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A Quiet American Epidemic
National Advocate for Children Speaks Out in Connecticut (Photo credit: CT Senate Democrats)
By Marian Wright Edelman
Thirteen-year-old Michael Graham, an eighth grader at Henry H. Wells Middle School in Brewster, New York, was popular with his classmates and played football, basketball, and lacrosse. But this year on January 14th, Michael committed suicide using a pistol he had found in his home. Michael’s father had three unregistered handguns in the house: a .40 caliber, a 9mm, and a .44 Magnum.
On February 5th, the grandmother of 15-year-old Steven Keele reported her grandson missing. She went to take a bath and came out to find him gone. Authorities found Steven the next day, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the edge of a field behind his grandmother’s home in Limestone County, Alabama. His grandmother doesn’t know where Steven got the gun.
On March 11th, a New Hampshire police chief left his service gun on top of the safe in his closet when he went to run some errands. It was there that his girlfriend’s son, 15-year-old Jacob Carver, found it. Later that day, Jacob shot himself in the stomach with the gun. Jacob was a freshman at Timberlane Regional High School where he was a member of the school’s football and freshman wrestling teams. He was remembered as “a goofball and a free spirit who had a great sense of humor and always made people laugh.”
To some people each of these boys probably seemed like any other teenager in their communities — young people with ups and downs, but who should have had the rest of their lives ahead of them. No one but them might have been able to predict when those ups and downs would become too much. But when that moment came, Michael, Steven, and Jacob all sadly had something in common: access to a gun. Now all three are among this year’s child victims of a quiet but widespread American epidemic.
The 10 most dangerous places to be a woman in America
(Photo credit: epSos.de)
By Katie McDonough
Lately, the preferred strategy for reproductive rights opponents in the United States seems to be: If you can’t beat Roe v. Wade, then simply regulate around it.
Whether it’s the newly imposed 72-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions in South Dakota, or Virginia’s Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider (TRAP) law that shuttered a clinic after 40 years in operation because the ventilation and temperature control systems required by the new regulations were simply too expensive, when it comes to undermining women’s autonomy and banning abortion in 2013, it’s all about petty bureaucracy.
The current battle playing out in Texas is only one example among dozens of states trying to bury abortion rights in red tape.
A roundup of some of the most dangerous places to be a woman in the United States right now:
North Dakota
The spring of 2013 was a busy time for lawmakers in Bismarck. The GOP-controlled Legislature passed four draconian measures with strong majorities, giving North Dakota the dubious distinction of having the most restrictive abortion laws in a country rich with restrictive abortion laws.
Read More The 10 most dangerous places to be a woman in America – Salon.com.
Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged abortion, North Dakota, roe v wade, South Dakota, Texas, TRAP law, United States, violence against women, Virginia
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Last Week in Poverty: The Unfinished March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
By Greag Kaufmann
“[African-Americans] must march from the rat-infested, overcrowded ghettos to decent, wholesome, unrestricted residential areas disbursed throughout our cities…. They must march from the play areas in crowded and unsafe streets to the newly opened areas in the parks and recreational centers,” said Whitney Young Jr., executive director of the National Urban League.
When I read those words this week, I thought it sounded like a good recommendation for residents of my hometown, Washington, DC, which has in essence been two separate and unequal cities since my great grandparents came here in the 1920s—and it remains so today.
But Young said this at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, exactly fifty years ago on August 28. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute, “The Unfinished March—An Overview,” offers a compelling look at the economic vision that was laid out on that day and has since been forgotten. It also examines the continuing struggle to achieve that vision.
Most Americans associate the March with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech and celebrate the victories of the civil rights movement that followed. But report author Algernon Austin, director of EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy (PREE), writes that there were “nine other speeches that day” and that the march organizers called for “decent housing, adequate and integrated education, a federal jobs program for full employment, and a national minimum wage of over $13.00 an hour in today’s dollars.”
Read More Last Week in Poverty: The Unfinished March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom | Alternet.
After Ruling, States Rush to Enact Voting Laws
By Michael Cooper
voting day in a small town (Photo credit: Muffet)
State officials across the South are aggressively moving ahead with new laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls after the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.
The Republicans who control state legislatures throughout the region say such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But such fraud is extremely rare, and Democrats are concerned that the proposed changes will make it harder for many poor voters and members of minorities — who tend to vote Democratic — to cast their ballots in states that once discriminated against black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests.
