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Immigration into the United States - Ria J

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Immigration into the United States - Ria J

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This article is about the smuggling of immigrants across the US border and how much many immigrants sacrifice to make it to the US. This connects to Theme 5 because immigrants have to adapt to their new surroundings in America in many ways including language and a different social and cultural environment, but they make this sacrifice anyways because they believe they will have a better life in these new surroundings.

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LAREDO, Tex. - Two weeks ago, a police officer on a routine patrol here was approached by six men frantically waving for him to stop. The men, all undocumented immigrants, told a harrowing tale.

With the help of smugglers, the men had crossed the Rio Grande a few days earlier. After being shuttled from one house to the next, they ended up at a mobile home in central Laredo, a city of 250,000 mostly Latino residents along the Mexican border. Unable to pay the smugglers the amount demanded for their passage, the men were threatened and locked in the house without food or water. They kicked out a back window to escape.

Hours later, when a squad of United States Border Patrol agents and local police officers descended on the mobile home, one man was still there. He said he was waiting to be taken to his next destination since he had paid his first installment of smuggling fees - $2,500. He expected to pay an additional $3,500 down the road.

The fees are part of a human smuggling business along the Southwest border with Mexico that is worth an estimated $500 million annually. Stash houses, like the mobile home here, are at the center of a smuggling chain that moves hundreds of thousand of people a year across the border and into the United States.

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The migrants are then delivered to another stash house, where they are detained by smugglers who demand fees before getting them to their next destination.

Migrants who are unable to pay are threatened and, in many cases, assaulted. Some women have been raped, according to federal court records, interviews with law enforcement officials and statements from undocumented immigrants. Migrants are also vulnerable to so-called rip crews, who kidnap them from the stash house of a rival group of smugglers and extort them or their families for money, federal court documents and Homeland Security Investigations records show.

Stash houses usually lack running water or air-conditioning. Up to 100 people are often crammed into a single house, waiting for smugglers to move them.

Law enforcement officials in unmarked vehicles quickly surrounded the car. With guns drawn, they removed seven men hiding in the back. At the wheel was a 16-year old girl.

He said that they were among several men who had been moved to four different stash houses. They were coming from one when law enforcement agents stopped them.

In some cases, officials only find stash houses after the migrants are gone.

Responding to a call this month at a Motel 6, just off Interstate 35, the local police were met by three men who said they had been forcibly detained by smugglers who had extorted $9,000 from each of them.

One of the men said he and the two others had crossed the Rio Grande in July after paying $2,800 to smugglers in Mexico. The men were taken to several stash houses as they waited to be moved to San Antonio, where they would meet people who would drive them on the next leg of a journey that they were told would eventually end in Kentucky.

They wound up at the Motel 6, which was to be their last stop before San Antonio. There, the men said, they were put in a car and driven for two hours to a hotel that they were told was their destination.

Mr. Smith said it was the same with many of the landlords of stash houses.

Some have called the authorities after learning that the home they rented out was used as a stash house. Others have been less helpful. Either way, it is rare for federal or local prosecutors to charge an owner with smuggling.

"It's tough to prove knowledge," Mr. Smith said. "I'm sure some of them know. But we just can't prove that they know that the residence was used as a stash house."

Ron Nixon is the homeland security correspondent. He joined The Times on the Business desk in 2005. He is a Marine Corps infantry veteran and the author of "Selling Apartheid: Apartheid South Africa's Global Propaganda War." @nixonron

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Smugglers' Stash Houses, Where High Profits and Misery Reside. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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High Profits and Misery Meet at Door of Smugglers' Stash Houses

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LAREDO, Tex. - Two weeks ago, a police officer on a routine patrol here was approached by six men frantically waving for him to stop. The men, all undocumented immigrants, told a harrowing tale. With the help of smugglers, the men had crossed the Rio Grande a few days earlier.

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Millions of children around the world have an almost certain destiny involving long hours of labor and hardship, and worry from the moment they are born. By sheer chance, you are either born into the wealthiest family or the poorest family. However, this slight chance effects your entire life on earth because of one key privilege which should be a universal right: education. So many children around the globe can never see how the world works because of who their parents are and where they happen to have been born. Regardless of these circumstances,  every single child should have the opportunity and access to an incredible education, setting then up for success.
This issue connects to theme 2 (politics and power) because governments across the globe have the opportunity to make progress on this issue, but many do not even try.

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CREATE | About | Why access to education is important

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But our research shows that this has often not been the case. Sub-Saharan Africa remains by far the most undereducated part of the world despite allocating proportionally as much or more finance than other regions to education. In South Asia growing inequalities have accompanied economic development and led to very uneven access to basic education and continued marginalisation of the poorest.

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Family Separation and its Effects on Children- Mar 

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Family Separation and its Effects on Children- Mar 

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It has become clear that Trump's "zero tolerance" policy has affected the lives of young children and their families who have been traumatized from the stresses of forced separation. The conspicuous psychological and physiological effects on these children have garnered questions and debates about the morality and violation of human rights. This issue relates to Theme 1 (American and National Identity) because our perceptions and political perceptions of what defines a citizen have ultimately led to core dilemmas regarding the livelihood and wellbeing of human lives; those who should be living in dignity.

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(Photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

A Guatemalan mother falls to her knees as her seven-year-old daughter walks through the door. They've been separated for 55 days, and the mother is completely overcome with emotion. She embraces her child, rocking her and rubbing her back, openly weeping and speaking to her daughter in Spanish. When she pulls back, the child's face appears somewhat frozen, but she clearly has tears in her eyes; her mother wipes her face with the tissue she has been clutching.

