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  • Prison is No Place to Grow Up: Why Every State Must Enact Juvenile Justice Reforms

    By David Chura. This post originally appeared on Juvenile Justice Information Exchange.

    Most of us know at least a few young teens—15-, 16-,
    17-year-olds. A son or daughter. A niece
    or nephew. A neighbor or a friend’s
    grandchild. We see them around, waiting for the school bus, surfing the
    sidewalk on a skate board, hanging out at the mall. Despite what they insist,
    teens are only on the cusp of adulthood, and most of us will do whatever we can
    to help them make it in the world.

    Until, that is, one of those youths gets arrested. Then
    all that good will disappears. At least that’s the case in over half the states
    which have yet to change their laws prosecuting young teenagers (under the age
    of 18) as adults and, if convicted, sending them to adult correctional
    facilities. Suddenly that young person becomes
    an exile to all the protections and decencies that communities work hard to
    provide their children, and she or he enters a world that is blind to the needs
    and vulnerabilities of every developing adolescent. (This disenfranchisement is
    made starkly clear by the fact that in some states the parents of those teens are
    not notified when their children are arrested.)There is nothing nice about a
    kid in an adult prison or jail—nothing any of us would wish on the young teens
    that we know.

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  • Weekly Link Roundup: November 3

     

    May Day March, photo by David Bacon

    Immigrants, workers, union members and community activists marched on May Day in San Jose. Marchers protested attacks on immigrants, unions and the rights of workers, and called on Congress to pass a just immigration reform. (David Bacon)

     

    —A global consensus is emerging on immigration policy—and the U.S. isn’t heeding it.

    —Boston is the home to many firsts: the first public park, the first subway, the first kidney transplant. Could the next first be a literary cultural district? With help of a planning grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Grub Street will refine the concept and pitch the MCC for designation of such a district.

    —Daylight saving time has once again come to an end. Feeling refreshed after an extra hour of sleep? Here's a brief history of why it came to be.

    —A federal district court in Texas found that a law requiring physicians who provide abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was unconstitutional and does not protect women in any way. Don't breathe too easy yet; the state of Texas has already filed an appeal. Three days later, the decision was reversed.

    —Grilled cheese to heal a cut? That's just one of the many bizarre natural remedies from the 1700s as promoted by John Wesley—a British evangelist and the co-founder of Methodist.

    —In 2008 and 2012, 75 percent of single mothers voted for President Obama. So who are the other 25 percent that are voting Republican?

    —A librarian has started a Tumblr blog with book recommendations made by humans, not algorithms.

  • The Social Status of Abortion Providers: ‘Doctors of Conscience’ Revisited

    By Carole Joffe.

    Note: This post is a lightly edited version of remarks given by Carole Joffee upon accepting the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Family Planning in Seattle on October 7. It previously appeared on the RH Reality Check.

    My journey as a researcher of abortion provision started in the late 1970s. I had just moved to the Philadelphia area for my first academic job, and I began an ethnography of a Planned Parenthood clinic in that city that was in the midst of incorporating abortion services. My interests at that time were in observing how a social movement issue becomes translated into a health-care “service.” But after immersing myself in that clinic for over a year, I became deeply interested in all categories of abortion providers, broadly speaking—counselors, nurses, physicians, clinic directors—and I have been studying providers ever since.

    2101What I would like to do today is revisit some of the main points of my book, Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v. Wade. What I attempted in that book was to apply a sociological lens to the work of providers, including an investigation of the “social status” of providers, which is sociological jargon for asking, more simply, how did involvement in abortion work affect both the personal and professional relationships of that first generation of providers whose work spanned the years immediately before and after legalization?

    I argued, based on the interviews I conducted with those physicians, that abortion provision early on suffered from a marginality from the rest of medicine. As I put it, “mainstream medicine supported legal abortion but not the abortion provider.” Very briefly, I claimed that within medical circles the legacy of the “back alley butcher” of the pre-Roe era carried over and stigmatized all those who had performed abortions before Roe and went on to do so afterwards—even the “doctors of conscience” I interviewed who had provided, at great personal risk, safe and ethical care before legalization. I also wrote of the personal isolation many felt as a result of engaging in this work.

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  • National Save for Retirement Week

    By James W. Russell.

    NAGDCA Banner Ad for National Save for Retirement WeekYou may be excused if you failed to notice that last week was National Save for Retirement Week. Promoted by the financial services industry, which profits handsomely from each extra dollar placed in 401(k) and similar retirement savings accounts, the week does not exactly compete with Halloween and Thanksgiving for public attention.

    The financial services industry would like for us to believe a number of things. We can save enough for retirement if only we will do it and stop wasting our money on frivolous lattes instead. It is our moral obligation to do this. It will be no one’s fault but our own if we don’t save enough for a secure retirement. It is there to help us be provident as a responsible custodian of our surrendered savings.

    I began to question this in the 1990s, long before my own retirement age was imminent. You see, I made the single biggest financial mistake of my life in 1986. In beginning the public university job that I still hold, I was given the choice between a tradition public pension plan and TIAA-CREF, a 401(k)-like plan, that relied on personal stock market investing. Numerous people assured me that the 401(k)-like plan was by far the better choice. But several years later I was in for a rude shock when I compared the actual benefits. Even in the bull markets of the 1990s, the projected benefits of my 401(k)-like plan were half those of the traditional pension plan I had rejected.

