David Hogg would like you to just listen to him. As one of the most prominent of the students who, after the shooting at Florida’s Stoneman Douglas High School, helped start the anti-gun-violence movement March for Our Lives, Hogg has been on TV and at rallies across the country. But even with his success, he says he finds doors closed to him–not because of his ideas, but because of his age.

“People doubt us so much just because of our age,” he said at a panel at the Fast Company Innovation Festival. “It’s disheartening and it’s sad when I’m trying to work with different people in different fields and they just write me off because I’m a young person. To send email after email after email and not get replied to because people are like: ‘This kid is an idiot and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.'”

But Hogg’s main message–and the lesson from the power that March for Our Lives has accumulated since the shooting on February 14, 2018–is that young people need to just push through adults who aren’t listening and build their own power. “Empowerment is not something given to you, it’s something you give yourself. On February 14, we didn’t all of a sudden gain all this power, we realized we always had it. And we stopped waiting for somebody else to do it for us.”

Despite the success of the March for Our Lives movement, which Hogg says has seen an unprecedented number of gun regulation laws passed (at least 126 as of August), he and his co-organizers still face pushback. “Ageism against young people is something serious that this country has to face,” Hogg says, “If you say young people are too stupid and too lazy to go out and change something, and then they go out and change that thing, you start criticizing them because they don’t know enough about politics.”

Aria Finger, the CEO of DoSomething.org, which uses texting to help get young people involved in politics, agrees. Young people need to understand that they have power to make their own change. “If we don’t have hope that we can change the world, if we don’t have hope that we can change these policy decisions, if we don’t have hope that the movement can continue, then we’re nowhere,” she says. “If you can show people that they have power, then they can do anything.”

“The question isn’t who are you waiting for,” he says. “It’s when are you going to do it yourself.”

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp has been sued for suppressing minority votes after an Associated Press investigation revealed a month before November’s midterm election that his office has not approved 53,000 voter registrations – most of them filed by African-Americans.

Kemp, who is running for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, says his actions comply with a 2017 state law that requires voter registration information to match exactly with data from the Department of Motor Vehicles or Social Security Administration.

The law disproportionately affects black and Latino voters, say the civil rights groups who brought the lawsuit.

As a scholar of African-American history, I recognize an old story in this new electoral controversy.

Georgia, like many southern states, has suppressed black voters ever since the 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote in 1870. The tactics have simply changed over time.

Democrats’ southern strategy

With black populations ranging from 25 percent to nearly 60 percent of southern state populations, black voting power upended politics as usual after the Civil War.

During Reconstruction, well over 1,400 African-Americans were elected to local, state and federal office, 16 of whom served in Congress.

Loyal to President Abraham Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation sounded the death knell for slavery, black Americans flocked to the Republican Party. Back then, it was the more liberal of the United States’ two mainstream political parties.

Southern Democrats fought back, using both violence and legislation.

White paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan and White Leagues threatened black candidates, attacked African-American voters, pushed black leaders out of office and toppled Republican governments.

After establishing single-party control over the South, white Democrats in the late 1800s instituted a poll tax, making voting too expensive for former slaves and their descendants.

“White primaries” excluded blacks from choosing candidates in primary elections.

These attacks proved effective. Between 1896 and 1904, the number of black men who voted in Louisiana plummeted from 130,000 to 1,342.

After North Carolina U.S. Rep. George White retired, in 1901, the South would send no African-Americans to Congress until the 1972 election.

Voter suppression in Jim Crow Mississippi

In the early 20th century, many black Americans voted with their feet, migrating north and west.

Around the same time, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal– which instituted racial quotas in hiring for federal public work projects and included policies aimed at reducing inequality – was shifting northern black voters’ allegiance to the Democratic Party.

Black voters in northern cities began putting African-American Democrats into congressional office.

But they did not give up on the South, pressing the Supreme Court to reaffirm voting rights in the 1944 case Smith v. Allwright, which prohibited white-only primaries.

But black voter suppression remained deeply entrenched in the South. Several states required new voters to complete literacy tests before they could cast a ballot. In the 1880s, 76 percent of southern blacks were illiterate, versus 21 percent of whites.

Strategies for excluding black voters evolved along with federal law. In reaction to Brown v. Board of Education, which in 1954 overturned “separate but equal” segregation laws, Mississippi in the same year modified its poll test. It asked voters to interpret a section of the state’s constitution, authorizing county registrars to determine whether the applicant’s answer was “reasonable.”

Virtually all African-Americans, regardless of education or performance, failed. Within a year, the number of blacks registered to vote in Mississippi dropped from 22,000 to 12,000 – a mere 2 percent of eligible black voters.

Political violence – including the 1955 attempted assassination of voting rights activist Gus Courts and murder of George W. Lee – accompanied the legal restrictions, showing the cost of black political independence.

Fighting for the vote

Activists were not deterred. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of Racial Equality continued to wage grassroots voter registration campaigns and fight for official representation in the Democratic Party.

In 1964, a new political party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, was founded to welcome“sharecroppers, farmers and ordinary working people.”

The Freedom Democratic Party elected 68 delegates to attend the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, hoping to transform the all-white Mississippi delegation.

Trying to broker a deal, national Democratic leaders extended Mississippi’s Freedom Democrats two nonvoting at-large seats at the convention – a minor concession that led most white Mississippi party members to walk out in protest.

Freedom Democrats rejected the two seats as tokenism, holding a sit-in on the convention floor in Atlantic City to highlight the lack of black political representation.

Black voters make gains

Over time, the civil rights movement sparked a political shift that dramatically changed the U.S. electorate.

The 24th Amendment outlawed poll taxes in 1964, abolishing a major barrier to black enfranchisement in the South. Literacy tests, too, were restricted, under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act also established federal oversight of voting laws to ensure equal access to elections, particularly in the South.

By the early 21st century, African-Americans constituted a majority of the registered Democrats in Deep South states from South Carolina to Louisiana. They turn out in high numbers and have been key voters for getting Democrats into office in the conservative-dominated South.

Voter suppression today

Over the past decade, Republican lawmakers have chipped away at the last century’s advances, enacting voter ID laws that make it harder to vote.

Claiming they seek to deter election fraud, some 20 states have restricted early voting or passed laws requiring people to show government ID before voting.