This video from CNN is just one of many that have gone viral in the past couple of months, showing immigrant children and their parents' first reunification after months of separation as a result of the Trump administration's " zero tolerance" policy. Something that is strikingly uniform in each of the videos is the frozen, non-emotional responses of the children as their parents weep over them. One video shows a devastated mother whose toddler continues to crawl away from her as she tries to talk to him and pick him up.

Even to a layperson's untrained eye, these reactions appear to be confirmation of the significant trauma mental-health experts warned would happen as a result of separating children from their adult caregivers.

Karen Johnson, senior director of trauma-informed services at the National Council for Behavioral Health, says that what we're likely seeing in these children's responses is a protective numbing or disassociating. Weeks- to months-long separations have an impact on a child's brain, Johnson says, "which speaks to the urgency to make sure that children do not spend one hour longer than they need to separated from their parents."

Johnson is concerned that children's stress responses are being turned on indefinitely in these scenarios, which directly affects the neural pathways in the brain and the immune system.

"The release of stress hormones, such as cortisol, happens when a child experiences something that is terrifying to them or scary, and the way to buffer that or to help a child move through that or to biologically turn off that hormone is through a nurturing, caring relationship," Johnson says. But in cases where children have gone without interaction with their caregiver, the stress response in a child's system remains on for however long they've been separated. When the stress response does not get shut off, the neurons in the brain change. And those changes can have consequences.

In the short term, the effects of this kind of prolonged stress response include numbing or detaching, difficulty with conversations and focusing, and having tantrums. It can also manifest in symptoms like stomach aches and headaches.

Immigrant Families Together, a group formed by United States parents who were heartbroken by the cruelty of forced family separations, has seen this kind of trauma firsthand. IFT fundraises to bond out immigrant parents, transport them (often thousands of miles) to where their children are being held, and reunite them with their children. In addition, the group coordinates pro bono legal help and ongoing housing and financial support while parents wait for their immigration cases to be heard. IFT has, to date, helped 27 mothers and two fathers reunite with their children.

Julie Schwietert Collazo, one of the founders of IFT, says that the group's volunteers have seen troubling medical issues in children who have been recently released: "Many children have had strep throat, a fever, and/or [gastrointestinal] distress. Other cases are more severe, such as a one-year-old who had penile discharge."

From a psychological standpoint, Schwietert Collazo says she's witnessed some of the immediate aftermath.

In the case of one family that IFT helped to reunite, a five-year-old boy and his 15-year-old brother were put into a foster home, where they reported receiving loving care. When they were reunified with their mother, they were separated abruptly from the foster family and, according to Schwietert Collazo, they were not given time to say goodbye, nor offered support to help them navigate the transition back to their mother's custody.

"The day after reunification, the five-year-old sat at my breakfast table sullenly, refusing to eat, and when his mom asked him what was wrong, he burst into tears, crying uncontrollably for a long period of time," Schwietert Collazo says. "To her enormous credit, the mom (who, of course, is also traumatized) hugged him and told him to cry as hard and as long as he needed to cry because he had been through an experience no child should have to go through." In the days that followed, the child had difficulty playing with other kids and had visible mood swings.

In addition to the short-term effects of childhood trauma, the known long-term health implications are stark. Kids who have experienced chronic stress are at increased risk of heart disease and diabetes, mental-health problems and addiction, and even chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer. A recent study, published in July by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that extremely high early life stress exposure in children was associated with changes in saliva DNA methylation levels, which adds to the existing body of research linking children's social experiences with risk for anxiety and depressive disorders. Left unmitigated, the damage caused by toxic stress can be lifelong.

Recovering from chronic stress requires ongoing effort, making sure a child has structure in their daily schedule, adequate sleep and exercise, good nutrition, healthy relationships, and mental-health interventions. But because of limited resources offered to families caught up in the immigration system and limited resources in their home countries if they are deported, the separated immigrant children in the majority of cases lack access to many of these things, even upon reunification.

Though the court order deadline mandating the reunification of separated families passed weeks ago, as of late August there were still more than 500 children separated from their parents, and more than 400 of those parents had already been deported without their children. Immigration advocates and lawyers have reported that, of the families who have been reunited, many gave up their asylum claims in order to more speedily get their children back. The government then propelled those families on a fast-track to deportation. And for most of them, there will be no access to the mental-health care that they need, only a trauma-laced return to violence and instability in their home countries.

The families who remain in the U.S., reunited with their children, face many everyday hurdles, including interfacing with systems and institutions that may or may not be equipped to support families who have been recently traumatized. As the school year begins, Schwietert Collazo says that children from multiple families helped by IFT have had a rough time transitioning to school.

"The return to school would be difficult for them under any circumstances due to language and cultural barriers (and the fact that they're attending school for the first time in the U.S.), but the separation from parents to conduct school grade level evaluations and the separation from parents to simply go to school have been very hard for the kids; they are afraid they are going to be taken away from their parents again," Schwietert Collazo says. In addition, it is unclear whether schools are equipped to understand and support immigrant students who have endured trauma from family separations.

From a physical and emotional standpoint, it's important that those who work with potentially traumatized populations-like school administrators, teachers, and physicians-understand past trauma. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, one of the largest investigations linking childhood abuse and neglect to long-term health, found a strong relationship between exposure to childhood trauma and some of the leading causes of death in adults, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease.

A big part of Johnson's work involves training practitioners, organizations, and institutions on a practice known as trauma-informed care. Drawing on the information in the ACE study, trauma-informed care was developed as a way to not only understand how a person's past trauma influences their health, but also to help service providers avoid re-traumatizing the people seeking support from them.

Though the trauma-informed model of care is still spreading and not yet accessible to everyone who needs it, Johnson sees promise in the outcry against family separations, which had a uniformity that she says would not have existed even just a few years ago. "There's no confusion about the impact that this is having on children and families," Johnson says. Three to five years ago, "there would have been more of the old school push-back like, 'kids are resilient, they'll forget, they'll move on, look, they aren't even crying, they're fine.'"

