Joy Gilfilen, host of iChange Justice, brings a new style of discussion to the table from a researcher who was a Wall Street bond market trader. He talks about how so many people in our society are siloed by our jobs. We become experts at doing one thing, and do not realize how this one thing links to another.
In investigative journalism, people often talk about following the money trail. In this case, we are "following the number trail". How does a 911 incident or arrest produce a case or cause # (a ticket) given by a police officer, become a tracking number inside a municipal system, and a bond that is traded on Wall Street as part of a municipal asset bundle that produces revenue in retirement funds? Most of us working in each step of the paper trail transactions have no idea what the numbers mean, how they change form, or how to track them individually. Mostly we don't recognize the links and why this matters to us in our individual communities. It is all obscured behind layers of changing numbers embedded deep inside our complex systems of law and justice.
