New America NYC and NYU's McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research have teamed up to produce an inaugural conversation on June 18th to highlight the necessity of early and sustained census preparation in keeping our democratic institutions equitably funded and accessible. 

New America NYC

2020 Census: A Tech Revolution or Risk?

 Imagine a centralized database replete with your personal information that links together your and your family’s vital health, education, and social welfare records. Now imagine the database includes an entire country’s population. Fifty years ago this year, Denmark launched the world's first nationalized big data project. The country's Civil Personal Registration (CPR) system assigns every resident a "digital ID" that directly connects them with the Danish state to facilitate government-citizen interactions from birth to death and everywhere in between. Originally created to render tax collection  and the distribution of social benefits more efficient, the system has become a popular and benevolent instrument in Denmark built on the values of trust in government and sense of community. Now similar data infrastructures—often built by private sector platforms—are being applied across the globe, but in a climate in which data breaches are growing more frequent and more severe, their implications must adapt to the opportunities—and account for the challenges—of twenty-first century technology. How can citizens ensure their personal data isn't vulnerable to hacking and that their privacy rights are being upheld? What safeguards must government and the private sector take on to guarantee data is used and stored securely? What do CPR-modeled platforms mean for the future of digital democracy? Join New America NYC, in partnership with the Consulate General of Denmark in New York and Columbia University's European Institute, for a set of conversations on the past, present, and future of digital identity—and the measures we need in place to ensure its use for good. WELCOMING REMARKS Elana Broitman @elanabroitman Director, New America NYC   Tom FrestonBoard Member and Chair, New America NYC Advisory Council OPENING REMARKS Ambassador Jonas Bering-LiisbergState Secretary for Foreign Policy, Kingdom of Denmark   SESSION 1 Mikkel Hagen Hess @mikkelhess Director, Invest in Denmark, North America   Don Thibeau @4thibeau Executive Director, OpenID Foundation Zia Khan @ZiaKhanNYC Vice President, Initiatives and Strategy, The Rockefeller Foundation Michael IbachChief Analytics Officer, United Nations Tara Nathan @Thetaranation Executive Vice President, Public-Private Partnerships, MasterCard Louise Matsakis @lmatsakisStaff writer, WIRED  SESSION 2 Rebecca MacKinnon @rmack Director, Ranking Digital Rights, New America   Jacob Mchangama @JMchangama Founder and CEO, Justitia   John Paul Farmer @johnpaulfarmer Director, Technology and Civic Innovation, Microsoft Amanda Graham @BCCBlockchainCo-founder and Chief Services Officer, Blockchain for Change David K. Park @davidchungpark Dean of Strategic Initiatives, Arts & Sciences, and Faculty Member, Data Science Institute, Columbia University Natasha Singer @natashanytTechnology reporter, The New York Times    This event is presented in partnership with the Consulate General of Denmark in New York with additional support from the European Institute at Columbia University.   

Digital Democracy

There are no good guys in this story, including me. – Dan David, GeoInvesting After the 2008 financial collapse, U.S. investors began scouring global markets for new opportunities for high returns, and they turned to China to take part in its explosive economic growth. Looking beyond profits that seemed too good to be true, a band of rogue Wall Street outsiders uncovered a massive web of multibillion-dollar fraud. From the producers of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, The China Hustle takes a deep dive into China's economic miracle to reveal how many ordinary Americans who want to invest in China's dynamic growth—through pension funds, retirement savings, and mutual funds—are unaware they could be holding billions of dollars of junk. Academy-Award® nominee Jed Rothstein follows Dan David and a group of whistleblower investors who go to China to discover a landscape ripe for fraud. Working with Chinese investigators who put their freedom at stake, they expose hundreds of small Chinese companies that have vastly overvalued their assets, revenues, and and future prospects—representing 1.1 trillion dollars in market value on the NYSE and NASDAQ—and the American companies willing to turn a blind eye while they rake in huge profits. Join New America NYC for an advanced screening of The China Hustle and a conversation with the film's director, key subject, and experts that considers the accountability and transparency needed to protect investors and asks: what will happen if the China bubble bursts? PARTICIPANTS Jed Rothstein @boerumhillfilm Director, The China Hustle   Dan David Chief Investment Officer, F.G. Alpha Management, and Co-founder, GeoInvesting Featured subject, The China Hustle Dune Lawrence @DuneLawrence Investigative Reporter, Bloomberg & Businessweek Jiayang Fan @JiayangFan Staff writer, The New Yorker

