Commentary
The infection of anti-Black bias in U.S. society and policing
Once again, Americans are left reeling from the horror of video footage showing police brutalizing an unarmed Black man who later died. Some details in the latest case of extreme police violence were gut-wrenchingly familiar: a police traffic stop of a Black male motorist turned violent. But, for many of us, other details were unfamiliar: […]
LGBTQ kids need protection from bullies and violence, not adults targeting and bullying them too
I grew up in a struggling, post-industrial Ohio town in the 1990s where ignorance and intolerance often reigned. I stood up to bullies my whole life, and when put under physical threat, I fought them. No bully can intimidate me, and so even though I was definitely a weird kid, I was also funnier, smarter, […]
Fifty years later, our lives still at risk
Fifty years ago, a very different U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. Radical right-wing extremists control the Supreme Court and serve in elective office. We have fewer freedoms than we did a generation ago. We suffer, and women die because of it. When the Supreme Court ruled last June to strip away our rights […]
On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, no one should settle for ‘a piece of freedom’
Some historians mark the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder as the end of the civil rights movement. Over an arc of 14 years — from the 1954 Brown Decision to King’s death in 1968 — the nation attempted to address its racial caste system. The same nation that launched a war on hunger and […]
Paid Family and Medical Leave is about valuing family
When you think of parental leave, you picture a smiling, rosy-cheeked cherub blissfully sleeping the day away. You might not think of the round-the-clock feedings, an infant screaming for hours on end from reflux or colic, or a mom unable to walk after a cesarean section. But that is the reality of the first few […]
A Tribal Education Trust Fund guarantees a fundamental right
As former governor of Tesuque Pueblo and current chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors (APCG), I am forever grateful to the late Judge Sarah Singleton for ruling in Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico that Native American students have a constitutional right to a culturally and linguistically relevant education. APCG’s tribal leaders, who […]
Trump is no longer the villain at the border. It’s Biden.
I listened to President Joe Biden announce his new plan for the U.S. border on Jan. 5 with fury. A theme in his speech — to crack down on people who cross the U.S. border illegally and circumvent U.S. law — makes my blood boil. Crossing the U.S. border to ask for asylum is emphatically […]
Latina champion of women’s voting rights and education in New Mexico now graces US quarters
Otero-Warren tirelessly advocated in Spanish and English for New Mexico to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote. In order for a constitutional amendment to take effect, it must be ratified by three-fourths of all states. In New Mexico, Otero-Warren implemented strategies advanced by the Congressional Union, […]
2022’s US climate disasters, from storms and floods to heat waves and droughts
The year 2022 will be remembered across the U.S. for its devastating flooding and storms – and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts. By October, the U.S. had already seen 15 disasters causing more than US$1 billion in damage each, well above the average. The year started with widespread severe winter storms from Texas to […]
Indoor air quality improvements in schools will reduce COVID transmission and help students learn
As fall temperatures cool across the U.S., many schools will struggle to ventilate classrooms while also keeping students and teachers comfortable and healthy. Children and teachers spend over six hours a day in classrooms during the school year, often in buildings that are decades old and have inadequate heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC, […]
If you think scrapping COVID isolation will get us back to work and past the pandemic, think again
COVID is an exceptional disease and was at its deadliest this year, causing more deaths in Australia between June and August 2022 than at any other time. There have been 288 deaths from influenza so far this year compared to more than 12,000 deaths from COVID. The number of deaths from COVID in Australia in […]
About one-third of the food Americans buy is wasted, hurting the climate and consumers’ wallets
You saw it at Thanksgiving, and you’ll likely see it at your next holiday feast: piles of unwanted food — unfinished second helpings, underwhelming kitchen experiments and the like — all dressed up with no place to go, except the back of the refrigerator. With luck, hungry relatives will discover some of it before the […]