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  • Weekly Link Roundup: October 27

    Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains

    –Any backpackers our there with at least moderate fitness and experience? Michael Lanza's backpacking trip in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains is just for you.

    –Read Jay Michaelson's tribute to Lou Reed in the Huffington Post.

    –Governor Chris Christie abandoned his long fight against
    same-sex marriage    , concluding that signals from the court and the march
    of history were against him.

    –Fast food workers making low wages often must sign up for federal benefits or get second jobs. And, there's no incentive for fast food chains, especially individual franchises, to increase wages.

    –Still searching for this year's Halloween costume? Dress up as you favorite literary character.

    —World Book Night is back for another year! Check out the selections for 2014, and find out how to become a book giver.

    –The Affordable Care Act gives another family a more affordable and better health insurance option.

    –Watch a lecture Bill Ayers gave last year about teaching and organizing for social justice.

    –What happens when we define some people as more human than others? Jeremy Adam Smith interviews Susan Fiske about the science of racism.  

  • Hunting Season on Immigrants

    With the government shutdown crisis finally over, President Obama has pledged once more to make immigration reform the centerpiece of his second term agenda. But change couldn't come sooner for many immigrant communities, who have seen the battlefront for immigration equality steadily shift from the court rooms and legislative halls to the streets outside their homes, schools, and playgrounds. Mirta Ojito's new book Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town, which went on sale last week, documents the rising tide of hate crimes against immigrants and focuses on one such community that found itself the target of an onslaught of harassment and abuse, culminating in an incident that sent the community reeling and brought the issue of immigration reform right to their doorsteps.

    Hunting Season by Mirta Ojito
    Ojito reenacts the tragic events of that evening in the opening pages of her book:

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  • Bill Ayers, an all too Public Enemy

    When Bill Ayers appeared recently on Morning Joe to talk about his new book Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident, which went on sale last week, it wasn't surprising that the conversation moved quickly to his time as a founding member of the Weather Underground, the militant offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society responsible for numerous arsons, bombings, and other violent antiwar protests in the late 60s and 70s. It was, in a way, the continuation of a pattern that's repeated over the years since the Weathermen disbanded and he rebuilt his life as an educator and education reform advocate.

    Public Enemy by Bill Ayers

    Public Enemy tells the story of Ayers's return to public life after having spent years in the radical underground.

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  • Weekend Link Roundup: October 20

    Turkey in Harvard Square

    (photo: @diane_xy)

    —Spotted in Harvard Square: A turkey browsing the new paperbacks at Harvard Book Store. We hope he was looking for Mike O'Connor's Why Do Bluebirds Hate Me?, which features another famous Cambridge turkey, Mr. Gobbles!

    —Does the EPA's authority to regulate automobile emissions of greenhouses gases
    as air pollutants also
    apply s to power plants and factories? In 2014, the Supreme Court will review a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the regulations.

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  • Malala, the Muslim feminist

    By Rafia Zakaria. This article originally appeared on Al Jazeera America.

    In 2007, Somali-born Dutch author Ayaan Hirsi Ali published Infidel, an autobiography that documented her journey from repression in Muslim East Africa to the freedom of the Netherlands. To be free, Hirsi Ali claimed, Muslim women must renounce their faith and their cultures. Rife with awestruck veneration of the empowered West, Hirsi Ali's recipe for liberation for Muslim women was eagerly consumed. The book became a New York Times best-seller and its author a celebrity. Not long after, Hirsi Ali collaborated on a film that further pushed her point and featured her naked silhouette in the rituals of Muslim prayer. Extremist clerics in various parts of the Muslim world denounced her as a heretic, bolstering Hirsi Ali's royalties.

    In 2013, the world is getting to know Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl from Pakistan who has become a champion for girls' education and was a favorite in betting parlors to win the Nobel Peace Prize. On Oct. 8, 2012, Malala, then 15, was a student at one of the few girls' schools in the Swat Valley, in the country's north. On an otherwise uneventful afternoon, Malala, whose family had received threats from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for continuing her education, got into the Toyota van that transported the girls to and from school. Minutes later, it was accosted by Taliban gunmen; they asked for Yousafzai by name and shot her. Her skull was fractured, and she nearly died. Her book, I Am Malala, is the story of that grim afternoon and all that came before and has come after.

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  • Weekly Link Roundup: October 13

    Inequality for all

    —Have you seen the new documentary featuring economics expert,
    author, professor, and former secretary of labor Robert Reich? If not,
    find out where Inequality for All is playing in your area.

    —And, here's a video that helps explain wealth inequality in America.

    —Still not sure if the Affordable Care Act is a good thing? Maybe these people will help convince you.

    —On The Daily Show, Aasif Mandvi looks at communities that are "suffering" from an influx of undocumented immigrants.

    —What's on the docket for the Supreme Court this year? These eleven cases will examine issues around reproductive health, affirmative action, fair housing, legistlative prayer and more.        

    —Over at the Daily Mail, librarians confess their deepest, darkest secrets.

    —Attention dog lovers! Mary Oliver's new book of poetry is just for you.

    —Medical researchers at the University of Mississippi analyzed what makes up a chicken nugget in two restaurant chains. They found that just 40% of the nugget is meat. So, what makes up the other 60%? (Click through if you dare.)

    —Is it time for the Washington Redskins change their name?

    —15,000 private-sector employees who work at businesses connected to private parks, and are out of work because of the government shutdown, won't get back pay.