Voter identification laws have hidden costs, research shows. Getting a government ID means traveling to state agencies, acquiring birth certificates and taking time off work. That puts it out of reach for many, a kind of 21st-century poll tax.

Federal and state courts have overturned such laws in some states, including Georgia, North Carolina and North Dakota, citing their harmful effect on African-American and Native American voters. But the Supreme Court in 2008 deemed Indiana’s voter ID law a valid deterrent to voter fraud.

Perhaps most damaging to black voters was a 2013 Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act.

Shelby County v. Holder ended 48 years of federal oversight of southern voting laws, concluding that the requirement relied on “40-year-old facts that have no logical relation to the present day.”

Current events show that voter suppression is hardly a thing of the past. From Georgia’s voter registration scandal to gerrymandered districts that dilute minority voting power, millions may be shut out of November’s midterms.

This story originally appeared at The Conversation.

“We have over 10 million followers on Facebook, Instagram” and other social platforms, Nameless Network CEO Kareem Rahma told a crowd at the Fast Company Innovation Festival on Wednesday. “The question was, how do we get them to buy tickets to something in the real world?” 

The answer was the Museum of Pizza, an experiential pop-up museum slash pizza joint that opened in Brooklyn earlier this month.

Rahma explained to Fast Company associate editor K.C. Ifeanyi that he chose pizza as the pop-up’s theme because “we knew it would appeal to a mass audience that we already reach,” through Nameless’s mobile-focused digital videos. The company bills itself as the Discovery Channel “reimagined for young, internet-savvy mobile media consumers” and reaches more than 300 million users a month, most of whom are under 34 years old. 

“For four years we’ve been strangled by Google’s algorithm, Facebook’s algorithm. And Twitter has this new, weird feed that’s really confusing,” said Rahma, who was joined on the panel by RYOT cofounder Bryn Mooser and Tricia Clarke-Stone, CEO of WP Narrative, in a wide-ranging discussion that touched on the game-changing arrival of 5G, the first-mover advantage of using new platforms like IGTV, and the erosion of trust on social media platforms.  

“All of this algorithm dependency strangles creativity,” Rahma said. 

When the discussion then turned to creating content that can be exploited on multiple platforms, Rahma brought up Nameless TV’s Webby-nominated series Everything Explained that makes common phenomena understandable, such as “what happens to your body when you fall asleep drunk.” 

The series has 4 million followers on Facebook and is now also a podcast. “We’re working with some brands and bringing it to audio,” Rahma said. “So you think about it as a piece of IP, and if it hits, you spin it off onto other platforms.” 

As for working with brands, Clarke-Stone distilled her ethos down to three things: insight, foresight, and taste. 

“Insight is, do we really know the target we’re speaking to? Foresight is, I know what’s next, and I have a good sense of where we can take it. And taste is having good enough taste to make stuff that’s amazing.” 

She smiled. “It’s easier said than done.” 

A suspect has been arrested in connection to the mail bombs that have been targeting Democratic leaders and Robert De Niro. CNN reports that federal authorities have arrested a man in connection to the terrorist acts. No additional information was available about the suspect.

The arrest was made in Plantation, Florida. According to CBS, the arrest was made by the Broward County Sheriff’s office and “there was some sort of confrontation,” and a “loud explosion” was heard during the arrest.

The arrest comes after two more “suspicious packages” were sent to prominent officials—Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who just appeared on CNN to discuss the bombings.

The FBI said on Friday that the package addressed to Booker was discovered in Florida and is “similar in appearance to the others.” The package intended for Clapper also was addressed to CNN, a law enforcement official told CNN. Like on the other bombs, it had Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s (D-FL) Florida office as the return address. It was found at a New York City postal facility and was similar to the other packages, the official added.

The arrest comes after packages were sent to former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros, actor and Trump critic Robert De Niro, former Attorney General Eric Holder, 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and former CIA Director John Brennan.

UPDATE: The suspect has been identified as Cesar Sayoc Jr of Aventura, Florida.

Photo of suspect Cesar Sayoc Jr. pic.twitter.com/dvjEApfhAL

— Spectrum News NY1 (@NY1) October 26, 2018

At this week’s Fast Company Innovation Festival, BuzzFeed opened up its Manhattan offices and let attendees learn more about its video strategy. Most media company these days have had some kind of run-in with “pivoting to video,” and BuzzFeed is one of the most prominent players in the ecosystem.

You can check out some photos of the event in the slideshow above.

Whether you are well into your career, or have a gap in your employment, it can be tough to decide what to include on a resume. This is especially true when you reach a point where you question whether your work experience happened too long ago to include on your resume.

Most people are looking for a straightforward answer or rule that tells them exactly how many years is too far back to include on their resume. However, career experts and coaches say there’s no hard-and-fast, right answer.

We spoke with Michelle Aikman, NCRW, cofounder and director of Adventure Learning of Cerno, to discuss just how far back your resume should go.

The rule of thumb

The standard rule people will often hear is that any experience past 10 years is not relevant and should be kept off a resume. But Aikman points out that there is no hard-and-fast rule that applies to everyone because some people don’t have work experiences that lead them to what they want to do next.

“My rule of thumb is to consider how important the experience is to convey your ability to do the job and whether it is absolutely critical that you communicate your qualifications or past experiences with a timeline attached to it,” says Aikman.

If the experience still applies, regardless of when it occurred, Aikman says you should still put it on your resume.

“As long as it gives the employer enough information to understand it, it opens the door for you to talk about that experience,” she explains. “It might not be recent, but is still relevant.

It’s all about relevancy

When it comes to placing old work experience on your resume, Aikman says to focus on relevancy. If you did something in high school or college that is more relevant to what you are trying to do than other recent experiences, then Aikman says you absolutely should include it because it adds to your qualifications.

For those with a large gap in their employment, filling out a job application or going to an interview might be nerve-wracking if you’re worried an employer will notice how far back your resume goes. But if you accomplished things in your personal life that you are proud of, you can find ways to showcase those accomplishments on your resume as relevant experience.

For example, if there is a gap in your employment because you had to care for a family member or loved one, you can explain what you learned or accomplished through that experience in a way that showcases the relevant work to the job you are now applying to. Maybe that experience taught you how to manage another person’s life–so you can showcase why you’d be a great assistant or general manager.

“It just comes down to pulling out the relevant words to describe what you did,” says Aikman. “It may mean you need to be skilled in how you present the information, because you may not be able to use the language you used before. Think about how you can communicate this experience using language that will resonate with the employer.”