The Supreme Court ruling last month freed a number of states with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, of the requirement to get advance federal permission in order to make changes to their election laws.
Within hours, Texas officials said that they would begin enforcing a strict photo identification requirement for voters, which had been blocked by a federal court on the ground that it would disproportionately affect black and Hispanic voters. In Mississippi and Alabama, which had passed their own voter identification laws but had not received federal approval for them, state officials said that they were moving to begin enforcing the laws.
The next flash point over voting laws will most likely be in North Carolina, where several voting bills had languished there this year as the Republicans who control the Legislature awaited the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had covered many counties in the state. After the ruling, some Republican lawmakers said that they would move as soon as next week to pass a bill requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. And some Republicans there are considering cutting back on the number of early voting days in the state, which were especially popular among Democrats and black voters during the 2012 presidential election.
Read More After Ruling, States Rush to Enact Voting Laws – NYTimes.com.
Zimmerman Case Has Race as a Backdrop, but You Won’t Hear It in Court
By Lizette Alvarez
From the very beginning, there was no more powerful theme in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin than the issue of race. But in the courtroom where George Zimmerman is on trial for second-degree murder, race lingers awkwardly on the sidelines, scarcely mentioned but impossible to ignore.
For African-Americans here and across the country, the killing of Mr. Martin, 17, black and unarmed, was resonant with a back story steeped in layers of American history and the abiding conviction that justice serves only some of the people.
Had Mr. Martin shot and killed Mr. Zimmerman under similar circumstances, black leaders say, the case would have barreled down a different path: Mr. Martin would have been quickly arrested by the Sanford Police Department and charged in the killing, without the benefit of the doubt.
Instead, there was no arrest for six weeks. And only after sharp criticism from civil rights leaders and demonstrations here and elsewhere did the Florida governor transfer the case to a special prosecutor from another county.
“For members of the African-American community, it’s a here-we-go-again moment,” said JeffriAnne Wilder, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Florida. “We want to get away from these things, but this did not happen in a vacuum. It happened against the backdrop of all the other things that have happened before.”
Yet inside a Seminole County courtroom, with the prosecution’s case against Mr. Zimmerman now over, race only occasionally punctuated the proceedings. The judge made it clear that statements about race would be sharply limited and the term “racial profiling” not allowed. What is more, overtly bringing up race might not have helped the prosecution.
via Zimmerman Case Has Race as a Backdrop, but You Won’t Hear It in Court – NYTimes.com.
Is a Constitutional Right to Vote Attainable?
By Brentin Mock
After the devastating decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to evict a cornerstone provision from the Voting Rights Act, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “The Department of Justice will continue to carefully monitor jurisdictions around the country for voting changes that may hamper voting rights. Let me be very clear: we will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action—using every legal tool that remains available to us—against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling by hindering eligible citizens’ full and free exercise of the franchise.”
This was a doubling down on what Holder said in his address to the National Action Network a year ago, when he said, “This Department of Justice will oppose any effort—any effort—to disenfranchise American citizens.”
The weapons available to DOJ for protection efforts are quite limited now under the Supreme Court’s ruling. The prophylactic effect that gave Justice the power to review an election change for possible discriminatory effects in jurisdictions with the worst problems are now gone. Now the DOJ and voters can in most cases only seek legal redress for discrimination after it has already happened, and then hope for the best in terms of remedy.
What many have been calling for, even before the Supreme Court’s decision, is an explicit guaranteed right to vote through amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“Most Americans are surprised to learn that there is no provision in the Constitution or federal law that affirmatively guarantees all citizens the freedom to vote,” said ColorofChange.com executive director Rashad Robinson in a statement after the Shelby vs. Holder decision. “We need a constitutional amendment that guarantees the freedom to vote for every citizen regardless of race and that protects against attempts to disenfranchise voters regardless of where they live.”
via Is a Constitutional Right to Vote Attainable? – COLORLINES.
Words of Wisdom
Posted in Soul Brother Presents
Tagged Gandhi, inspiration, life, message, self-care, self-enlightenment, wisdom
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Life
Posted in Thoughts of the Soul Brother
Tagged inspiration, life, message, self-care, self-enlightenment, wisdon
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