That outcry resulted in the interruption of the family separation policy. But the end of family separations only solved part of the problem. Every family that has been traumatized through separation still needs access to mental-health care and trauma-informed care within every institution that they interact with moving forward. "We still have to figure out how to make this happen," Johnson says.

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What Viral Reunification Videos Reveal About the Trauma of Separated Immigrant Children

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A Guatemalan mother falls to her knees as her seven-year-old daughter walks through the door. They've been separated for 55 days, and the mother is completely overcome with emotion. She embraces her child, rocking her and rubbing her back, openly weeping and speaking to her daughter in Spanish.

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Police Brutality and Racial Profiling -Emily Tieu

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Police Brutality and Racial Profiling -Emily Tieu

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Jordan Edwards. He was 15 years old and only just starting out in high school. His name will join a list of other unarmed black men and boys (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling...) who have been killed by police officers. Racism is evident and is being tackled as we speak, but it still is a big part of our society. In America, racism can unconsciously affect our decisions due to the history of racism and fear of those who look different than us.

This most directly relates with theme 1 (American and National Identity) as this issue deals with the relationships between racial, ethnic and cultural groups in America. Racial profiling is connected to historical patterns and trends of racism and discrimination against African-American stemming from the slave trade. Each and everyone of the victims of racial profiling and police brutality have been American. Their experiences are unique to America and its diverse community. By looking at this issue deeply through theme 1, we will be able to understand why racism has become part of America's culture and how we can get rid of it.

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Roy D. Oliver II, a former Balch Springs, Tex., police officer, during his trial this week. Credit Credit Pool photo by Rose Baca

A white former police officer in a Dallas suburb was found guilty on Tuesday by a jury of fatally shooting an unarmed black high school freshman with a high-powered rifle in April 2017.

The former officer, Roy D. Oliver II, was fired from the Balch Springs Police Department after he shot and killed Jordan Edwards, a 15-year-old high school freshman, as Jordan and four other teenagers drove away from a house party. Mr. Oliver fired into the vehicle, hitting Jordan in the head as he sat in the front passenger seat.

The jury deliberated for just two days. Last week, Mr. Oliver testified that he had decided to fire at the car when he saw it moving toward his partner, Officer Tyler Gross, endangering him. But Officer Gross told the court that he had not feared for his life.

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Jordan Edwards with his father, Odell, in an undated photo.

Mr. Oliver, 38, was on trial for murder and two counts of aggravated assault. He was found not guilty of the assault charges but faces a prison term of five to 99 years or life on the murder conviction.

The trial immediately entered the penalty phase after the verdict on Tuesday, with teachers being called to the stand. "Jordan was a great kid," said Robert Howig, a physical education teacher at Mesquite High School. "Respectful, polite, it was just a pleasure to teach him."

Mr. Oliver had been an officer in Balch Springs, a working-class suburb of 24,000, since 2011. He had joined the force after serving as an infantryman in the Army and being deployed to Iraq twice.

He was charged with murder one week after shooting Jordan and was fired by the town's police chief, who said Mr. Oliver had violated department policies.

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Former Texas Police Officer Found Guilty of Murder for Killing Black Teenager

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A white former police officer in a Dallas suburb was found guilty on Tuesday by a jury of fatally shooting an unarmed black high school freshman with a high-powered rifle in April 2017. The former officer, Roy D.

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Child Abuse At Migrant Detention Centers - Mahima

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Child Abuse At Migrant Detention Centers - Mahima

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As the result of Trump's no tolerance immigrant policy,  thousands of children are being held in ICE detention centers. As the article describes, there is a lot of child abuse in the centers including confinement/restraints, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and drug injections.
This relates to Theme 5, because these children and their families fled from their native countries in Central and South America to escape from violence/abuse and get a chance at better life. In America, instead of welcoming them and giving them safety and helping them, we are separating families and treating them poorly.

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children allege grave abuse at migrant detention facilities - cnn

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Children allege grave abuse at migrant detention facilities

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In court documents, children allege grave abuse at migrant detention facilities, ranging from handcuffs to assaults to drugs disguised as vitamins.

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LGBTQ+ discrimination & bullying - Shresthi V

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LGBTQ+ discrimination & bullying - Shresthi V

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Recently, a nine year old boy from Denver, Colorado killed himself just 4 days after starting 4th grade and coming out as gay to his classmates because of the vicious bullying he faced. This article specifically connects to the first theme of APUSH because it shows how even though on paper, the American identity is open to interpretation, there is still a lot discrimination towards groups of people for simply being themselves.

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Bullying Drove 9-Year-Old Boy to Suicide, Mom Says

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A 9-year-old boy in Denver, Colorado took his own life last week after being taunted by classmates for coming out as gay

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Bias/Discrimination Against Natural Hairstyles on Black People - Isha

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Bias/Discrimination Against Natural Hairstyles on Black People - Isha

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Black people of all ages have been experiencing discrimination against natural hair for years in America. One boy was turned away from his school because he was wearing locs; the dress code of the school did not allow the hairstyle in school. This is just one of many ways that black people are undermined. This boy was just as ready to learn as his classmates, but a part of his identity put him at an unfair disadvantage. Incidents like these show up in many forms. People that are not black are often praised for wearing hairstyles meant for natural hair (that have been used for centuries), while black people who wear these hairstyles are called "ghetto" or other slurs or insults. While the school did have many black students, there was still no excuse for locs to be banned; this implies that there is a negative connotation associated with the hairstyle, which shouldn't exist in the first place. On top of this, the father and son had to face the humiliation and outrage of being turned away from the school.
This story relates to Theme 4, because natural hair is a beautiful tradition that has existed for so long. Unfortunately, with the oppression of black people in America came the negative stigma against natural hair. Many black women relate to and remember childhood experiences of straightening and relaxing their hair; now, more people are accepting natural hair for what it is. We hold certain stereotypes, one being that dreadlocks are for "thugs" or dangerous men, when in fact, there are a multitude of other issues that have led to the fear America has of black men. While many people don't think that hair would be such a controversial and emotional issue, because of the experiences of black people in society, it is something that must be discussed. It is a matter of identity, bias, and discrimination.