Translating old experiences

Moreover, not only is providing relevant experience important, but it’s also important to translate the experience for your future employer. Aikman says you must come to terms with the challenges you are facing while unemployed, but showing the employer why you are motivated and want to work for them.

“The cover letter is a really good place to explain this,” advises Aikman. “It’s important that you provide details on why you are trying to transition right now because employers tend to get nervous about why you are unemployed or haven’t been hired yet.”

Aikman explains this is a significant issue for many people with a large employment gap and that many career services centers or professionals are not able to help because they don’t know how to.

Go beyond the resume

Unfortunately, a stigma still exists around being unemployed. When you are looking for a new job, the standard process of filling out an online application or dropping off a resume isn’t always enough. Aikman advises that those in this situation should be more proactive in reaching out to employers by attending networking events and building relationships with other professionals.

When it comes down to it, Aikman says you just have to communicate to the employer that the experience you have, regardless of when it occurred, does make you qualified for the position.

“You have to believe in the resume for it to work. I think anything can go on a resume, it’s just how you communicate it using the right language,” she says.

This article originally appeared on Glassdoor and is reprinted with permission. 

When a river in Bandung, Indonesia, was so choked with plastic trash earlier this year that the water was essentially invisible, the government called in the army to clean it out. It was a temporary fix: Indonesia has one of the world’s largest problems with plastic waste, much of which ends up flowing into the ocean. Surabaya, the country’s second-largest city, is trying a different approach: If you recycle plastic bottles, you can get a free ride on a city bus.

Five plastic bottles, or 10 plastic cups, equal a two-hour bus ticket. Riders can drop off bottles at terminals or pay their fare directly with the bottles; in a day, a bus can collect as much as 550 pounds of plastic, according to a Reuters report.

It’s an attempt both to encourage more people to ride the bus, in a city where 75% of trips happen in cars, and a step toward a goal of eliminating plastic waste. A global study in 2015 found that Indonesia was responsible for sending more plastic into the ocean than any other country than China. “I think the government has taken that incredibly seriously,” says Susan Ruffo, managing director of international initiatives for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, which recently launched an accelerator in Surabaya to incubate startups working on the problem of plastic waste. (The nonprofit is not involved with the bottles-for-tickets plan.) “They have really launched an all-out effort to try to deal with that.”

In 2016, the government introduced a tax on plastic bags, though the program eventually stopped. In 2017, the government started to create national action plans for education on plastic waste and reducing plastic consumption. This year, as the government sent in soldiers to clean up some of the plastic in Bandung, it also partnered with Islamic religious leaders to give sermons asking people to reduce plastic waste.

Some of Indonesia’s plastic problem comes from other countries: After China said that it didn’t want to be a dumping ground for the world’s plastic recycling, some countries started sending even more to Indonesia. (In April, Indonesia implemented stricter rules for inspecting imports of recycling to help cut down on the volume.) As in other Southeast Asian countries, trash is also growing internally. “The economies are growing really rapidly, populations are growing, people are consuming more, they’re creating more waste, and infrastructure is not keeping up,” says Ruffo.

Right now, waste pickers go through trash–at households or landfills–pulling out anything of value. The country doesn’t have government programs for collection, and everything is thrown into trash cans mixed together. But the new bus program points to a future where plastic may be sorted earlier, and a new habit of recycling.

On a panel at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, CEOs from The Daily Beast, Vimeo, and Daily Burn gathered onstage to talk about entrepreneurialism inside of big organizations. The conversation quickly turned to the burden of trying to ascend the corporate ladder as a woman.

“Am I being too aggressive? Or too ambitious? Or too impatient? Those are all words that I have been accused of, and, in a certain way, am,” said Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud. Women, she argued, disproportionately have a difficult time owning their own entrepreneurialism because of the way their peers view them. Others seem to agree. Several studies back up the idea that women who are confident are perceived differently than their male equivalents. While the lack of environmental support never stopped her from going after what she wanted, Sud said, it did make her anxious, and it took her a long time to get comfortable with being ambitious.

“You can get so much from the people around you, whether they’re your direct reports, or your boss, or your friends and family,” said Han.

“I’ve never felt that I’ve had a formal mentor in my career,” said Sud, “my experience has been building a peer network—and actually those below—is often one of the most valuable things.” Sud moved up at Vimeo quickly. Over the span of three years, she went from head of global marketing to general manager to chief executive. “I went from being in some cases the peers of people and in some cases being below people to being their boss overnight,” she said. Along the way, she said, she developed trust at all levels of the organization, which set her up for success when she transitioned into the company’s top position.

In developing a support network, she said people should be strategic, but also genuine. “The most valuable way to be an ally is not to be, ‘What can I get out of this and how are they going to help me?’ It comes down to: How am I adding value? If you can take that lens, you end up building more sustainable relationships.”

“You can be ambitious and aggressive, but still generous and kind,” said Han. “I think this is where we forget it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can be a whole person and go after these things.”

As a caravan of migrants makes its way from Honduras toward the U.S. border in hopes of finding a safe future, the Trump administration is taking a stand. The New York Times reports that the administration is drafting an executive action that would effectively shut the southern border and make it exceedingly difficult for Central Americans seeking asylum to gain entry at the U.S.-Mexico border or even ask for asylum. This news comes as Trump prepared to send as many as 1,000 active-duty Army troops to help secure the southern border.

The situation is about to get worse. According to the nonprofit RAICES, which you may remember as the group that raised $4,000 a minute on Facebook to help stop the Trump administration’s heartless child separation policy, thousands of families are to be released from ICE detention.

While that sounds like good news, according to a series of tweets, the government is releasing the families with no plans to “ensure their safety.” In the past, prior to releasing migrants with pending asylum claims, ICE would review post-release plans, including confirming bus routes, coordinating with nonprofit groups and relatives, and ensuring that families had a means to reach their destination and were not simply left on the street.

That is no longer happening: As theHouston Chronicle reports, “the burden of providing temporary shelter and travel coordination fall[s] solely to nonprofits.”

According to RAICES, the timing of this mass release “isn’t a coincidence.” As Trump considers closing the border–and the Army moves in and the migrant caravan approaches–this en masse release could just make a bad situation worse.

