In These Times

Offline Youth Struggle in Online World

Megan Tady — 2008-12-04T11:00:00-06:00

Antonio Reyes and Julian Rosas grew up together in California's San Fernando Valley. Now 17 and seniors in high school, the two friends are beginning to fill out college applications. Antonio wants to be a pediatrician, while Julian is considering computer engineering. But Antonio has one distinct advantage: He has high-speed Internet access at home. Julian––whose family can't afford a connection––can only get online at school, when one of his working parents can drive him to the library, or at a local youth center, the Youth Speak! Collective, where I met the teenagers. The collective is a nonprofit organization that works to empower "at-risk" youth. The restricted Internet access makes doing homework and applying for colleges especially difficult for Julian. "It kinda sucks," he says. "I can't go online anytime I want. I have to work twice as hard just to turn something in." Julian is one of millions of offline Americans who now have to work harder to function in an online world. According to the Census Bureau, more than 16 million Californians lack a high-speed connection. Whether because people can't afford a computer or high-speed Internet, don't have the training and skills to navigate the Web, or have…

Illinois Schools On Uneven Field

Ben Strauss — 2008-12-03T11:00:00-06:00

CHICAGO -- When the Chicago Cubs hosted Game 1 of their opening round playoff series on Oct. 1, more than 40,000 fans packed Wrigley Field. Outside the ballpark, another group was also trying to make history. Roughly 1,500 parents, students, teachers and activists protested for state educational reforms. Crowded around the foot of a flatbed truck, the rally was the latest in an educational reform movement, led by Democratic State Sen. James L. Meeks, a pastor at Salem Baptist Church on Chicago's South Side. For six years, Meeks has tried to pressure Illinois lawmakers to address the disparity between dollars spent per child in wealthy suburban Chicago and the dollars spent in the inner city and downstate. "We do not want the City of Chicago to pay more attention to the Cubs and White Sox than to their kids," Meeks said at the demonstration. Although Illinois has the fourth-highest GDP in the country -- at $741 billion -- it ranks 49th in public-school funding, forcing local communities to foot the bill. School districts in wealthy communities in Illinois provide more than 80 percent of school funding through property taxes. Low-income districts hover near 45 percent, resulting in an average of…

How Will the Media Cover Obama?

Susan J. Douglas — 2008-12-02T11:00:00-06:00

It's the morning after Election Day and, like millions, I am filled with elation and hope. CNN let me feel that for about one hour. Then came its pundits. They warned of all the problems facing President-elect Barack Obama -- the economy, threats from Pakistan, the desperate need for universal healthcare, global warming, all the things Bush ignored or denied for eight years. And they emphasized how Obama will have to -- have to -- govern "from the center" and not move "too far left" the way Bill Clinton did. Clinton! And where's all that mandate talk that Bush got in 2004? Now that Obama and his strategists David Axelrod and David Plouffe have presided over one of the most successful presidential campaigns in modern history, they face not only all of the national and geopolitical problems mentioned above, but also this: Our deeply contradictory, image-over-substance, verbal food-fight-oriented news media. I say contradictory because much of the news media is still used to the same-old, same-old when it comes to political coverage: speculation about the future as actual news, a focus on verbal gaffes, sex scandals, celebrities and the like. But this is also a news media beaten up and…

Ban the Cluster Bomb

Brian Cook — 2008-12-01T11:00:00-06:00

In late 2001, Soraj Ghulam Habib, a 10-year-old boy living in Herat Province in western Afghanistan, was walking home from a picnic with his cousin and some friends when he noticed a yellow canister. Because its color was the same as the parcels of food aid that the U.S. military had been dropping during its campaign against the Taliban, Soraj picked it up and attempted to pry it open. "I had a lot of dreams at the beginning of my life," Soraj, now 17, said through his Dari interpreter Sulaiman Safdar, at the Cluster Bomb Survivors Tour's Oct. 7 stop in Chicago. "But cluster submunitions destroyed all my dreams and put me in a wheelchair." The event -- sponsored by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker peace lobby -- also included heart-rending testimony from Raed Mokaled, whose son Ahmad was killed in a 1999 submunitions accident while celebrating his fifth birthday at a park in southern Lebanon; and from Lynn Bradach, whose 21-year-old son Travis, a U.S. Marine, was killed in 2003 while attempting to detonate unexploded cluster submunitions outside of Kerbala, Iraq. The Survivors Tour traveled through several Midwestern states in October to rally public and political…

Dead Man Waiting

Alice Kim — 2008-11-28T11:00:00-06:00

In an unprecedented move, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta recently stayed the Oct. 27 execution of Georgia death row prisoner Troy Davis. On Oct. 24, the court said it would consider a new hearing on whether the Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of the innocent. In September, the U.S. Supreme Court halted Davis' execution to consider the issue but then denied to hear the case. "The case is extraordinary," says Stephen Bright, president and former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, based in Atlanta. Last year, the Georgia Supreme Court also stayed the execution to consider the innocence claim, he says, but then denied it by a single vote, 4-3. Now the federal court--applying the federal law regarding claims of innocence--has granted another stay to decide whether to order a hearing on the innocence issues. In 1991, Davis, a 39-year-old African-American man, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, a white, off-duty police officer, at a Burger King parking lot in Savannah, Ga. Davis was convicted based solely on witness testimony that contained many inconsistencies, according to a 35-page Amnesty International…