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A private Christian school in Florida is facing backlash after a 6-year-old black child was turned away on his first day of class because of his dreadlocks.

Clinton Stanley Jr. was all set for his first day at A Book's Christian Academy, but when he arrived, he was denied entry because of his hair. His dad, Clinton Stanley Sr., expressed his frustration in a now-viral video on Facebook Monday.

"My son just got told he cannot attend this school with his hair," he said in the video. "If that's not bias, I don't know what is."

The father decided to un-enroll his son right then and there, saying "I don't even want him here, period."

He said he was aware the school required a uniform, but was never told the dress code prohibits dreadlocks. The handbook posted online states boys may not wear "dreads, Mohawks, designs, unnatural color, or unnatural designs."

The video has been viewed nearly 500,000 times and has been widely shared by activists and community members. Stanley Sr. said the reaction he's seen to the video has been "nothing but good."

Sue Book, a school administrator, told the Washington Post that she's been flooded with constant calls and even death threats since the video was posted. Book said sheriff's deputies had to come in on the second day of classes due to the threats.

"They're calling me everything under the sun," she told The Post. "I'm getting it from everywhere, all parts of the country. Most of them do not speak intelligently. I bear with them until they start using the four-letter words. Then I'll lay the phone down and play Christian music."

More: Why is natural hair growing in Hollywood and beyond?

More: Untangled from politics, the Afro rises again

The Orange County Sheriff's Department confirmed the school has reported the threats and officers responded to the scene Tuesday, according to Public Information Officer Jane Watrel.

After learning about the incident, Orange County Commissioner Rod Love went to the school Tuesday to assess the situation. He said his primary concern was the safety of the children involved.

"Every time the phone rang you could feel how tense it was getting for the school and the staff," Love said. "One of the things that really hit me in the gut was that this child had to experience that."

Love said while the situation could've been handled better, he didn't believe the issue was about racism.

"The school may need to look into the policy," he said. "I do know the policy was instituted in 1971, but the school is a private school. They're going to have to make their own decisions."

Clinton Stanley, Jr., 6, is starting at a new school after being turned away from a private, Christian school on his first day of class. (Photo: Clinton Stanley Sr.)

The school's director, Rev. John Book, argued that because his school is a private school they have the right to set the dress code rules.

"You can see my school," Book told NBC-2 WESH Tuesday. "It's probably 95% black. Obviously, I'm not a racist.

"In our school, our song is: Jesus loves the little children of the world, red and yellow black and white, they are precious in his sight," he continued.

Stanley Sr. said he's enrolled his son in a public school while he searches for another option. He's planning a community meeting Thursday to address the issue and hopefully work to change to other discriminatory policies.

He said his son is upset but isn't letting the incident get him down.

"I feel real disappointed, real disgusted, real bad for the fact that he had to witness that," Stanley Sr. said. "I've been holding up emotionally. I don't know how long I can keep holding up."
Follow N'dea Yancey-Bragg on Twitter: @NdeaYanceyBragg
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2Mn2XvJ

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Florida school receiving death threats after turning away 6-year-old with dreadlocks

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CLOSE A private Christian school in Florida is facing backlash after a 6-year-old black child was turned away on his first day of class because of his dreadlocks. Clinton Stanley Jr. was all set for his first day at A Book's Christian Academy, but when he arrived, he was denied entry because of his hair.

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Although Trump has been placing numerous laws that limit the flow of immigration into the United States and economists have doubted , immigrants significantly help us drive innovation, growth, and possibly global competitiveness in the future.
This relate to Theme 5 because it addresses the debate about whether immigration, both legal and illegal, should be allowed in this country and the benefits the US will gain if they choose to continue accepting them in. Highly skilled immigrants are key to prosperity, are more entrepreneurial, account for a large percentage of patents, and, if chosen the latter, could chill innovation.

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The Muslim ban. The Wall. Children separated from their parents at the Mexican border. The past two years have seen an aggressive push by the Trump administration against both legal and illegal immigration. But it's not just the United States seeing a backlash, says Harvard Business School Professor William R. Kerr.

"Nationalistic policies have gained strength all around the world," Kerr says, pointing to Brexit in the U.K. and strains caused by the refugee crisis in Europe as indicators of anti-immigrant sentiment worldwide. "It's very worrisome in the implications it could have for policy choices."

Kerr, the Dimitri V. D'Arbeloff-MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration, has researched the economic effects of global migration of workers for more than a decade, sometimes partnering with his wife, Sari Pekkala Kerr, an economist and senior research scientist at Wellesley College, herself an immigrant from Finland.

Kerr concludes that countries shutting the door on legal immigration are following the wrong approach. Far from being a drain on an economy, immigrants are actually an engine that helps drive innovation and growth -and could even become more vital to global competitiveness in the future.

"The debate is red-hot right now, but in the background, the workforces are rapidly aging in most advanced countries, and public debt levels are high," he says. "So what's the national strategy toward a healthy economy and future gains? There are several levers such as investing heavily in robotics and labor-augmenting machinery, but immigration can also be a powerful way for countries to continue economic development and growth."
Highly skilled immigrants are key to prosperity
That influx is especially important when looking at higher-skilled workers, says Kerr, whose new book, The Gift of Global Talent: How Migration Shapes Business, Economy & Society, will be released by Stanford Business Books in October. "Today's knowledge economy dictates that your ability to attract, develop and integrate smart minds governs how prosperous you will be."