⚠️ EMERGENCY ALERT ⚠️

The gov't announced a plan to mass release families from detention centers. For months they’ve kept families for longer than the 20 days they are legally allowed, but now, they are suddenly mass releasing THOUSANDS with NO plans to ensure their safety.

— ???????????????????????? (@RAICESTEXAS) October 26, 2018

The U.S. gov’t did this before. In 2016, ICE released 500 people to the streets of San Antonio. We were there and within days we got hundreds of people on buses, planes and into safe houses.

We’re prepared to do the same again.

— ???????????????????????? (@RAICESTEXAS) October 26, 2018

After Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico’s power grid, causing the longest blackout in U.S. history, it ignited a new push for renewable energy–a solution that could be more resilient in future storms and avoid the emissions that are making hurricanes worse. Now, lawmakers want to make it official: Today, the Puerto Rico House and Senate are holding a joint hearing to consider a bill that would transition the island to 100% renewables.

The bill calls for 20% renewable electricity by 2025, 50% by 2040, and 100% by 2050. California recently passed a similar bill, with a goal of 100% renewables by 2045. Hawaii passed a similar law in 2015, and this June, added another law with the goal of becoming fully carbon neutral.

In Puerto Rico, there were clear arguments for renewables even before the storm. The grid was already unreliable, and blackouts were common. Importing fossil fuels to the island is expensive, and electricity cost twice as much as it does on the mainland. The island has both abundant sunshine and wind. Maria made the case even stronger to switch to those power sources.

“It changed everything,” says Javier Rua-Jovet, who lives in San Juan and now works as director of public policy in Puerto Rico for SunRun, the solar power company, which entered the market there this year because of the demand for solar power and battery storage systems. “People were hurled back from the first world to the third world in terms of energy.”

Rua-Jovet’s own electricity was out for a relatively short two months (for some others, the blackout lasted nine months), but he spent around $1,700 on fuel for a generator during that time. Others suffered significantly more–some people died because they didn’t have the power to run a respirator or dialysis machine. It became clear to everyone, he says, that the energy paradigm needed to change. Long transmission lines crossing mountains, vulnerable in storms could be replaced by a more resilient system with energy distributed in many locations.

After Maria, SunRun, along with companies like Sonnen and Tesla, installed small solar microgrids–solar panels plus batteries to store the power–at sites like hospitals and fire stations. The systems worked, and have continued to work during more recent temporary blackouts. That helped bolster the political case for more microgrids, which the new bill supports as part of the shift away from fossil fuels. It’s also designed to support “prosumers,” consumers who can install rooftop solar systems and then sell excess power to the grid and their neighbors. Some disaster funding from the federal government may help homeowners buy panels. (A request from Puerto Rico to HUD currently asks for $100 million to go to solar power and storage.)

The storm “created broad consensus across the political spectrum,” says Rua-Jovet. “We have a pro-renewables governor. We have a pro-renewables Senate.” He’s optimistic that the bill will pass.

It’s a great time to be a jobseeker. Unemployment rate is low, and there are more open positions than there are candidates looking for work. That means that employers are always competing with each other for top talent, and it’s no longer enough just to post vacancies on job boards and wait for applications to come in.

Minshew shared her own experience of being shortlisted as one of the final two candidate to be the chief of staff of a large organization. The last round of interviews involved getting to know the leadership and members of the company. Minshew discovered things that compelled her to withdraw from the application process. “I felt so bad,” Minshew said. Because “they had invested so much time in me and I had invested so much time in them.” Had she known that information earlier, she would have withdrawn her application earlier, and the company could have had a candidate that was a better fit, she said.

The importance of transparency in the recruitment process

Candidates are no longer just looking for companies who can pay them well and give them generous perks. Toni Thompson, VP of people and talent at The Muse, said that while candidates consider benefits to be an important factor, many are also interested in talking about the company’s policy towards work and life. She stressed that organizations need to be honest about things like the number of hours that an employee is expected to work. For example, if a role requires an employee to work on weekends on occasion, that’s something they should be upfront about during the hiring process.

A company’s recruitment process needs to be consistent with its brand

For Katie Turrel, director of talent acquisition at Bonobos, every candidate is a potential Bonobos customer. “I tell hiring managers and recruiters, a lot of the times it’s a lot of touch points with the brand. If they are not right for our brand, they are potentially customers. It’s so important to give them the same candidate experience as the person you’re looking to attract.” After all, a candidate who had a negative hiring experience is more likely to tell their friends and family not to apply to future roles in that company, and might even go so far as to discourage them from engaging with the brand.

Turrel also noticed that even existing employees have become more comfortable with questioning their leaders. “It’s been a massive shift,” she said. At the end of the day, Thompson said, companies need to be more open about what their culture is and what they expect from employees. Not only will they be less likely to make the wrong hire, but companies will be more likely to hire those who embrace their mission wholeheartedly, and help them succeed in the process.

Sex scenes in TV and movies can be awkward for the people getting fake frisky in front of a bunch of gaffers, best boys, and script supervisors (and they are even more awkward if you’re innocently watching a movie with your grandparents and then bam! naked stuff). They can also be uncomfortable if the people involved feel forced into doing the scene, are uncomfortable with what they are asked to do, and don’t feel like they can say no. To make actors and lawyers and everyone in between feel more comfortable during the many, many sex scenes for their down-and-dirty series The Deuce, HBO hired Alicia Rodis as an on-set intimacy coordinator to ensure standards were followed and to make sure there was no abuse. She runs a nonprofit, Intimacy Directors International, and basically works as the sex version of a stunt coordinator, on hand to make sure everything goes safely and according to plan.

The idea to hire Rodis came from The Deuce star Emily Meade, who plays the prostitute-turned-porn star Lori on the show. “I went to the [series] creators…and HBO and told them I’d feel much more comfortable if there was some sort of advocate purely for the sexual scenes,” Meade said in an interview. Rodis’s hiring has made such an impact that, according to Rolling Stone, showrunner David Simon said he would never work without an intimacy coordinator again.

HBO took him at his word and announced in a tweet that they will be rolling out the practice in all its programs, bringing intimacy coordinators on set for any projects with sex scenes. (So, like, every HBO show except Bill Maher’s?) It’s a major step–one that’s long overdue. Hopefully other networks and studios will follow HBO’s lead.