The China Hustle

 Optimism is a moral choice. – Dr. Jim Yong Kim Thirty years ago, as much of the world was being ravaged by horrific diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, three young people, not yet out of medical school, set out to provide healthcare for Haiti's rural poor. They went on to spend the next three decades on the frontlines of health crises across the globe. Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl came together to deliver a world-class level of care — the kind they would expect for their own families — and build health clinics in remote areas ignored by everyone else. Their idea was controversial and revolutionary: to create partnerships with the patients themselves by training ordinary villagers as healthcare workers. Despite enormous resistance from the outside world, they made groundbreaking advances in combating the life-threatening conditions of impoverished communities and against the spread of pandemics including drug-resistant TB, HIV/AIDS, and Ebola. Their inspiring vision is the subject of Bending the Arc, a new film by Academy Award® nominees Kief Davidson, Pedro Kos, and Cori Shepherd Stern. Through candid interviews and never-before-seen archival footage, the film profiles the fiercely dedicated group of doctors and activists as they deliver the highest-quality care in the most unlikely places. Join New America NYC for a screening of Bending the Arc and a conversation with global health practitioners and experts to ask: is healthcare a privilege for those who can afford it or a basic human right?   INTRODUCTION Nina Fialkow Executive Producer, Bending the Arc Chair, Massachusetts Cultural Council PARTICIPANTS Natalia Kanem, MD, MPH @Atayeshe Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Alishya Mayfield, MD, MPH Senior Clinical Adviser on Strategy, Partners in Health (PIH) Anatole Manzi, PhD Director of Clinical Practice, Partners in Health (PIH) Donna Patterson, PhD @PharmacySenegal International Security Fellow, New America Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies, Delaware State University Lori Adelman @Ladelman Executive Director, Feministing Director of Youth Engagement, Women Deliver This event is presented in partnership with Tumblr. 

Bending the Arc

In January 2013, on an early morning in Guatemala City, soldiers with automatic weapons are standing on street corners. A long line of Mayan women and men head into the high court, an institution historically dominated by the interests of a small white elite minority. Just three decades earlier, the ruling elite, with U.S. backing, engineered a coup that would topple a democratically elected government and unleash a dark period of repression and massacres. 200,000 mostly indigenous people were murdered; 45,000 urban artists, intellectuals, and activists disappeared.  Thirteen years later, the Mayan survivors and activists prevailed: former president Efraín Ríos Montt was brought before the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity and  a citizen uprising forced a corrupt president, Otto Perez Molina, to resign.  This heroic story is the subject of 500 Years, the third installment in Director Pamela Yates’s The Resistance Saga trilogy. Focusing on universal themes of racism, power, corruption, and social justice, 500 Years tells the story through the eyes of the majority indigenous Mayan population in Guatemala. It highlights how the ongoing struggle for human rights galvanized activists, especially women, to emerge as eloquent, powerful leaders of their community and country.   Join New America NYC for a screening of 500 Years and a conversation with the filmmaker, activists, and global experts about justice in the face of structural racism and how the force of sustained nonviolent resistance can make it possible for right to make might. PARTICIPANTS Pamela Yates @pameladyates Director, 500 Years Monica Aleman Cunningham @ACunningham2013 Senior Program Officer, Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD), Ford Foundation Andrea Ixchíu @Andreakomio Mayan activist featured in 500 Years

500 Years

Many American workers are unwell. They live with serious economic insecurity; succumb to diabetes, depression, and addiction at alarming rates; and struggle to balance the conflicting needs of their employers, their families, and their own well-being. That outlook won’t improve until we think of health as the driver of prosperity — not just the product of it. In the U.S., we spend extravagantly on treating illness but spend proportionally less on keeping people healthy than most developed nations. But research shows a strong correlation between healthy communities with little economic disparity and healthy economies. People live longer in the nation's more equal states. What can we do to change the country's focus from health care as a cost with limited returns, to health as an investment that pays off over the long term — socially and economically? How can we better elevate health as a policy priority? Join New America NYC for a conversation on the future of health and wellness — and what both governments and the private sector can do to improve its outlook. PARTICIPANTS Esther Dyson @edyson Executive Founder, Way to Wellville, and health investor   Dr. Herminia Palacio @HerminiaPalacio Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, City of New York Manmeet Kaur @ManmeetKaurNY Founder and Executive Director, City Health Works Melanie Lavelle @Mglavelle Founder, Benefit Kitchen Dan Goldberg @DanCGoldberg Senior Health Reporter, Politico

