Violence and Hope – Urban News & Ideas for April

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Eliot once wrote. Thankfully, this has rarely been true in my own life. But it seems wrong to begin any urban news and ideas column for this April 2022 without briefly foregrounding the cruelty and destruction imposed by the Russian military on Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities. This BBC video features interviews with two women refugees (Katarina and Nataliya), together with propaganda-style clips produced by fighters in underground tunnels at the Azovstal steel plant. At the very opening of the video is quiet footage of a wrecked neighborhood of what appear to be family homes with grassy yards, smoke billowing from the gargantuan factory in the background and the calm sea in the distance.

Beyond citing this video, I do not intend to write directly about the Ukraine conflict here. But I will say that as it pertains to the themes of this blog, the war has brought up for me a heightened consciousness of the centrality of safety, freedom from violence, and rule of law by legitimately elected and rules-bound public authorities. It’s easy to forget these basics when they are in place. But urban prosperity is impossible without them.

What I do intend to do in this post is review three fascinating articles about Mexico by Harvard economist Melissa Dell (I will travel to Mexico in June and am actively trying to re-familiarize myself with issues affecting this nation before I arrive there). I also plan to reference news developments related to a tragic eruption of gun violence close to home in Sacramento. Finally, I will close by referencing a hopeful local education initiative connected to the building trades. Perhaps this type of initiative is the kind of thing that could in the long term act as a brake on the conditions that can breed urban violence.

Mexico and Historical Persistence

Over the past year I have become a follower of Tyler Cowen’s podcast through the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Even though I am not a fan of the Mercatus Center, and am definitely not a fan of its funders, I find Cowen to be a quirky and compelling figure. In digging through back episodes on my commute to work this month, I was struck by his conversations with two Harvard professors, Nathan Nunn and Melissa Dell. Both are development economists focusing on how certain events and institutions, both large and seemingly small, can have long reach (persistence) in shaping the present. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in school, and I’m delighted to be learning a bit more about this fascinating subfield in economics. In particular, I was curious to hear Dell talk about her research into historical persistence as it relates to patterns of early twentieth century land reform in Mexico. This led me to download three of Dells’ published papers, and to attempt my own layperson’s reflections on the themes she brings up and techniques she uses.

The first paper, the one Dell references in the Conversations with Tyler podcast, is on path dependence in development. In it Dell makes an intricate argument based on what she describes as a “novel municipal level data set” on insurgency during the early 20th century Mexican Revolution. Additionally, she deploys government weather records pertaining to monthly precipitation from 1906-1910. Using this data (and applying econometric techniques I am not trained to follow) Dell argues that drought during one critical period created differential spatial impacts on insurgent violence, and that insurgent violence in turn led to a higher propensity for lands to be converted to state-owned communal farms dubbed “ejidos.” A hundred years later, other research indicates that areas in Mexico with higher proportions of land converted to ejidos seem to have demonstrably worse economic outcomes. This particular early twentieth century drought is thus shown to have outsized, historically “persistent” effects.

The two other articles use similar techniques to make data-driven arguments about historical persistence in Mexico. Moreover, they address issues that return me more directly to the theme of contemporary urban violence. One is on the association between local mayoral elections and levels of drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico. The central finding here is that close wins in municipal level elections by the conservative National Action Party (PAN) led to substantially greater levels of violence (around 30 more homicides per 100,000 people). PAN victories seem to have destabilized hierarchies within drug trafficking organizations enough to promote competition for power that, in the absence of police being able to effectively “clear” killings through the court system, led to even more people getting murdered. 

In the third paper I read, Dell and her co-authors also look at violence, but in this case focus on trade competition and factory closures as an explanatory factor associated with “persistent” increases in violent crime. This paper is shorter and more heavily quantitative than the other two. Here is a link.

The arguments in each of the three papers are, as noted above, both intricate and technical. I hope I am not butchering them with these quick summaries. But to me, they are inspiring, dense but at the same time highly readable. I recommend them highly, something I would almost never do for a technical paper in an academic journal.

Why is this? I guess I’m struck by several factors connected to Dell’s approach. For one, it’s fascinating to see her prove how seemingly simple things (say weather) can have such lasting impacts given the right circumstances. Second, I’m also fascinated with how she invokes basic issues connected to economic development – true fundamentals like the nature of land tenure or the ability of state authorities to convict murderers and put them in jail. Third, I like how each paper circles around the problem of municipal violence, even (indirectly) the paper on land reform and drought. I tend to see control of violence and rule of law as the single most important factor for municipal prosperity (this is a reason conservatives should support police accountability, in that without police accountability it’s hard to have rule of law). Dell’s preoccupation with violence in these papers confirms my deep instinct.