Opioids don’t discriminate among age, race, geography, or socioeconomic status. To put a finer point on that fact, Truth Initiative is using its newest PSA to introduce us to Rebekkah, a 26-year-old addict who got hooked on prescription drugs after she hurt her ankle as an aspiring dancer at 14. Stories like hers are tragically common in America right now, and the new campaign forces us to face that fact. Onward!

Truth Initiative “Rebekkah’s Story”

What: A new PSA that aims to show that opioid addiction can start in unexpected places.

Who: Truth Initiative, The Ad Council, U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 72andSunny, M ss ng P eces

Why we care: It’s a tragic story well told with a glimmer of hope, but it’s the specificity of chronicling Rebekkah’s first three days of detox that brings home the pain, struggle, and will required to break the curse cast by a well-intentioned prescription.

Nike “LeBron–I Believe”

What: As LeBron James begins his 16th NBA season, his first as a Los Angeles Laker, Nike serves up a flashback.

Who: Nike, Wieden + Kennedy Portland

Why we care: It may be his 16th year in the NBA, but the foundation of his confidence was on display for all to see when he was just an 18-year-old NBA hopeful. The spot expertly taps footage from his press conference on May 22, 2003, just after the results of the year’s NBA Draft Lottery were announced, to stylishly illustrate the power of self-belief.

Ford “Accessibility Mat”

What: Ford Brazil redesigned the Ecosport SUV’s trunk mat to give it a new function as a portable accessibility ramp for drivers with disabilities or limited mobility.

Who: Ford Brazil, GTB Brazil, Code Studio

Why we care: Some of the best examples of brand marketing are actually pieces of utility that not only promote a brand but also work to make our lives easier. Here, Ford saw an opportunity to adapt a seemingly simple part of its product to become a useful tool for the millions of Brazilians living with some type of mobility disability, making it easier for them to navigate the world. It’s a cool innovation, with a look at the humanity behind it.

Three UK “#PhonesAreGood”

What: A U.K. mobile brand ad to counter all the claims of how bad our phones are for us.

Who: Three UK, Wieden + Kennedy London

Why we care: What if the captain of the Titanic had had a smartphone? Would history change? (Of course it would.) That’s the ridiculous premise here to cheekily illustrate the brighter side of our crippling phone addiction.

Volvo “Pump It Up”

What: An ’80s inspired fever dream disguised as an ad for Volvo construction vehicles.

Who: Volvo, Forsman & Bodenfors

Why we care: Just what the sweet, Swedish automotive hell is going on here? Your guess is as good as mine, but this feels like a weird sequel to Benny Bennassi’s “Satisfaction,” that just happens to be a Volvo ad. Dolph Lungren somehow pops up in pop culture twice in as many months, adding to the Creed II trailer excitement. That’s two more times than in the last, what, 20 years? Pump up the jams.

The World Travel and Tourism Council just released its report on the economic impact of tourism around the globe, and it just might be time to cash in on all the vacation days you’ve been hoarding–because the list could easily make up your 2019 travel plans.

The fastest growing cities in terms of tourism dollars are Cairo and James Bond’s favorite destination, Macau, which was one of five Chinese destinations to make the list, along with Chongqing, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Other emerging destinations to add to your Pinterest board include Dublin, Ireland; Manila, Philippines; and Antalya, Turkey.

Why are there so many Chinese destinations on the list? According to Travelzoo senior editor Gabe Saglie, it’s not just because China is a vast country with a lot to offer travelers who can score a visa. “The Chinese government has aggressively subsidized travel to and within the country–generating some of the biggest travel values in the world,” he wrote in an email.

China is really booming, too, raking in tourism dollars: Shanghai ($35 billion); Beijing ($32.5 billion) and Shenzhen ($19 billion) were all in the top 10 in terms of how much money tourism contributed to the country’s GDP. Other big contributors were Paris ($28 billion); Orlando ($24.8 billion); New York ($24.8 billion); Tokyo ($21.7 billion); Bangkok ($21.3 billion); Mexico City ($19.7 billion); and Las Vegas ($19.5 billion). Your thank you note is in the mail!

If dreaming about travel isn’t enough for you anymore, consider getting a job in the tourism industry. Jakarta, Beijing, Mexico City, Shanghai, Bangkok, Chongqing, Delhi, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City, and Shenzhen all topped the list in terms of tourism job creation. Seems like a good time to make a break from the open-plan office.

Facebook took down 82 accounts, pages, and groups that posted about U.S. and U.K. politics from Iran. The company hasn’t found ties to the Iranian government but can’t say for sure who’s responsible, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, on Friday. The company takes down accounts engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” meaning they worked together to mislead users about content they’re posting.

They posted content on “politically charged topics such as race relations, opposition to the President, and immigration,” Gleicher wrote in a blog post.

The material included 30 Pages, 33 Facebook accounts, 16 Instagram accounts, and 3 Facebook groups on Facebook. About 1.02 million accounts followed at least one of the pages. Some 25,000 accounts joined at least one of the groups, and more than 28,000 accounts followed one of the Instagram users. The accounts also hosted seven Facebook events and spent less than $100 on two ads posted in June 2016 and January 2018, according to Facebook.

Facebook shared data with U.S. and U.K. officials and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has been monitoring social media misinformation and propaganda. The company, which has set up a “war room,” focused on stopping interference with elections, first identified the accounts about a week ago.

Facebook and Twitter took down hundreds more accounts and pages linked to Russia and Iran in August. The social media services have come under criticism for failing to take down Russia-tied propaganda posts and pages prior to the 2016 presidential election.

As the narrative continues to unravel around the disappearance and killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, members and institutions of the global creative community are responding to the international crisis by distancing themselves from projects funded by the Saudi government and its affiliates.

Among them is Neom, the $500 billion “smart city” mega-development that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman had announced last year. The futuristic territory, slated for ground-up construction across more than 10,000 square miles in the Saudi desert, was hailed as the cornerstone of the country’s strategy to transform its economy and infuse the region with foreign investments by 2030. Now that many of the 19 architecture and design leaders listed on the project’s advisory board earlier this month have abruptly withdrawn from participation, however, the future of that prospect seems uncertain.

Apple’s chief design officer, Jonathan Ive. was among the first to quietly withdraw his name from the board. A week after news broke on Khashoggi’s disappearance on Oct. 2, Apple confirmed, in very few words, that Ive’s inclusion was “a mistake.” Several other prominent design figures–including architect Norman Foster, Carlo Ratti of MIT’s Senseable Cities Lab, Ideo president and CEO Tim Brown, and former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick–have distanced themselves as well.