Making Health Work

The United States and China are in a race to build the world’s first quantum machine, and whoever crosses the finish line first will attain global dominance for generations to come. In The Quantum Spy, a new genre-bending thriller, New York Times bestselling author and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius tells the fictional story of a hyper-fast quantum computer—the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb—able to shred any encryption and break any code in existence. When top-secret U.S. research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, CIA officer Harris Chang sets in motion a history-altering investigation that forces him to question he thinks about loyalty, diplomacy, and the primacy of truth. Couched in the real-world technological arms race, the novel asks pivotal questions about contemporary national security issues—the competition to achieve quantum computing technology, the high stakes rivalry between the U.S. and China, and the conduct of spycraft in the digital age.     Join New America NYC for a conversation with David Ignatius and Karen Greenberg on the fictional tale of cyber espionage—and what it tells us about the real-world threats with which national security policy must contend. PARTICIPANTS David Ignatius @IgnatiusPost Columnist, The Washington Post Author, The Director and The Quantum Spy Karen Greenberg @KarenGreenberg3Director, Center on National Security, Fordham University School of Law Author, Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State

The Quantum Spy

Today, almost half of the American workforce earns less than $15 per hour and a third of working-age men are either unemployed or unable to keep a family of four out of poverty. Few have sufficient savings to retire with, while businesses continue to push healthcare and other social safety costs onto their employees. Yet American companies are far from struggling. Is the contract between employee and employer broken? In his new book, The End of Loyalty, Rick Wartzman chronicles the erosion of the relationship between American companies and their workers through the histories of four major American employers — General Motors, General Electric, Kodak, and Coca-Cola. Wartzman argues that big businesses once took responsibility for providing their workers and retirees with an array of social benefits, but in a twenty-first century economy turbocharged by the pace of technology, access to a good, stable job no longer guarantees access to the American Dream. The cause, he says, is clear: the American workforce cannot thrive if it clings to systems that preference shareholders over employees and productivity over morale. Join New America NYC for a conversation on the past, present, and future of work — and how technology can play a more constructive role in fostering effective systems for both workers and businesses. PARTICIPANTS Rick Wartzman @RWartzman Senior Advisor and former Executive Director, Drucker Institute Author, The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America Ai-jen Poo @aijenpoo Executive Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance Co-director, Caring Across Generations 2014 MacArthur "Genius" Award winner Jessica Lin @jerseejess Co-founder and General Partner, Work-Bench Kristin Sharp @ktsharp2Executive Director, Shift: The Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology, New America

The End of Loyalty

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States’ total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. According to a new book by Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money, this absence of wealth isn't just a failure to atone for oppression imposed by slavery and Jim Crow — it's the product of contemporary acts to maintain their legacies. Today, the racial wealth gap persists in building wealth for those who already have it and sowing debt among those who don't. Many policies animated by this trend — fees and fines levied my municipal governments and the criminal justice system; residential segregation; the rise of predatory payday lenders — disappear mainstream banks from communities of color, pass off responsibility of investment in their wealth, and enforce conditions that disproportionately push them from profit to poverty. Join New America NYC and the NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research for a conversation with legal, business, and racial equity leaders on the fight for economic justice and how to pioneer strategies that reform how government works — and who it serves. OPENING REMARKS Scott M. Stringer @NYCComptroller Comptroller, City of New York PARTICIPANTS Mehrsa Baradaran @MehrsaBaradaran J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law Author, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap   Blondel Pinnock @blondelSenior Vice President and Chief Lending Officer, Carver Federal Savings Bank Anne Stuhldreher @AnneStuhldreher Director of Financial Justice, City and County of San Francisco Fellow, New America CA Clyde Vanel @clydevanelAssembly Member (D-33), State of New York Michael Lindsey @DrMikeLindseyDirector, McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, New York University

The Color of Money

 On Sunday, October 8th, join New America NYC for a private screening of Human Flow, a sweeping new film by world-renowned artist, activist, and icon Ai Weiwei, followed by a conversation with Richard Gere and David Miliband on the plight of refugees all over the world. More than 65 million people have been forcibly displaced due to war, persecution, climate change, and crushing poverty in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Setting out on a journey across 23 countries, Ai Weiwei, who spent his own childhood as a displaced person during China's Cultural Revolution, follows a chain of urgent human stories across the globe to bear witness to this massive human migration, elucidating both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its intimately personal human impact. From perilous ocean crossings to barbed-wire borders, Ai follows the desperate attempts of men, women, and children as they move from dislocation and disillusionment to endurance and adaptation. HumanFlow is a testament to the unassailable human spirit and poses a question that will define this century's greatest human rights challenge: will we emerge from fear and isolation and choose a path of freedom and respect for one another? SPEAKERS Ai Weiwei @aiwwArtist and activist Director, Human Flow Richard GereActor and humanitarian David Miliband @DMilibandPresident and CEO, International Rescue Committee Former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, United Kingdom 

Human Flow

Extremism across the continent of Africa has been widely researched and reported; less covered are the stories of those who have been survivors—and resisters—of it. A Moonless, Starless Sky, the debut book by New America National Fellow, Alexis Okeowo, is a vivid account of Africans who are courageously countering their continent's wave of fundamentalism. Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball league flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram.  Complicating the simplistic good-guy, bad-guy narratives common in describing the continent, the book illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary — lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.    