Studies on whether immigrants to the United States take jobs away from Americans or constitute a drain on social welfare are mixed, says Kerr, with some research showing a net loss and others showing a net gain of jobs. "Even those economists who are more skeptical of immigration suggest the impacts are modest." On the other hand, the benefits that immigrants provide when it comes to innovation are impressive, he adds.

In his recent working paper with Pekkala Kerr, for example, the researchers combined several databases that survey business owners across the United States. They found that even though foreign-born people make up about 13% of the US population, immigrant entrepreneurs create some 25% of new companies, and that number continues to rise. In some states, that percentage is even higher, with immigrant "gateways" such as New York and California seeing more than 40% of new businesses led by immigrants.

The study also found that immigrant-led companies start smaller but grow at a faster rate and are more likely to survive long term.

"Immigrants as a group can have a dynamic effect on an economy," says Kerr, adding that the phenomenon cuts across industries, with lower-skilled immigrants opening up dry cleaning businesses, restaurants, and autobody shops, and higher-skilled immigrants launching tech firms.
Why are immigrants more entrepreneurial?
Researchers aren't exactly clear on why immigrants are more entrepreneurial, says Kerr. One set of explanations focuses on the mindset required to migrate: "The very act of someone moving around the world, often leaving family behind, might select those who are very determined or more tolerant of business risk," he says. In previous work, Kerr found that immigrants tend to cluster in particular industries -Vietnamese manicurists, Korean dry cleaners, Haitian cab drivers-making it easier for new arrivals to learn how to launch businesses of their own.

On the more negative side, it could be that immigrants have a harder time finding jobs in existing firms that are commensurate with their skills-either because of discrimination or because companies don't know how to interpret their skill set. "Imagine I gave you a CV of somebody who had a bachelor's degree from [China's] Guangzhou University-you may not know what that means in terms of quality," says Kerr. Thus, immigrants may find going into business for themselves the best option.

In their study, Kerr and Pekkala Kerr also found that wages and benefits for jobs created by immigrant-led firms were lower than native-led firms. That gap could reflect that some immigrant startups are family businesses or employ newly arrived immigrants willing to work for less. "If what we are capturing is a job where none would otherwise exist, it's still a positive story, but there could be negative reasons too. A lot more research is required on this front," Kerr says, noting that either way, labor market competition among firms would close these gaps over time for mobile workers.
Immigrants account for large percentage of patents
Outside immigrant business owners, Kerr's previous research shows that immigrants contribute to the innovation of larger companies, accounting for roughly a quarter of US patent filings. These contributions are reshaping US invention in dramatic ways.

"One out of every 11 patents developed in the United States today is either invented or co-invented by an individual of Chinese or Indian ethnicity living in the San Francisco Bay Area," Kerr says.

Kerr notes that certain aspects of the US immigration system have been influential for these tight connections of skilled immigrants to STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) work. In contrast to a points-based immigration system used in countries like Canada, the United States principally relies on employers to select skilled immigrants through programs like the H-1B visa. "There are many pros and cons for each route, with the employer-based approach allowing firms to find candidates they really want and also screen on softer information like creativity or teamwork skills," he says. "In practice, the flexibility of the system has let US employers go after a lot of immigrants in STEM fields."

While the administration has instituted high-profile travel bans and worked to undo the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy of the Obama administration, the president has also often signaled a desire to shift the H-1B visa selection procedures. Although the US immigration policies directed towards skilled workers remain largely unchanged so far, Kerr agrees that the current system is very inefficient. (He discusses how to improve competitiveness in his new book.)
Anti-immigrant rhetoric could chill innovation
On the other hand, Kerr fears that the anti-immigrant rhetoric in America and other countries could have a damaging effect on their economies by chilling innovation and entrepreneurship by the very foreign-born workers we should be trying to encourage.

"Uncertainty lowers investment," he says, "and if I am an immigrant facing a chaotic, uncertain environment, I may shy away from starting a company if I fear being forced to leave. For very mobile skilled workers and rising students, this uncertainty can weigh heavily into decisions about whether to come to the United States versus another countries."

The countries that will win in the coming fight for global talent, Kerr says, are those that welcome immigrants and make them partners in building the economy.

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In America, Immigrants Really Do Get The Job Done

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The Muslim ban. The Wall. Children separated from their parents at the Mexican border. The past two years have seen an aggressive push by the Trump administration against both legal and illegal immigration. But it's not just the United States seeing a backlash, says Harvard Business School Professor William R.

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A survey showed that Muslim students are twice as likely to be bullied at school, even by teachers and officials. This relates to American and National identity because some people do not include Muslims in their American identity because they feel that all Muslims are a threat, which is far from the truth. What some people do not realize is that Muslims suffer greatly because of this prejudice and they are Americans just like everyone else and they have just as much right to be here.

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In total, 42 percent of Muslim parents report that their kids are bullied in school.

We have yet more evidence of Islamophobia in America.

A new poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding looked at the prevalence of bullying in American schools, conducting nearly 2,400 interviews of parents across the US in January.

The poll found that 42 percent of Muslim parents say their kids have been bullied due to their religion, whether through insults or physical assaults, at least once in the past year. About 23 percent of Jewish parents, 20 percent of Protestant parents, and 6 percent of Catholic parents reported that their kids were bullied at least once in the past year.

The results suggest that Muslim students are more than twice as likely to be bullied as their Protestant peers and seven times as likely to be bullied as their Catholic peers.