Proud of Obama … For Now

Salim Muwakkil — 2008-11-27T11:00:00-06:00

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Nov. 4. What was once a distant possibility -- and an audacious hope -- has become an extraordinary fact. The election of a black president was considered so unlikely that it seemed silly to even contemplate. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime. When CNN announced Obama had won, tears unexpectedly welled in my eyes. The election of the nation's first black president struck some deep psychic chord. But outside of my psyche, a President Obama has many meanings -- some contradictory. I feel strong pride that such a talented black American has accomplished such a towering feat against such overwhelming odds. I am proud Obama's team mounted an innovative 21st century campaign that left many of us scratching our heads in 20th century bemusement. I feel pride that this nation is making bold steps to atone for its original sin. That theme also resonates with many black civil rights activists. Some have likened Obama's election to the period during the Emancipation Proclamation, and several civil rights groups organized so-called "Emancipation Watch" gatherings to monitor election results. The notion that this election is a symbol…

‘Milk’ Does the Man Proud

Gary Barlow — 2008-11-26T11:00:00-06:00

In death, as in life, Harvey Milk defied expectations. Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in a major U.S. city, was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. But because of fear, he didn't come out of the closet until he was in his 40s. His public life as a gay leader lasted only five years, when he and Mayor George Moscone were gunned down inside City Hall on Nov. 27, 1978. Now, 30 years after his death, Milk's life is on the big screen. In the first time a major Hollywood film has portrayed a gay historic figure as the central hero, Milk, starring Sean Penn in the title role, hits theaters nationwide on Dec. 5. Milk gained fame as an unusually skillful politician, despite winning only one out of his four attempts at public office. He served less than a year as a San Francisco supervisor before being killed, yet he left a legacy that influences that city three decades later. Milk grew up spending Saturdays at the opera, where he also found men who shared other interests with him. Ever the quick study, Milk learned how and where to…

Are Long Lines the ‘New Poll Tax’?

Michael Peshkin — 2008-11-25T11:00:00-06:00

Did Rachel Maddow mean to suggest racism in naming long polling place lines as "the new poll tax"? After all, poll taxes were abolished in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act, which ended a mechanism of vote suppression dating back almost a century. After the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 ("The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged...on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.") the South reacted with intimidation of black voters through violence. Within a few years poll taxes were enacted, very effectively disenfranchised the great majority of blacks, who could not come up with the cash that the tax required them to pay in order to vote. Today, intentional vote suppression is illegal. So why would Maddow refer to long lines as a poll tax? Aren't lines just a bureaucratic snafu, the inevitable consequence when voter turnout overruns predictions and an under-prepared county election apparatus struggles to cope? Maybe not. Two generations after the Civil Rights Act, long lines at polling places show a striking correlation with the percentage of African-Americans in the voter population. States with a greater African-American population had more reports of…

The Crisis of Wage Theft

Kim Bobo — 2008-11-24T11:00:00-06:00

A few years ago, I heard about a garment factory near my house where workers weren't making the minimum wage, or so I was told. I couldn't believe that such a place operated four blocks from where I live. I didn't even know it existed. I'd heard about this place because some workers had visited the Chicago Interfaith Workers Center and told their stories. In addition, I'd heard that this place was a sole subcontractor for a leading national company. I wanted to know what was going on. With the help of Interfaith Worker Justice colleagues, we organized a fact-finding delegation of religious leaders to investigate what was going on. One cold Chicago morning, twenty-five of us dropped in at the factory. The place was located in a largely residential neighborhood in a small turn-of-the-century industrial building that faces the Metra train stop. There was no sign outside identifying the facility. The front door was unlocked, so we marched on up to the second floor. Sure enough, when we opened the second door at the top of the stairs, we stepped into a small entryway, which then had a door opening to a large high-ceiling room full of Latina immigrant…

Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee Boggs — 2008-11-21T20:59:00-06:00

M60o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr

Tuning Out the Braindead Megaphone

David Sirota — 2008-11-21T17:06:00-06:00

If you're having trouble remembering what the recent election was all about, rest easy: you're probably not going senile – you're likely experiencing the momentary effects of brainwashing. For weeks, your television, newspaper and radio have been telling you America is a "center-right nation" that elected Barack Obama to crush his fellow "socialist" hippies, discard the agenda he campaigned on, and meet the policy demands of electorally humiliated Republicans. This is the usual post-election nonsense from the Braindead Megaphone, as author George Saunders famously calls our political and media noise machine. When George W. Bush wins by 3 million votes, the megaphone blares announcements about a conservative mandate that Democrats must respect. When Obama wins by twice as much, the same megaphone roars about Democrats having no mandate to do anything other than appease conservatives. It's confusing, isn't it? We hazily recall backing Obama and his progressive platform. Yet, the megaphone's re-educative shock treatment aims to wipe away that memory and conjure eternal conservatism from our spotless minds. Luckily, we have polling to maintain our sanity. Public opinion surveys show most Obama voters knew the Illinois senator is a progressive when they cast their ballots – and those votes for…