“Earlier this week, Lord Foster wrote to the head of the NEOM Advisory Board stating that whilst the situation remains unclear he has suspended his activities in respect of the Board,” a representative from Foster+Partners confirmed with the Architect’s Newspaper. Meanwhile, Ratti’s office provided the following statement: “Both Carlo and our team are gravely concerned about the Khashoggi case. We are monitoring the situation closely as it develops hour by hour. We are waiting for the results of the U.S. investigation to evaluate the best course of action.” And Dan Doctoroff’s publicist wrote to Fast Company, simply stating: “Dan Doctoroff’s inclusion on that list is incorrect. He is not a member of the NEOM advisory board.”

Neom is among the latest projects to respond to the Khashoggi case, with institutions and businesses across sectors responding as well. Notably in the cultural sector, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art also announced last week that it would reject funding from the Saudi government for its yearlong Arab Art and Education initiative, opting to continue it as an entirely self-funded event. Similarly, in a statement to the New York Times, Brooklyn Museum officials shared that “in light of recent events and in harmony with the international community’s concerns,” it would deny monetary donations from groups tied to the Saudi government for its exhibition, Syria Then and Now: Stories from Refugees a Century Apart, which opened on Oct. 13.

Democracy is at a crossroads. With the midterms approaching and the 2020 presidential election looming on the horizon, millions of Americans are set to place their faith in candidates whose rhetoric is democratic but who are open about their intention to compromise the very institutions that curtail the powers of elected leaders. Not just in the United States, but around the world–from Brazil to Hungary–voters are turning to authoritarian leaders promising to unleash the power of the people, but whose definition of “the people” excludes many who are not like them. Remarkably, however, the ‘illiberal’ turn in the development of democracy is not the greatest challenge facing the idea of government by the people.

Increasingly, digital technology is eroding the assumptions and conditions that have underpinned democracy for centuries. By now, fake news and polarization are familiar subjects to those interested in democracy’s health. Just last week Facebook announced that it was doubling its ‘security and community’ staff to 20,000. But in the future, we’ll have to grapple with the much more significant idea of AI Democracy, asking which decisions could and should be taken by powerful digital systems, and whether such systems might better represent the people than the politicians we send to Congress.

It’s a prospect which holds possible glories but also terrible risks. “Is democracy, such as we know it,” asked Henry David Thoreau in 1849, “the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?” The same question arises today.

This book excerpt has been edited for length and clarity.

We tend to talk to those we like and read news that confirms our beliefs, while filtering out information and people we find disagreeable. Technology increasingly allows us to do so. If you are a liberal who uses Twitter to follow races for the U.S. House of Representatives, 90 per cent of the tweets you see (on average) will come from Democrats; if you are a conservative, 90 per cent of the tweets you see will typically come from Republicans.

In the early days of the internet it was predicted that we would personally customize our own information environment, choosing what we would read on the basis of its political content. Increasingly, however, the work of filtering is done for us by automated systems that choose what is worthy of being reported or documented, and decide how much context and detail is necessary. Problematically, this means that the world I see every day may be profoundly different from the one you see.

The term fake news was initially used to describe falsehoods that were propounded and given wide circulation on the internet. Now even the term fake news itself has been drained of meaning, used as a way to describe anything the speaker disagrees with. Although some social media platforms have taken steps to counter it, the nature of online communication (as currently engineered) is conducive to the rapid spread of misinformation. The result is so-called post-truth politics. Think about for this a moment: in the final three months of the 2016 US presidential campaign, the top twenty fake news stories on Facebook generated more shares, reactions, and comments than the top twenty stories from the major news outlets combined (including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Huffington Post). 75 per cent of people who saw fake news headlines believed them to be true.

Unfortunately, our innate tendency toward group polarization means that members of a group who share the same views tend, over time, to become more extreme in those views. As Cass Sunstein puts it, “it is precisely the people most likely to filter out opposing views who most need to hear them.” If matters carry on as they are, we will have fewer and fewer common terms of reference and shared experiences. If that happens, rational deliberation will become increasingly difficult. How can we agree on anything when the information environment encourages us to disagree on everything? “I am a great believer in the people,” Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said. “If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

Who will bring us the real facts?

Importantly, these problems aren’t inevitable. We can find solutions. Social network proprietors are slowly taking steps to regulate their discussion spaces. Software engineers like those at loomio.org are trying to create ideal deliberation platforms using code. The Taiwanese vTaiwan platform has enabled consensus to be reached on several matters of public policy, including online alcohol sales policy, ride- sharing regulations, and laws concerning the sharing economy and Airbnb. Digital fact-checking and troll-spotting are rising in prominence and the process of automating this work has begun, albeit imperfectly. These efforts are important. The survival of deliberation in the future will depend in large part on whether they succeed.

What’s clear is that a marketplace of ideas, attractive though the idea sounds, may not be what’s best. If content is framed and prioritized according to how many clicks it receives (and how much advertising revenue flows as a result) then truth will often be the casualty. If the debate chamber is dominated by whoever has the power to filter, or unleashes the most ferocious army of bots, then the conversation will be skewed in favour of those with the better technology, not necessarily the better ideas. Deliberative democracy needs a forum for civil discussion, not a marketplace of screaming merchants.

In the future, as we’ve seen, those who control digital platforms will increasingly police the speech of others. At present, tech firms are growing more bold about restricting obviously hateful speech. Few among us will have shed a tear, for instance, when Apple removed from its platform several apps that claimed to help ‘cure’ gay men of their sexuality. Nor when several content intermediaries stopped trafficking content from right-wing hate groups after white supremacist demonstrations in Charlottesville in mid- 2017. (The delivery network Cloudfare terminated the account of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer. The music streaming service Spotify stopped providing music from “hate bands” The gaming chat app Discord shut down accounts associated with the Charlottesville fracas. Facebook banned a number of far-right groups with names like “Red Winged Knight,” “White Nationalists United,” “Right Wing Death Squad,” and “Vanguard America.”)