Among Muslims who reported bullying, one in four parents said the bullying involved a teacher or school official in some way. Put another way, Muslim students reportedly face more bullying from teachers and school officials than Catholic students reportedly face from anyone.

This is far from the first analysis to show Muslims in America face disproportionate levels of discrimination. Jenée Desmond-Harris previously reported on the tide of bullying faced by Muslim students after President Donald Trump's election. A Pew Research Center survey measured Americans' "warmth" toward different religious groups, with Christians and Jews ranking the highest and atheists and Muslims ranking the lowest. And in studies conducted by Northwestern University psychologist Nour Kteily, researchers had participants rank different groups based on how evolved they are; among the set of groups provided, Muslims ranked the lowest.

When you put this all together, it seems Islamophobia is a consistent theme in America. And this form of bigotry extends to children in our schools.

Watch: Fear and loathing at a Trump rally

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Survey: Muslim kids are more frequently bullied, often by teachers and school officials

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We have yet more evidence of Islamophobia in America. A new poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding looked at the prevalence of bullying in American schools, conducting nearly 2,400 interviews of parents across the US in January.

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Factory farming is often a forgotten problem in our world because it is unknown just how horrible it is for the environment.  Factory Farming is the leading contributor of air pollution (above all human transportation combined), water pollution, and deforestation. This issue is connected to theme 6 because it focuses on how the human population has and will continue to destroy the natural environment until we soon runout of resources from land and sea.

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Industrial agriculture is one of the most unsustainable practices of modern civilization. From start to finish, factory farming is responsible for the abuse of land, animals, and natural resources all for the express purpose of providing cheap, unhealthy food to large amounts of people. Industrial agriculture only really crept its way into normative American culture in the 1970s (thanks to President Nixon's Agricultural Secretary, Earl Buttz), but in just four decades, it has spread like a disease across the globe. Our current global food system is responsible for one-third of global greenhouse emissions and it completely depends on fossil fuels for transportation and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Replacing small-scale farms, where a variety of crops and animals were raised in congruence with single-crop farms and " animal production facilities," factory farming has wrought economic problems, public health concerns, inhumane conditions for billions of animals, and a huge carbon debt on the world's agricultural system.

With rising concerns over food security and the future of our rapidly deteriorating environment, more attention has been put on the multitudinous ways factory farming contributes to these issues. It is easy to fall into the traps of contradictory information that Big-Ag manufactures to justify their unsustainable practices, but I urge you not to believe a word of it! Below are the top five ways that factory farming harms the planet - read, learn, and pass it on!

1. Air Pollution

Over 37 percent of methane emissions result from factory farming. Methane has a global warming potential 20 times higher than carbon dioxide. But that doesn't make the carbon dioxide emissions any less staggering...the fossil fuels used in energy, transportation, and synthetic pesticides/fertilizers emits 90 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. On a lesser note, factory farming also releases harmful compounds like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia that can cause immediate negative health effects in humans.

2. Deforestation

In the United States alone, over 260 million acres of forest have been cleared to make room for crop fields, most of which are used to exclusively grow livestock feed. This is not a practice that only occurs in the U.S., land clearing in Brazil to grow chicken feed is responsible for the destruction of about 3 million acres of rainforest. And these numbers only account for land cleared to feed animals. Clearing land to grow soybeans in the Amazon rainforest is responsible for clearing over 100 million hectares of forest, releasing enough carbon into the atmosphere to increase the rate of global warming by 50 percent.

3. Water Pollution

Industrial agriculture sucks up 70 percent of the world's freshwater supplies. To follow up that staggering number, the EPA estimates that 75 percent of all water-quality problems in America's rivers and streams. Water polluted with agricultural run-off can destroy whole ecosystems and be toxic, if not lethal to humans and animals alike.

Industrial livestock farms, known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (sounds warm and fuzzy, right?), contain massive cesspools that store animal waste. These "factory-farm lagoons" have been known to leak into adjacent waterways. Nitrates, dangerous microbes, and drug-resistant bacteria run rampant in these lagoons. When these by-products get into local waterways, they cause toxic algae blooms which lead to "dead zones" and massive fish kills. High levels of nitrates in drinking water can cause spontaneous abortions and blue baby syndrome and bacteria outbreaks from agricultural water pollution is responsible for several disease outbreaks across the United States.

Click here to see how levels of animal waste impact your state's water supplies.

4. Monocultures

Monocultures in industrial farming pose an incredible threat to future food security across the globe. Single-crop farms are one of the "ingenious" developments that have come out of industrial agriculture. To support the livestock industry, a small group of "commodity" crops have taken up the majority of the world's agricultural land. In the United States, corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans are planted at an unprecedented rate, yet only a small percentage of these crops feed people.

Planting millions of acres of genetically similar plants has become a global phenomenon due to the high-yields that these plants can produce under certain conditions. The problem with this, however, comes when environmental conditions change (good thing our climate is so stable...) or in the form of a crop epidemic (the potato famine sound familiar?).

Large-scale farming of monocultures depends on massive amounts of synthetic fertilizers to replace nutrients that are continually drained from soil. This practice also requires high levels of synthetic pesticides to stave off insects that are attracted to certain crops. If farmers did not receive subsidies for growing commodity crops, then crop fields could be populated with a diverse mixture of plant species that can naturally fix nitrogen into soil and control insects.

5. Fossil Fuels and Carbon Emissions

In the satirical web series " Farmed and Dangerous," industrial farms begin feeding livestock " petro-pellets," animal food that is really concentrated pills of fossil fuels. While this outrageous practice does not happen in real life (...yet), it does highlight how heavily factory farms rely on fossil fuels to raise animals and grow crops. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are derived from petroleum, the majority of crops grown with the use of these chemicals are turned into animal feed - hence the comedic irony of cutting out the crop-middle man and just feeding animals straight petro.