A Moonless, Starless Sky

 The only United States bank indicted for mortgage fraud related to the 2008 financial crisis is the one you’ve never heard of.  Charged with securities fraud, mortgage fraud, and conspiracy, Chinatown’s Abacus Federal Savings Bank — the country's 2,531st largest bank and a cornerstone of the Chinese immigrant community — became the only bank in the U.S. to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Part legal thriller, part underdog saga, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, a film from director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life, Itself), tells the incredible tale of the Sung family and their five-year, ten-million-dollar legal battle to defend themselves and their bank’s legacy.  Thomas Sung, a prominent lawyer and real estate developer, opened the Abacus bank in 1984 to provide the small housing and business loans that Chinatown’s residents and business owners were routinely denied. The small, fiscally conservative bank weathered the 2008 worldwide economic meltdown, but at the same time large, global banking institutions were deemed “too-big-to-fail” and given bailouts, Abacus saw its employees marched out of the bank in chains for the evening news.  

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail

For her entire life, German-born and -educated Souad Mekhennet has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing—Muslim and Western—and provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other. In Mekhennet's new memoir, I Was Told To Come Alone, she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and culminating on the Turkish-Syrian border where ISIS is a daily presence. Traveling across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents the failed promise of the Arab Spring, and then returns to Europe, where she uncovers the identity of notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John" and delves into the terror that has pierced the heart of Western civilization. With unprecedented access to some of the world's most wanted men, she's told to never come alone to an interview. As she gets closer and closer to the inner circles of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates, she can never underestimate the personal danger that awaits her destination. Join New America NYC for the release of New America fellow Souad Mekhennet's I Was Told To Come Alone and for a conversation on her journey coming face to face with the figures most of us confront only in news headlines. PARTICIPANTS Souad Mekhennet @smekhennet Correspondent, The Washington Post Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow, New America Author, I Was Told To Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad   Alexis Okeowo @alexis_okStaff writer, The New YorkerFellow, New America Author, A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa (forthcoming)

I Was Told to Come Alone

The future of the Negro in this country is precisely as bright or as dark as the future of the country.— James Baldwin In the final years of his life, James Baldwin began writing Remember This House, a personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his closest friends—Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, more than 30 years later, a new documentary picks up those letters and unfinished manuscripts to explore how race became the defining struggle of American society. I Am Not Your Negro , an Academy Award-nominated film by Raoul Peck, is an up-to-the-minute examination of race in America. Using Baldwin's original words and a spellbinding flood of archival material, the film is a journey into the black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights Movement to the present of Black Lives Matter. Baldwin's legacy makes one thing clear: the piercing endurance of racism—and the very definition of what America stands for—remains as relevant as ever. On the eve of its theatrical release, New America NYC presented a screening of I Am Not Your Negro and a conversation on how we can better face—and change—the racial divide in America. PARTICIPANTS Hébert Peck @IAmNotYourNegroProducer, I Am Not Your Negro   Nikole Hannah-Jones @nhannahjonesStaff Writer, The New York Times MagazineEmerson Fellow, New America Aisha Karefa-Smart @afroculinistaAuthor and niece of James Baldwin Jamil Smith @JamilSmith Senior National Correspondent, MTV News

I Am Not Your Negro

As the debate about which bathroom transgender people should use continues, a more complex question is emerging about how early the medical transition begins for trans kids. Families and doctors are rewriting the rules as they decide when and how to start medical intervention before transgender youth hit puberty. In a special VICE on HBO episode, VICE correspondent Gianna Toboni explores this emotionally charged and rapidly evolving issue with trans youth and their parents in the midst of this intense process. On August 9, New America NYC and VICE presented a special screening of VICE on HBO's Trans Youth at Lincoln Center, followed by a talkback with the segment's producers and some of the featured family members on the state of the transgender rights movement today. PARTICIPANTS Tom, Rachel, and Max O'Brien Featured subjects, Trans Youth Nicole BozorgmirProducer, Trans Youth, VICE on HBO   Hendrik Hinzel @JH_Hinzel Associate Producer, Trans Youth, VICE on HBO Tim Clancy @FancyTimClancy Executive Producer, VICE on HBO

Trans Youth

Events from New America NYC featuring innovative policy ideas from some of the best minds of our time.

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