Activist, attorney, iterant troublemanker Edgar Cahn gave a brilliant lecture.
He has three topics: pizza, operating systems, and the pirus.
Pizza. You can deliver pizza, you can deliver products, but you cannot deliver justice, community, or human values. Those items require all parties to participate.
Examples.
Juvinile Court. Allowed to try all non-violent youth crime in DC. The jurors are teenagers. The court can sentence offenders to jury duty. Trial by your peers. The kids buy into the justice because they ARE the justice system. And they start to behave.
The Homecommers. People who didn't want to be called ex-cons. Started volunteering for community service. Cut recidivisim by huge amounts.
Operating system.
Our economy is based on so much more than money, but money is currently the only measure.
The problem with money. Money values things that are rare. Common things have little or no economic value. Thus, the things which make us human, which are intrinsic to all humanity, which are found in every person, have no monetary value.
Pirus.
Need to build a two-fuel economy. We still need money, but that should be the gas, the bit that gets used the least and is only there when the other just doesn't quite make it. The other, the respect for every human's worth, should be the main fuel.
That ended his talk. But one of the questions brought out another fantastic zinger. Mr. Cahn, after pointing out that public officials are the only professionals who are not required to act according to the best knowledge (malpractice in doctors, forget the term for attorneys, also applies to engineers, etc).
The way to show discriminatory behavor by courts is NOT to look backwards at cases tried (more blacks then whites sent to jail, etc), but forwards. Make them aware of what best practices are, what works, and what consequences different options have. Then, if they don't change, you can show that they have INTENDED the discriminatory outcomes.
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