Between transportation, synthetic fertilizers/pesticides, and the incredible amount of energy it takes to run Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, factory farms use about 5.5 gallons of fossils fuels per acre. The average farm in the United States spans 418 acres, meaning it will devour about 2,300 gallons of fossil fuels. Just think about how many thousands of farms there are across the globe...

What You Can Do

It is more than clear that industrial agriculture needs to stop. There are many things you can do to help reform the farming industry, so don't feel like you are powerless in the face of the factory farming machine! Here are a few simple things you can do that make a huge impact:

If you haven't already: STOP eating meat, the livestock industry is a major driver behind these 5 examples.

Only purchase local and organic produce to support small-scale farming that grow crops without ridiculous amounts of petroleum fertilizers and pesticides. Check out this guide to find local produce near where you live.

OR better yet, grow your own vegetables and fruits.

Check out this awesome article for more ideas, including a directory of petitions you should sign!

Join the #EatForThePlanet movement and spread the word!

For more Animal, Earth, Life, Vegan Food, Health, and Recipe content published daily, subscribe to the One Green Planet Newsletter ! Lastly, being publicly-funded gives us a greater chance to continue providing you with high-quality content. Please consider by donating!

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5 Ways Factory Farming Is Killing the Environment

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Industrial agriculture is one of the most unsustainable practices of modern civilization. From start to finish, factory farming is responsible for the abuse of land, animals, and natural resources all for the express purpose of providing cheap, unhealthy food to large amounts of people.

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Something that is really prevalent today (but not spoken about enough) is sex trafficking and the cultural and societal influence behind it. For example, India and Cambodia are a few of the leading forces behind the human trafficking business. I think this connects to Theme 3 and Theme 4 because it not only falls into the category of work and exchange, but culture and society. These days, we see more and more women who are raised with the belief that they aren't equal to and don't deserve the same respect and honor as men. The devaluation of women and girls in society as well as culturally accepted norms are what make this industry what it is today.

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sex trafficking: the new american slavery - cnn

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Sex trafficking: The new American slavery

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CNN documentary "Children for Sale: The Fight to End Human Trafficking" looks at underage victims of sex trafficking and what can be done to help them.

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Recently, more and more schools are adding all gender bathrooms to different school and centers. This is a connection with theme #4 which states, "...the roles that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression have played in shaping the United States..." I think this relates to this theme because awareness of the LGBTQ community was not acknowledged in the past, but we are slowly shaping the United States to be accepting of different ways of life one small city at a time

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No more separate restrooms for boys and girls, with rows of feet-showing stalls. The North Kansas City school district is going fully gender neutral at two new elementary schools, opening on Wednesday, as well as in a few renovated restrooms in North Kansas City High School and the sixth-grade centers.

The bathrooms still have an open alcove area with a common trough sink, but the toilets are enclosed inside individual stalls with floor-to-ceiling walls and lockable doors.

A single sign on the wall outside displays both the male and female symbols.

North Kansas City first tried the gender-neutral design when it opened its Northland Innovation Center for gifted students in 2016. That was a year after one of the district's four high schools, Oak Park, made national headlines when it became one of the first in the country to crown a transgender student its homecoming queen.

"We had such positive feedback from students, teachers and parents," said Rochel Daniels, executive director of organizational development for the district. "Since then we have decided to replicate the concept in any new construction." That included the newly built Rising Hill Elementary on Northeast 108th Street and Northview Elementary on North Indiana Avenue, as well as renovations at North Kansas City High and the Eastgate and Gateway sixth-grade centers.

"I think it is great," said Melanie Austin, whose daughter will be a first-grader at the district's Crestview Elementary and in gifted classes once a week at the innovation center. "You just don't know what gender a kid might identify as. This helps everyone to feel comfortable, accepted."

The district's new schools and bathrooms were designed by Hollis + Miller, a Kansas City architecture firm known for innovative school buildings. More than 90 percent of its clients are schools. But Daniels said the design of the new bathrooms came from a district team that included parents and students.

"Students said they like these restrooms better because they are more private," Daniels said.

In addition, she said, teachers can better monitor students because they can stand in the common area while the bathrooms are in use. Before, a female teacher could supervise girls in the bathroom, but she could not walk into the boys bathroom.

The district does not have a policy that speaks to transgender or gender-neutral restrooms, but "we do have a policy about non-discrimination," Daniels said. "The restrooms became a point where we can provide for all students. The design was a decision based on privacy, safety and security for all students."

Kirk Horner, president of Hollis + Miller, said the North Kansas City bathrooms were the first of that type his firm has put into a school. He said similar bathrooms are going in at two Kansas City, Kan., middle schools, and the firm is "in high-level" discussions about building the bathrooms in Blue Valley schools.

People are used to seeing a certain type of bathroom in schools, he said, and "this is really different. And it's a tough issue. But you got to think forward a little bit. We believe they improve safety. I do believe it is gaining momentum."

Gender-neutral restrooms are not forced by federal or even state law but rather are a decision of individual districts.

"If there was a law that addressed this, it would be our job to implement it," said Chris Neale, assistant commissioner of quality schools for the Missouri state education department. "We trust school boards like North Kansas City to be very attuned to local constituents and to make the very best decisions with regard to their student population."

Kelli Hopkins, an associate director for the Missouri School Boards Association, said she can't speak for the association, but her personal opinion about the North Kansas City bathroom concept is that she has "always thought it is a really good option."

During the administration of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidelines to public schools saying students should be allowed to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity, not necessarily the gender on their birth certificates. Many area districts, including Kansas City Public Schools, began offering one or two single-stall bathrooms for students to use.

Last year, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded the guideline.

