Romanticizing debt and ramen
That lub-dub-sniff-lub-dub you’re hearing is the sound of my heart weeping for not-struggling young journalist Taylor Cotter.
...read moreProsecuting “Bad” Mothers
A must-read in this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine about over-zealous Alabama prosecutors bringing charges against drug-addicted mothers. It’s a troubling and complex issue. Obviously no one thinks that using drugs during pregnancy is a good idea. Obviously it is a tragedy when a baby is stillborn, or born with drugs in its system. But many of these cases involve stillbirths which cannot be clearly tied to drug use — all the prosecutors know is that the pregnant woman used drugs (even one time) and the baby was stillborn, and so they assume (and argue, with little to no evidence) causation. And because most folks don’t understand just how complicated pregnancy actually is — and after the 80s “crack baby” hysteria, don’t understand that drug use during pregnancy actually doesn’t usually cause long-term problems in the child — people hear “drug-using mom” and “stillborn baby” and it’s easy to conclude that A led to B, even though that’s not actually how it works.
...read moreMore on Komen and Planned Parenthood
...read moreThe truth is that anti-Planned-Parenthood sentiments aren’t about abortion; they’re about hostility to women, and particularly to female sexuality. Abortion makes up 3% of its services. Cancer screening and prevention are 17%.
Filming Against Odds: Undocumented Youth “Come Out” With Their Dreams
By Anne Galisky, cross-posted at On The Issues Magazine.
“Papers”is the story of undocumented youth and the challenges they face as they turn 18 without legal status. More than two million undocumented children live in the U.S. today, most with no path to obtain citizenship. These are youth who were born outside the U.S. and yet know only the U.S. as home. The film highlights five undocumented youth who are “American” in every sense but their legal paperwork.
...read moreBecause the poor really do have it too easy these days
In a conservative intolerance one-two punch, Rick Santorum gives it to the poor and the obese in a single tweetable comment. The comment came at an Iowa town hall where he explained his plans to cut the federal food stamp program, should (God forbid) he be elected president. “If hunger is a problem in America, [...]
...read moreDr. Erik Fleischman and Involuntary Sterilization
Via Femonomics, we find a really disturbing post from Dr. Erik Fleischman, an American doctor practicing in Tanzania who brags about participating in an involuntary sterilization, calling the doctor who performed the procedure a “hero.” After a pregnant patient’s heart stops beating on the operating table during a C-section (because they screwed up the epidural [...]
...read more7 Billion
Today, the world’s population hits 7 billion (well, not exactly today, but that’s as good an estimate as any). PSI, a leading global health organization, has extensive coverage of this milestone in their latest magazine. On their blog, you can read posts about the population boom by Feministing’s Lori Adelman, global health advocate and blogger [...]
...read moreYou can just. . .
Via Karnythia’s tumblr, I found this post that summarizes Chef Karl Wilder’s attempts to feed his family for two months on the allotment a family gets on food stamps. Wilder, who did this as part of an awareness campaign for the San Francisco Food Bank, documented his and his family’s experience on his blog. Now [...]
...read moreGo see The Interrupters
I caught this new documentary by Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) & Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) during its sold-out run at the Siskel Center last week. Trailer: The Interrupters Imagine walking down a street where everyone is armed – with guns, rocks, knives – and a fight is breaking out. Imagine walking [...]
...read moreAn appetite for moral panics
Anthony Bourdain has had freakouts over Rachel Ray, Sandra Lee, Alice Waters, Guy Fieri, and now Paula Deen. The most recent pissiness–the carping on Deen–was because (he said) she is beholden to corporate interests and she features foods (southern foods, by the way) on her show that are “fucking bad for you” (both true, by [...]
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Class war? Or one-sided attack?
If I don’t have it, why should you? It’s the basis of the resentment I hear and see on the part of people who snarl about those unions (who get so! much!) those striking Verizon workers, those students on the J-1 visa, teachers, public service workers, and others. Instead of thinking, “Hey, that’s fucked. We [...]
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