Monsanto Beets Down Opposition

Kari Lydersen — 2008-11-21T11:00:00-06:00

WILLAMETTE VALLEY, Ore.--The sugar beets growing in farmer Tim Winn's fields do not look menacing. But other farmers in Oregon's fertile Willamette Valley fear the beets could devastate their crops. Winn's sugar beets have been genetically modified to allow them to survive application of Monsanto's Roundup Ready herbicide. The modification allows Winn to kill weeds in his field with two sprayings of Roundup, rather than the multiple applications of various herbicides he used to use. Winn and other sugar beet farmers across the country say Roundup Ready sugar beet--which are being grown on a commercial scale for the first time this year--make farmers' work easier and more profitable. And, they claim, there will be environmental benefits because farmers will make fewer passes through fields with a tractor--a point that was made in a 2003 British study published in New Scientist magazine. But Kevin Golden, staff attorney for the Center for Food Safety, says the unknown long-term environmental risks of genetically modified crops outweigh short-term benefits. "We admit Roundup is a less toxic alternative than a lot of the herbicides, but weed resistance is developing really fast," Golden says. "Eventually, Roundup becomes obsolete and farmers have to use these really nasty…

We Have Much to Celebrate

Joel Bleifuss — 2008-11-20T11:00:00-06:00

Next year, President Barack Obama and the solidly Democratic Congress can pass legislation that provides universal healthcare, establishes a sustainable energy program, reforms labor laws and restores environmental safeguards. In addition, the current economic crisis gives progressives an opportunity to pursue institutional reforms that have previously been off the table. We have nationalized elements of our financial system, but its institutions remain unresponsive to the needs of the American people. How can we hold the banks that we now own accountable? What adjustments can we make in our economic model so that the tremendous productivity of American workers will translate into higher wages and better lives? We can also put on the agenda issues that were ignored during the presidential campaign. To give three examples: First, the crisis in urban communities, where a generation of young men -- who are denied opportunities that many Americans take for granted -- are shackled to a broken criminal justice system. Second, the foolish drug laws that provide the human-fuel for the prison-industrial complex and wreak political havoc in Latin America and elsewhere. Third, a short-sighted national transportation policy that revolves around cars and trucks, and the haphazard sprawl that reliance engenders. Can we…

Our Vampires, Ourselves

Laine Bergeson — 2008-11-20T11:00:00-06:00

Welcome to Bon Temps, La., where all the women are innocent, all the men have secret obsessions and all the vampires -- save for a few -- try to recapture their lost humanity. A small, swampy, fictional town set deep in (ahem) "real America," Bon Temps is the central locale in HBO's frothy new vampire series, "True Blood." The series centers on Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin), a wide-eyed waitress and reluctant telepath who hears other people's thoughts on a constant loop. Despite suffering the ritual abuse of growing up "different" -- that is, a mind reader -- in a small town, Sookie has managed to maintain her natural sweetness and charm. She's also learned to be emotionally resilient and incredibly open-minded. These, it turns out, are handy qualities to possess when the undead move into town. Thanks to the creation of a synthetic blood beverage, Tru Blood (available in flavors A, B, AB and O), which meets all the nutritional needs of the undead and frees them from their dependence on human blood, vampires have "come out of the coffin" and have started mainstreaming into society. Two years and the advent of a broad vampire-rights movement later, the…

Mandate for Change

David Sirota — 2008-11-19T11:00:00-06:00

What do we do now?" That's the question Bill McKay (Robert Redford), ponders in The Candidate (1972). He won the presidency, promising "a better way." After Nov. 4, America is asking Democrats the same haunting question. These are heady times for the party of Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and, now, President-elect Barack Obama. Only a few years ago, Democrats were almost relegated to permanent minority status by a "Mission Accomplished" sign and an ass in a flight suit. But since President Bush's 2004 re-election, Democrats have gained at least 50 House seats, 12 Senate seats, seven state houses and seven governorships. Republicans used the threat of "socialism" to turn the 2008 campaign into a referendum on conservatism. The result? Democrats notched their highest percentage of the popular vote since 1964--when Lyndon B. Johnson won in one of the most lopsided elections in U.S. history. After two years and more than half a billion dollars worth of ads, the pulverizing election came down to a steel-cage match that pitted rivals against each other--and not Immigrants versus Natives, Americans versus Foreigners or Whites versus Blacks. Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama made the race's final weeks a proxy war between two…