Did you know that American students score above average on international assessments in math and science? It’s hard to hear the good news over the drumbeat message of “public education failure, let’s privatize ’em all.” A marketing executive talks about reframing the public education message.
The NRA has found itself a test school district in Arkansas. Four adults in each of Clarksville’s five schools will be carrying concealed weapons — which comes out to one armed adult for every 125 kids. This would not make US feel safer.
It’s racial profiling plus violent action taken against the profiled that is the problem, so why isn’t it a criminal act? Lawyer-commentator Ari Melber explores why and how we could change this.
More states are pushing 20-week abortion bans like the one passed in Texas, and there’s even a Federal proposal in the House. Proponents cite polls that show Americans favor restricting abortions after 20 weeks. Our friends at the Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women list some reasons why these bans are a bad idea. Jessica Valenti at The Nation also weighs in:
We live in a country that makes procuring reproductive care as difficult as possible: we give young people inaccurate and dangerous information about sex via ideologically driven abstinence-only education; 87 percent of counties in the US have no abortion provider; we deny financial assistance to the most in need and put up obstacles for younger women; one-third of women seeking abortions have to travel more than twenty-five miles to obtain one, and crisis pregnancy centers routinely lie to women about far into their pregnancy they are. Not to mention that we provide nothing in the way of support to parents—no mandated paid parental leave, no universal preschool or subsidized child care.
The Republican war on reproductive justice is directly responsible for women’s seeking later abortions. It’s easier for anti-choicers to perpetuate a myth of callous women who cavalierly decide to end their twenty-two-week pregnancy than to admit that their cruel and punitive policies are why women don’t get the care they need earlier.
And in North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory not only signed a new law restricting abortions (after an election where he pledged that was something he would not do) — he brought the protesters cookies.
