diff --git a/www/conservancy/__init__.py b/www/conservancy/__init__.py
index dba7ab716b934932260d77d0feb544b890c43668..1a64ad37c44a5aa12e40cde924561e2a11276270 100644
--- a/www/conservancy/__init__.py
+++ b/www/conservancy/__init__.py
@@ -1,14 +1,13 @@
-from past.builtins import basestring
 from builtins import object
 import hashlib
 
 from django.conf import settings
-from django.template import RequestContext
 
 # This is backwards compatibilty support for a custom function we wrote
 # ourselves that is no longer necessary in modern Django.
 from django.shortcuts import render as render_template_with_context
 
+
 class ParameterValidator(object):
     def __init__(self, given_hash_or_params, params_hash_key=None):
         if params_hash_key is None:
@@ -17,7 +16,7 @@ class ParameterValidator(object):
             self.given_hash = given_hash_or_params.get(params_hash_key)
         seed = getattr(settings, 'CONSERVANCY_SECRET_KEY', '').encode('utf-8')
         self.hasher = hashlib.sha256(seed)
-        if isinstance(self.given_hash, basestring):
+        if isinstance(self.given_hash, str):
             self.hash_type = type(self.given_hash)
         else:
             self.hash_type = type(self.hasher.hexdigest())