, because I’m a public employee, by day, and subject to restrictions on political activities. I am committed to anti-racist principles and supporting Black Lives Matter. So, I was glad to learn from this article that the Office of Special Counsel recently found that Federal employees are not prohibited from showing support for BLM at work. For the record, the Hatch Act only covers Federal employees. Many states, including Ohio, have similar rules sometimes called mini Hatch Acts.
Would you support Electoral College reform that required states to allocate their electoral votes proportionally, ideally to the state’s top two vote-getters instead of the winner-take-all method? Peruse this article from Governing magazine.
Harvard Law School on Negotiating with Bureaucrats.
The Secret Money Trail Exposing America's Racist Monuments at Fast Company. This article presents the story of The Monument Lab, a public art and history studio in Philadelphia that launched a nationwide effort to assess and collect the stories behind monuments. Read now and bookmark the site to check back later.
The title of this Vox piece, Why Coronavirus Is Making Us Socially Awkward, is an understatement: “Every day, people are weighing the immediate social cost of an invitation with the abstract possibility of exposing themselves or others to a disease that could feel like a regular cold or could kill you. It’s a choice that seems easy until it isn’t, and it’s one that regular people never should have to make in the first place.”
A personal and professional analysis from critic Alan Sepinwall on how the TV industry conditioned our responses to the police and what needs to change here: “Early on, it presented police officers as infallible heroes who are professionally and temperamentally equipped to handle any delicate situation. Then eventually, it began depicting less admirable cop behavior, but in ways that tended to explain it — and, after a while, to normalize it. These fictional stories have rewired many of us to assume cops are always acting in good faith, and to ignore or wave away those moments when they’re clearly not.”
Forgotten anything recently? You may not need The New York Times to tell you that it’s hard to keep track of the day of the week, but The Year of Blur: How isolation, monotony and chronic stress are destroying our sense of time presents an interesting and reassuring analysis: “Sheer monotony has the ability to warp time and tangle our memories, psychologists say, with quarantines and lockdowns robbing us of the “boundary events” that normally divide the days, like chapters in a book.”
If COVID-19 has you thinking about long-term planning, The Cut has info for you, Can I Make a Will Without Spending a Fortune?
Entrepreneur Andre Springer on the Unifying Power of Hot Sauce
Do you have a COVID 19 project? Cookbook author, Julia Turshen, will help you make a family cookbook.
This Slate writer’s project was to walk every block of his zip code just to catalog how people style their house numbers. He includes a short history of house numbers and some insights. He collected his data in an interactive Google map.
“It’s solidarity, not charity.” In the last City Clicks, I posted an article about Community Fridges in New York City. Here’s a news story about New Orleans Community Fridges. It appears the NOLA project has decorated fridges, like our People’s Pantries in Cincinnati. Would you contribute to a community fridge?
Why stop reading now? You might also like:
City Solutions: Neighborhood Food Truck Night
Issue #3: Case of the Sloshy Beer Vault
Issue #1 -- What does "no turn on red" on school days mean?
Friday Ombudsman posts:
Fred Neurohr — Traffic calming in Northside and a beef with Izzy’s
Rachel Hastings — Case study in crime reduction in Covington and that Cincinnati question
Regina Carswell Russo — Real talk on diversity and the dish that is addicting, delicious, soothing, and medicinal
Dr. Amber Kelly Pro networking tips using Cincinnati’s strengths and the question I really should have asked her
Steve Ramos Animal control and his favorite “urban, egalitarian Jewish community” leader
Jeffrey Miller Food waste reduction through the tax code and York Peppermint patties
Geralyn Sparough What neighborhood felt like home for this Californian and how she weaves this City together
Be the next Friday Ombudsman by clicking the Be the Friday Ombudsman button on the home page and send your answers. Everyone has something to contribute!