January 28, 2022

A U.S. Foreign Policy Fit for the 21st Century

By Pramila Jayapal, the U.S. representative for Washington’s 7th Congressional District and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Barbara Lee, the U.S. representative for California’s 13th Congressional District and chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.


January 24, 2022

Excerpts:

Across the country, Americans are mourning the losses of their loved ones to a pandemic that has taken more lives than the Civil War. Millions are struggling to make ends meet as they are burdened with debt, skyrocketing housing costs, and exploitative jobs. Others are enjoying a short reprieve between the hurricane and wildfire seasons that annually turn everyday life into a fight for survival.

Meanwhile, our fellow members of Congress finished the year by authorizing the largest war-making budget in U.S. history since World War II—and they did so in the name of security.

Excerpt: The greatest threats to America’s security—pandemics, climate change, economic inequality, authoritarianism—cannot be defeated at the barrel of a gun. It’s time to stop relying on the same old playbook and instead forge a foreign policy that works for everyday people. (That’s why we have introduced the Foreign Policy for the 21st Century Resolution.)

The resolution sets out a new vision for the United States’ role in the world. It takes as its starting point a few simple truths. Today’s greatest security challenges cannot be solved through military adventurism. International cooperation, diplomacy, development, and peacebuilding—not bombs—must be the foreign-policy tools the country reaches for first. Global problems require global solutions. Justice and security go hand in hand. The United States cannot play by a different set of rules than it expects of the rest of the world. Foreign policy must be made not for the self-interest of the few but by and for the people, centering the working class and impacted and marginalized communities at home and abroad.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/24/jayapal-lee-resolution-us-foreign-policy-21st-century/



( Long overdue. )

January 28, 2022

Schools Use Off-Book Suspensions To Push Out Students In Special Ed, Report Finds

by Michelle Diament | January 27, 2022


In a new report, the National Disability Rights Network says that schools are using a wide range of tactics to keep children with disabilities out of classes. (Ting Shen/The Dallas Morning News/TNS)


Hundreds of students with disabilities across the country, if not more, are illegally being kept out of school without access to special education services due to their behaviors, advocates say.

A report out this week from the National Disability Rights Network highlights several kids who have experienced what the group is calling “informal removal.”

The off-the-books suspensions come in many forms, according to the network, an umbrella group for the federally mandated protection and advocacy organizations in each state. Some students are repeatedly sent home from school while others are limited to shorter school days, assigned to homebound placement with minimal education or remote learning, the report says. In other cases, school districts transfer students involuntarily to programs that do not exist, have no openings or ones which the child does not qualify for.

Excerpt: The report tells of a 6-year-old with complex medical needs who was only allowed to go to school one day a week. Another child with autism was placed in homebound services in second grade because of his behaviors and did not have a seat in a classroom for at least three years. And, at one school district, three kids with autism were routinely sent home because there were too few paraprofessionals and the children were deemed “too hard to handle.” One of the students was kept out of school for nearly a year.

https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2022/01/27/schools-use-off-book-suspensions-to-push-out-students-in-special-ed-report-finds/29676/


( This is what we're about now? The Pentagon received $24 billion more than they even asked for, but schools are conniving kids out of services...ugh )

January 27, 2022

Gun-Maker Slammed for 'Children's Assault Rifles' Based on AR-15

"At first glance, this comes across as a grotesque joke," said one gun control advocate. "On second look, it's just grotesque."

Jessica Corbett
January 26, 2022


Gun control advocates on Wednesday sharply condemned an Illinois-based company for recently unveiling the JR-15, a long rifle inspired by the AR-15 but marketed for children.

Although it is under 2.5 pounds and 20% smaller than the standard version, the JR-15 "operates just like Mom and Dad's gun," WEE1 Tactical said in a statement. The weapon "functions like a modern sporting rifle," but its "lightweight and rugged polymer construction and ergonomics are geared towards children."

WEE1 Tactical launched the JR-15 earlier this month at an annual trade show sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is based in Newtown, Connecticut—where a gunman with an AR-15 murdered 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

"The callousness of the National Shooting Sports Foundation to promote a children's version of the same type of assault rifle that was used in a horrific mass shooting of 20 first graders and six educators in our shared community is just the latest proof that the organization, and the gun manufacturers it represents, will do anything in pursuit of continued profits," Po Murray, chairwoman of the Newtown Action Alliance, said Wednesday.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/26/gun-maker-slammed-childrens-assault-rifles-based-ar-15

( Murika Proud. )

January 26, 2022

Want to Solve Wildfires and Drought? Leave it to BEAVERS!

&t=2s

Beavers offer lessons about managing water in a changing climate, whether the challenge is drought or floods

January 20, 2022

It’s no accident that both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology claim the beaver (Castor canadensis) as their mascots. Renowned engineers, beavers seem able to dam any stream, building structures with logs and mud that can flood large areas.

As climate change causes extreme storms in some areas and intense drought in others, scientists are finding that beavers’ small-scale natural interventions are valuable. In dry areas, beaver ponds restore moisture to the soil; in wet zones, their dams and ponds can help to slow floodwaters. These ecological services are so useful that land managers are translocating beavers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom to help restore ecosystems and make them more resilient to climate change.