Finally, and here I will transition back to more immediate events in Sacramento, I was struck by Dell’s basic policy conclusions in the second paper, the one on local mayoral elections. Dell argues that the results of her study suggest “emphasizing policies to deter violence and improve the enforcement of homicide laws, as opposed to policies whose primary objective is to reduce drug trafficking.” Earlier in the paper she refers to appallingly low “clearance” rates for murders in parts of Mexico, noting for instance that in Chihuahua, in 2010, “only 3.6 percent of homicides … resulted in an arrest by the end of the following year.” To me Dell seems to be implying that if governments in Mexico and perhaps elsewhere can arrest and jail drug traffickers, they ought to be able to arrest and jail murderers. Violence, not drugs, should be the emphasis of criminal justice policy.

A Mass Shooting in Downtown Sacramento

This month Sacramento made national news, for the dreadful reason that six people were killed in a downtown mass shooting. Here is a timeline of events connected to the shooting posted on the Capitol Public Radio website on April 21 (I think Cap Radio has the best local coverage of these events). Click also here for raw-feeling audio from the day after the shooting, in which Vicki Gonzalez interviews Mayor Steinberg, Councilwoman Valenzuela, and Berry Axios from Voice of the Youth. Gonzalez has subsequently interviewed both former Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn and current Chief Kathy Lester. 

I have found coverage of these event in the Sacramento Bee to lack comparable urgency and focus, despite a prominent Sunday spread on the problem of gang violence (this appears to be a gang-related event). While I was disappointed by the Bee on this one, I was impressed by a very revealing opinion article in the LA Times that touches on the backgrounds of Dandre Martin, Smiley Martin, and Mtula Payton, three of the suspected five shooters in the event. According to the Times, each of these three men faced previous domestic violence charges. One of the men, Smiley Martin, was charged with beating a woman in Phoenix – the mother of his small children – for refusing to prostitute herself. 

It’s not merely tangential or a form of piling on Mr. Martin to note his past vile behavior toward women. The Times article above cites research through Lisa Geller at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions showing that in seven of ten mass shootings nationally the suspect “had a history of domestic violence or was targeting someone he had a relationship with.”

My sense of frustration that there hasn’t been more focus on the intimate partner violence issue as it pertains to this case spills over to a more general frustration. Maybe it’s material I’ve recently read in the Dell article about “clearing” murder cases in Mexico (above), but I worry here that the Sacramento Police seem to have been unable to arrest and hold all five suspected shooters nearly a month after the incident. I worry about the lack of urgent media focus on doing just this (perhaps this is why the banal Sunday gang violence spread in the Bee so annoyed me). I’m alarmed to notice the lack of full cooperation from members of the community (the shooting happened in a crowded public place with many eyewitnesses). I worry generally, as a person of the left, that local and state governments aren’t doing a good job controlling violent crime, much like they aren’t doing a good job facilitating adequate housing construction.

Right or wrong, I am certain I am not alone in these perceptions and worries. Crime and public safety is an increasingly high priority among voters, and not just older or whiter or more conservative voters. A good article in Politico last month shows that this is definitely true in Los Angeles. As we have seen with the election of Mayor Eric Adams, it’s the same situation in New York City.

There is reason, of course, to worry about these political winds. A toxic, racist sort of local and national politics can easily evolve from crime spikes. Witness mass incarceration in the US and the disastrous “war on crime.”  Wisdom and compassion and much greater resources are needed for the most affected communities. I’ll say it again. But a laser beam focus on bringing shooters like the ones involved in the downtown Sacramento shooting to justice is also needed. I might add that a focus on taking away guns owned by men with with histories of intimate partner violence is needed as well. 

Building a More Positive Future Through the Trades

This month’s post has dealt with dark themes. But I want to end on a bright note. I was very pleased this month to learn, again through a Cap Radio Insight interview, about the impending formation of the new Capital College & Career Academy in economically distressed North Sacramento. The Sacramento Business Journal has also done a great job covering this story, with this January article and this hopeful April update indicating that the charter for the proposed school has been approved by the Sacramento County Office of Education. “Next up,” according to journalist Ben van der Meer, “is closing escrow and getting a conditional use permit.”

I hope that these hurdles, and the additional ones that will no doubt face this new school before it even opens, will be removed quickly. Others seem to feel this way too. The initiative has attracted nearly a million dollars in funding. I was truly inspired to listen to Kevin Dobson, the school’s executive director, speak on the Cap Radio interview. His words and tone echoed the school’s printed vision of eradicating educational inequality.

I know from my experience as a high school teacher that college isn’t going to be the path for everyone, at least right away. I know intimately from my experience building a “mother in law” apartment that there is strong market need for skilled people in the building trades. It’s hard to find carpenters and plumber and electricians and the like. And because the pipeline for workers with construction skills is currently so constricted, these jobs pay well, often very well.

May Mr. Dobson’s new school truly come into being next year, and may it thrive.