But what about when Facebook removed the page belonging to the mayor of a large Kurdish city, despite it having been “liked” by more than four hundred thousand people? According to Zeynep Tufekci, Facebook took this action because it was unable to distinguish “ordinary content that was merely about Kurds and their culture” from propaganda issued by the PKK, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. In Tufekci’s words, it “was like banning any Irish page featuring a shamrock or a leprechaun as an Irish Republican Army page.”

My purpose is not to critique these individual decisions, of which literally millions are made every year, many by automated systems. The bigger point is that the power to decide what is considered so annoying, disgusting, scary, hurtful, or offensive that it should not be uttered at all has a significant bearing on the overall quality of our deliberation. It’s not clear why so-called “community guidelines” would be the best way to manage this at a systemic level: the ultimate “community” affected is the political community as a whole. To pretend that these platforms are like private debating clubs is naïve: they’re the new agorae and their consequences affect us all.

The idea of unfettered freedom of speech on digital platforms is surely a non-starter. Some forms of extreme speech should not be tolerated. Even in the nineteenth century, the philosopher John Stuart Mill accepted that certain restrictions were necessary. In his example, it’s acceptable to tell a newspaper that “corn-dealers are starvers of the poor” but not acceptable to bellow the same words “to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer.” Mill understood that we certainly shouldn’t be squeamish about rules that focus on the form of speech as opposed to its content. Just as it’s not too burdensome to refrain from screaming in a residential area at midnight, we can also surely accept that online discourse should be conducted according to rules that clearly and fairly define who can speak, when, for how long, and so forth. In the future this will be more important than ever: Mill’s “excited mob” is much easier to convene, whether physically or digitally, using the technologies we have at our disposal.

It would be easy to blame post-truth politics on digital technology alone. But the truth (!) is that humans have a long and rich history of using deceit for political purposes. Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 description of the “paranoid style” in public life–“heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy”–could have been meant to describe today. So too could George Orwell’s complaint, in his diary of 1942, that:

We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth . . . everyone is simply putting a “case” with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.

AI Democracy

Looking further into the future, we have seen that one of the main purposes of democracy is to unleash the information and knowledge contained in people’s minds and put it to political use. But if you think about it, elections and referendums do not yield a particularly rich trove of information. A vote on a small number of questions–usually which party or candidate to support–produces only a small number of data points. Put in the context of an increasingly quantified society, the amount of information generated by the democratic process–even when private polling is taken into account–is laughably small. Recall that by 2020 it’s expected that we’ll generate the same amount of information every couple of hours as we did from the dawn of civilization until 2003. This data will provide a log of human life that would have been unimaginable to our predecessors. This prompts the question: why would we govern on the basis of a tick in a box every few years?

By gathering together and synthesizing large amounts of the available data–giving equal consideration to everyone’s interests, preferences, and values–we could create the sharpest and fullest possible portrait of the common good. Under this model, policy could be based on an incomparably rich and accurate picture of our lives: what we do, what we need, what we think, what we say, how we feel. The data would be fresh and updated in real time rather than in a four- or five-year cycle. It would, in theory, ensure a greater measure of political equality–as it would be drawn from everyone equally, not just those who tend to get involved in the political process. And data, the argument runs, doesn’t lie: it shows us as we are, not as we think we are.

Machine-learning systems are increasingly able to infer our views from what we do and say, and the technology already exists to analyze public opinion by processing mass sentiment on social media. Digital systems can also predict our individual views with increasing accuracy. Facebook’s algorithm, for instance, needs only 10 “likes” before it can predict your opinions better than your colleagues, 150 before it can beat your family members, and 300 before it can predict your opinion better than your spouse. And that’s on the basis of a tiny amount of data compared to the amount that will be available in the future.

The logical next question is this: what role will artificial intelligence come to play in governing human affairs?

We know that there are already hundreds, if not thousands, of tasks and activities formerly done only by humans that can now be done by AI systems, often better and on a much greater scale. These systems can now beat the most expert humans in almost every game. We have good reason to expect not only that these systems will grow more powerful, but that their rate of development will accelerate over time.

Increasingly, we entrust AI systems with tasks of the utmost significance and sensitivity. On our behalf they trade stocks and shares worth billions of dollars, report the news, and diagnose our fatal diseases. In the near future they will drive our cars for us, and we will trust them to get us there safely. We are already comfortable with AI systems taking our lives and livelihoods in their (metaphorical) hands. As they become explosively more capable, our comfort will be increasingly justified.

In the circumstances, it’s not unreasonable, let alone crazy, to ask under what circumstances we might allow AI systems to partake in some of the work of government. If Deep Knowledge Ventures, a Hong-Kong based investor, can appoint an algorithm to its board of directors, is it so fanciful to consider that in the future we might appoint an AI system to the local water board or energy authority? Now is the time for political theorists to take seriously the idea that politics—just like commerce and the professions—may have a place for artificial intelligence.

In the first place, we might use simple AI systems to help us make the choices democracy requires of us. Apps already exist to advise us who we ought to vote for, based on our answers to questions. One such app brands itself as ‘matchmaking for politics’, which sounds a bit like turning up to a blind date to find a creepy politician waiting at the bar. In the future such apps will be considerably more sophisticated, drawing not on questionnaires but on the data that reveals our actual lives and priorities.

As time goes on, we might even let such systems vote on our behalf in the democratic process. This would involve delegating authority (in matters big or small, as we wish) to specialist systems that we believe are better placed to determine our interests than we are. Taxation, consumer welfare, environmental policy, financial regulation— these are all areas where complexity or ignorance may encourage us to let an AI system make a decision for us, based on what it knows of our lived experience and our moral preferences. In a frenetic Direct Democracy of the kind described earlier in this chapter, delegating your vote to a trusted AI system could save a lot of hours in the day.

A still more advanced model might involve the central government making inquiries of the population thousands of times each day, rather than once every few years—without having to disturb us at all.66 AI systems could respond to government nano-ballots on our behalf, at lightening speed, and their answers would not need not be confined to a binary yes or no. They could contain caveats (my citizen supports this aspect of this proposal but not that aspect) or expressions of intensity (my citizen mildly opposes this but strongly supports that). Such a model would have a far greater claim to taking into account the interests of the population than the model with which we live today.

In due course, AIs might also take part in the legislative process, helping to draft and amend legislation. And in the long run, we might even allow AIs, incorporated as legal persons, to ‘stand’ for election to administrative and technical positions in government.