Scientists estimate that hundreds of millions of beavers once dammed waterways across the Northern Hemisphere. They were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and North America but are making comebacks today in many areas. As a geoscientist specializing in water resources, I think it’s important to understand how helpful beavers can be in the right places and to find ways for humans to coexist with them in developed areas.

https://theconversation.com/beavers-offer-lessons-about-managing-water-in-a-changing-climate-whether-the-challenge-is-drought-or-floods-168545



( I mean come on, they're so cute too. )

January 25, 2022

Trauma Lingers For Students Who Experienced Repeated Seclusion And Restraint

by Jillian Atelsek, The Frederick News-Post/TNS | January 25, 2022

FREDERICK, Md. — It was the first day of third grade, and James had been in school for 19 minutes.

By 9:20 a.m., the 8-year-old was locked in a padded, closet-sized room. He’d remain there, alone, for nearly three hours.

Though Maryland law is clear that no child may be kept in seclusion for more than 30 minutes, Frederick County Public Schools (FCPS) seemed to have found a loophole. In their logbook, staff recorded James’ seclusion time that day in half-hour chunks, according to discipline records provided by his mother and examined by The Frederick News-Post: 9:20 to 9:50. Then 9:51 to 10:21. Then 10:22 to 10:52. On and on until 12:08 p.m.

“From what he explained, sometimes they would pull him out and then shove him back in,” said James’ mom, Beth. “Sometimes they would open the door and then just close it again.”
https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2022/01/25/trauma-lingers-students-repeated-seclusion-restraint/29674/


( I can't begin to put in words how distressing this is to me. They don't know what they're doing and their response should be seen as criminal, IMO.)

January 24, 2022

Symposium: What would US intervention in Ukraine really look like?

Scholars, journalists, former military and intel officers weigh in on the wide-ranging costs of military aid and a clash with Russia.

January 24, 2022

Excerpt:

A New York Times article late Sunday reports that the Pentagon has handed Biden several options that would shift American military assets much closer to Mr. Putin’s doorstep, including troops and warships and other military assets to allied countries in the region.

Responsible Statecraft asked a host of military and international relations scholars and journalists, as well as former military and intelligence officers, what it would look like if the United States decided to intervene to defend Ukraine. We asked them to answer the following prompt:

“Many in Washington, including media pundits, are saying the U.S. may have to get involved militarily— directly or indirectly — to defend Ukraine should Russia invade. Yet they do not expand on what that would actually mean in practice, or in costs. Based on your experience and expertise, if Washington decides to defend Ukraine against a Russian invasion, what kind of costs and repercussions would such a conflict incur (long and short-term), for the United States and for the region?”

Respondents:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/24/symposium-what-would-us-intervention-over-ukraine-really-look-like/

January 16, 2022

A Free South : The Black Arts Movement and the politics of emancipation.

By Elias Rodriques
January 10, 2022


In the 1960s, the Free Southern Theater, an organization founded by a group of activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), traveled to a church in a predominantly Black, rural corner of Mississippi. There they staged Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, an absurdist drama about characters conversing as they wait for someone who never arrives. The play may have seemed like a strange choice—who would imagine that Beckett might connect with rural Black Americans in the throes of the civil rights movement?—but it found at least one admirer in civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer. “I guess we know something about waiting, don’t we?” Hamer said from the audience.


Everyone agreed, and as they discussed the play, the conversation eventually turned to slavery and prisons. “We had this incredible discussion with people who barely had a sixth-grade education,” Denise Nicholas, an actress in the Free Southern Theater, said later. And drama—even high-modernist, experimental drama—functioned as political education.

This was the Free Southern Theater’s goal. As cofounder John O’Neal recalled of its creation:

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/james-smethurst-black-arts-movement/

January 14, 2022

(Tweet) Be A King @BerniceKing: I want to encourage us today concerning voting rights legislation

https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1482023617420537868











( Is she awesome or what? The fight continues. )

January 14, 2022

Joint Statement of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races

January 14, 2022

The People’s Republic of China, the French Republic, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America consider the avoidance of war between Nuclear-Weapon States and the reduction of strategic risks as our foremost responsibilities.

We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented.

We reaffirm the importance of addressing nuclear threats and emphasize the importance of preserving and complying with our bilateral and multilateral non-proliferation, disarmament and arms control agreements and commitments. We remain committed to our Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, including our Article VI obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

https://www.worldtribune.org/2022/01/joint-statement-of-the-five-nuclear-weapon-states-on-preventing-nuclear-war-and-avoiding-arms-races/


Excerpt:

In wondrous synchronicity, on Sept. 8, 2022, we will be commemorating the 65th anniversary of second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda’s Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons. On Sept. 8, 1957, in front of the 50,000 youth members in attendance at a Soka Gakkai youth festival, Mr. Toda entrusted all Soka Gakkai youth with the mission to abolish nuclear weapons. He famously declared: “We, the citizens of the world, have an inviolable right to live. Anyone who jeopardizes that right is a devil incarnate, a fiend, a monster.”[2]

https://www.worldtribune.org/2022/01/a-nuclear-war-cannot-be-won/

January 13, 2022

Unions are not only good for workers, they're good for communities and for democracy

High unionization levels are associated with positive outcomes across multiple indicators of economic, personal, and democratic well-being

Report • By Asha Banerjee, Margaret Poydock, Celine McNicholas, Ihna Mangundayao, and Ali Sait • December 15, 2021

We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions.

But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.

In this report, we document the correlation between higher levels of unionization in states and a range of economic, personal, and democratic well-being measures. In the same way unions give workers a voice at work, with a direct impact on wages and working conditions, the data suggest that unions also give workers a voice in shaping their communities. Where workers have this power, states have more equitable economic structures, social structures, and democracies.
Income and economic protections

https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-and-well-being/