First, the Youth Climate Strike sees the Green New Deal (GND) as the pivotal mechanism to enact climate action. (If you need to refamiliarize yourself, here’s the full text of Congress’ Green New Deal Resolution, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.) The Youth Climate Strikers want: An equitable transition for marginalized communities that will be most impacted by climate change An equitable …
A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Helping students recognize the power they have—collectively or individually—to make the world a better place
“We want students to recognize the power they have—collectively or individually—to make the world a better place. But it’s wrong to direct students primarily toward individual solutions to create change. In his Chapter Five essay, Derrick Jensen confronts this problematic celebration of individual action: Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for …
Debt and the value of college education in the US
Buzzfeed, Feb 2019, excerpt …Student debt in the US is a collective $1.5 trillion debt load. The weight of all that student loan debt is markedly different than the feeling of the weight of mortgage or credit card debt — after all, those borrowers can declare bankruptcy, an option unavailable to student loan borrowers. Not even death can absolve you or …
Day care for all
CreditCredit Illustration by Tyler Comrie; Photographs by Chloe Gudy/EyeEm, and Jamie Grill, via Getty Images Day Care for All The progressive to-do list is missing a very important idea. By Katha Pollitt Feb. 9, 2019 When Bernie Sanders ran for president, he promised to fight for free public college, universal health insurance and a $15 minimum wage. He drew huge crowds, but many …
Equality is the basis of a fair and free society, says Elizabeth Anderson
By Nathan Heller in The New Yorker. Our real concern should be equality not in material benefits, Anderson argues, but in social relations: democratic equality. American stories trace the sweep of history, but their details are definingly particular. In the summer of 1979, Elizabeth Anderson, then a rising junior at Swarthmore College, got a job as a bookkeeper at a bank in …
What Educators Don’t See: The Relationship Between Complex Trauma and School Interruption
By Tricia Stephens, ilberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, What Educators Don’t See: The Relationship Between Complex Trauma and School Interruption Mothers of color affected[1] by the Child Welfare System (CWS) experience high rates of exposure to events where their lives or physical/psychological integrity are challenged (Blakey & Hatcher, 2013; Chemtob, Griffing, Tullberg, Roberts & Ellis, 2011). Like many women, exposure …
70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Created Under the Chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt Passed Today in 1948 by the UN General Assembly
POSTED ON DECEMBER 10, 2018 · POSTED IN ROOSEVELT HOUSE, ROOSEVELT HOUSE GENERAL NEWS Roosevelt House celebrates the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt in writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as we mark the 70th anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Three years of Mrs. Roosevelt’s hard work and consensus-building produced a document that would shape the way …
Jail to jobs program
Three years ago, in New Castle, Pennsylvania, District Attorney Joshua Lamancusa was at a hearing for a 29-year-old who’d been falling behind on his court bills. If he kept missing the payments he risked ending up in jail, so Lamancusa asked him what was going on. “He said he couldn’t get a job. And I asked him, ‘Have you applied?’ …
National Teachers Association urged science teachers at all levels to emphasize that ‘no scientific controversy exists regarding the basic facts of climate change.’
Phil McKenna Inside Climate News 13 Sept 2018 “If there are controversies or other issues to deal with, we want them to have a good solid foundation in evidence-based knowledge to carry out that conversation,” said David Evans, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. Credit: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images In response to what it sees as increasing efforts to …
Can Parks Make Kids Better at Math?
By RACHEL DOVEY, in NextCity, Sept 11, 2018 Central Park in New York City. (Credit: Library of Congress) Kids need parks — from obesity and asthma rates to psychological indicators, research repeatedly shows that green space has a tremendous impact on children’s health. But could trees, swings and bike paths also make kids good at math? A study published this month in the British Journal of …