AI systems could play a part in democracy while remaining subordinate to traditional democratic processes like human deliberation and human votes. And they could be made subject to the ethics of their human masters. It should not be necessary for citizens to surrender their moral judgment if they don’t wish to.

There are nevertheless serious objections to the idea of AI Democracy. Foremost among them is the transparency objection: can we really call a system democratic if we don’t really understand the basis of the decisions made on our behalf? Although AI Democracy could make us freer or more prosperous in our day-to-day lives, it would also rather enslave us to the systems that decide on our behalf. One can see Pericles shaking his head in disgust.

In the past humans were prepared, in the right circumstances, to surrender their political affairs to powerful unseen intelligences. Before they had kings, the Hebrews of the Old Testament lived without earthly politics. They were subject only to the rule of God Himself, bound by the covenant that their forebears had sworn with Him. The ancient Greeks consulted omens and oracles. The Romans looked to the stars. These practices now seem quaint and faraway, inconsistent with what we know of rationality and the scientific method. But they prompt introspection. How far are we prepared to go–what are we prepared to sacrifice–to find a system of government that actually represents the people?

From FUTURE POLITICS: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech by Jamie Susskind. Copyright © 2018 by Jamie Susskind and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Cesar Sayoc, the 56-year-old Florida man arrested in connection with the recent wave of mail bomb attacks, had a Facebook profile full of right-wing propaganda. The page is no longer available, perhaps taken down by Facebook, and didn’t include any public content after October 2016.

The page, under the name Cesar Altieri Randazzo, included numerous public posts from 2016 supporting President Trump and denouncing his political rivals, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. One shared post came from a page called “Handcuffs for Hillary,” and the page also included numerous reposts from conservative news sources—from Fox News to Breitbart—as well as photos apparently taken by Savoc at Trump rallies.

Facebook didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from Fast Company about whether it took down the page.

Savoc appears to have shared right-wing content and conspiracy theories on Twitter as well. Some posts propagate conspiracy theories about George Soros, the billionaire funder of liberal causes, suggesting he aided in the Nazi Holocaust (despite being Jewish) and that he was behind the Parkland High School shooting. The Twitter account also ranted about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose return address was used to send the mail bombs, and included threats against other liberal public figures including New York Times columnist and tech writer Sarah Jeong and actor Jim Carrey, The Daily Beast reports.

With details still emerging, it’s obviously too soon to determine the extent to which Savoc’s online persona was authentic, but his constant sharing of extreme content is likely to stoke criticism of Facebook and other social media as engines for online radicalization.

A van seized in connection with Savoc’s arrest was covered in far-right stickers, many featuring images from prominent conservative memes.

Megyn Kelly is canceled.

Really.

Just three days after the TV host made controversial remarks defending blackface on Halloween, NBC has pulled the plug on Megyn Kelly Today.

On Tuesday’s episode of her morning show, Kelly wondered why doing blackface as part of a Halloween costume is considered racist. The backlash was swift and fierce, with Kelly offering a tearful apology a day later and NBC airing a rerun instead of a live episode on Thursday. Today, NBC put out a statement saying, “Megyn Kelly Today is not returning. Next week, the 9 a.m. hour will be hosted by other Today co-anchors.”

After Kelly’s departure from Fox News in January 2017, NBC scooped her up in a highly lucrative deal that was supposed to last through 2020. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Kelly’s lawyers are negotiating an exit deal.

During the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won over voters in coal country by claiming he would keep mines open, and retain coal as a prominent energy source in the U.S. His argument was an economic one: He knew that miners were worried about their jobs, and that many did not see a path forward should the mines close.

But closing mines does not have to mean a loss of work. Done thoughtfully, it could present an opportunity for new economic growth, and environmental renewal. That’s what Spain is looking to accomplish via its recent commitment to close nearly all of its coal mines by the end of this year. The Spanish government and unions that work with private coal mines just reached a deal that will bring €250 million ($285 million) in investments to mining regions in the form of early retirement funds for miners over age 48, and comprehensive retraining schemes and economic support for younger miners.

With this newly announced deal, Spain is providing the rest of the world a model in how to accomplish a “just transition” away from polluting energy sources like coal. The larger just transition movement advocates for a shift to renewable energy in a way that protects the economic livelihoods of the people who stand to be affected by that shift. By ensuring that the over 1,000 miners who will lose their jobs in the closure of the 10 coal plants have a safety net already in place, Spain is aiming to prove that a just transition can happen equitably, if a country lines up resources to support workers beforehand.

In The Guardian, Montserrat Mir, the Spanish confederal secretary for the European Trades Union Congress, said that she thinks other regions grappling with how to move away from coal could learn from Spain’s model. “Spain can export this deal as an example of good practice. We have shown that it’s possible to follow the Paris agreement without damage [to people’s livelihoods]. We don’t need to choose between a job and protecting the environment. It is possible to have both.”

Especially in light of the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that the planet must collectively decarbonize and shift to renewables in the next three decades or face significant environmental consequences, the movement away from coal cannot happen soon enough. Currently, 36% of the world’s energy is still produced by coal, despite the knowledge that it’s the largest contributor to climate change, and responsible for around 46% of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide. As solar and wind energy have grown cheaper, the argument to preserve the use of coal mainly hinges around the effect on communities whose economies are centered around those jobs. But if economic vitality can be preserved by providing workers other jobs–perhaps in renewable energy, or in environmental restoration projects on the sites damaged by coal mining–it could make a stronger case for shifting away from coal.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for ecological transition, says that the country’s strategy could pave the way for regions that previously depended on coal to become leaders in Spain’s new renewable energy sector–which is set to boom as the new administration just abolished a tax on solar, and will be releasing its long-delayed comprehensive environmental plan in November. “Our aim has been to leave no one behind,” she says. “We also want to go further, we want to innovate.”

There are lessons in Spain’s plan for any region grappling with the move away from coal. Despite the lack of political will in the United States at the federal level, currently, to implement this type of wide-ranging policy, similar efforts are happening at a smaller scale. In West Virginia, for instance, an organization called Coalfield Development Corporation is beginning to retrain miners in sectors like housing construction, environmental restoration, and renewable energy development. As Spain provides a model for how to implement a nationwide just transition, these smaller initiatives could continue to build momentum from the ground up. And perhaps, they could set the world on a path to eradicating the use of coal by 2050, and keeping in line with the recommendations of the IPCC report.