The Americans With Disabilities Act does not directly protect transgender people from discrimination but does consider gender dysphoria a disability and protects people with disabilities from discrimination. Gender dysphoria is the distress a person feels when a biological gender does not match the gender they identify with. The Missouri Human Rights Act does not protect against gender-identity discrimination.

This year a Missouri Nondiscrimination Act bill was passed out of a House committee but never made it to a vote by the full chamber. Opponents cited "privacy concerns" for not allowing transgender people to use the restroom of their choice.

But at the time, Missouri LGBT advocate Steph Perkins said, "Safety and privacy is important to all of us, including in places like restrooms and locker rooms."

Advocates of the new school bathroom design say perhaps the new changes would make the whole restroom debate moot.

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North KC schools have gender neutral, unisex restrooms | The Kansas City Star

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No more separate restrooms for boys and girls, with rows of feet-showing stalls. The North Kansas City school district is going fully gender neutral at two new elementary schools, opening on Wednesday, as well as in a few renovated restrooms in North Kansas City High School and the sixth-grade centers.

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This article discusses an ICE raid that occurred in a North Texas vehicle trailer manufacturing plant. Several undocumented workers were detained, despite the fact that they weren't criminals. This connects to the APUSH Theme 5 about migration and settlement, because many of these undocumented workers migrated to the United States to obtain better employment opportunities and support their families. This particular Texas company provided employment to over 179 undocumented immigrants, allowing them to support their families and contribute to the national GDP. Overall, the reason for migration for most of these immigrants is to support a family and overcome poverty, not to engage in violent crime.

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Federal immigration authorities are raiding a North Texas vehicle trailer manufacturing plant and detaining multiple undocumented workers as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the company.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit is conducting a criminal investigation into the Sumner-based company, Load Trail, for illegally employing foreign workers - a rare move reserved for repeat violators.

The Sumner-based company just outside Paris makes trailers that hitch onto vehicles.

Load Trail began as a family-owned business in 1996 and has grown to employ more than 500 people on its 100-acre site, according to the company's website.

The company in 2014 paid a $445,000 fine for hiring undocumented immigrants to work in its plant.

Katrina Berger, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations' (HSI) Dallas office, said Tuesday's law enforcement operation is expected to be one of the largest of its kind in a decade.

As part of a criminal search warrant, agents plan to question employees and seize employment documents. Hundreds of workers were expected to be "administratively arrested" and processed for immigration violations. All are to be be issued notices to appear in immigration court for civil proceedings.

Many will likely be released with a court date for a hearing before an immigration judge, except for those with a criminal history or new criminal charges, Berger said.

The owners face possible criminal indictment. "Abusive and exploitative" employers have in the past been charged by ICE with alien smuggling, alien harboring, document fraud, money laundering and conspiracy.

Berger said such illegal hiring practices give companies an unfair advantage, subject workers to low wages and potentially dangerous conditions, and take jobs away from U.S. citizens.

One year ago, ICE's acting director at the time, Thomas Homan, told The Dallas Morning News that the immigration crackdown supported by President Donald Trump would make employers its next target.

"You are going to see a lot more work-site enforcement this year," Homan said. "We will take action against those employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens."

Homan promised ICE was "firing up" work-site enforcement, saying "We need to take the magnet away."

Verify before hiring

Federal immigration law made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire those in the U.S. without employment authorization in 1986. But the laws haven't been enforced with the same vigor the immigration agency uses against undocumented immigrants.

Employers must verify the identity and work eligibility of everyone they hire, using what's known as an I-9 form.

Many immigrant employees use Social Security numbers that belong to other people or false documents. Employers have long argued that makes it hard for them to self-police and shows they didn't "knowingly" hire an unauthorized worker.

Berger said Load Trail is suspected of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants.

More than 300 federal agents and support staff, including translators, are at the company's location on Tuesday as part of the law enforcement operation. That includes Air and Marine Operations, an agency within U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

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Immigration officials descend on North Texas company that allegedly hired undocumented immigrants

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Federal immigration authorities are raiding a North Texas vehicle trailer manufacturing plant and detaining multiple undocumented workers as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the company. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit is conducting a criminal investigation into the Sumner-based company, Load Trail, for illegally employing foreign workers - a rare move reserved for repeat violators.

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Discrimination In Health Care -                                                      Jovanna

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Discrimination In Health Care -                                                      Jovanna

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Discrimination in our health care because of race, gender, or self-identity, is thought to be an issue we as society have moved past from, when in reality it is still prevalent in our lives today and is affecting the people around us. In a recent survey done by NPR, many women, people of color, and LGBTQ people revealed having experienced discrimination while seeking medical attention, so much so that a lot of them disclosed that they intentionally avoid seeking medical care because of their fears of receiving discrimination. This issue corresponds to Theme 1 as the article talks about the different problems different groups face because of their identity.

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Racial discrimination in the United States is pervasive and affects health outcomes and access to health care on multiple levels-from the interpersonal, to the institutional, to deeper structural divides. Such ingrained racism creates significant barriers for people of color, making it harder for them to get equal access to jobs, housing, education, and health care services.

Families USA shined a spotlight on these issues earlier this year at our annual Health Action Conference. At one of the event's most popular sessions, a panel of experts discussed the impact of racism and discrimination in health and health care.

Panelists were: Dr. Camara Jones, Satcher Health Leadership Institute, Morehouse School of Medicine; Dr. David Williams, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Dr. Marshall Chin, Finding Answers, University of Chicago; Andrea Ducas, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dr. Tekisha Everette, Health Equity Solutions, Inc.; AJ Jones II, W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and Ed Tepporn, Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum.

Health Action 2018: Racial Discrimination and Health Care Panel

David Williams discussed a study demonstrating the racial disparities in neighborhood poverty levels. The study found that a low-income white child, on average, lives in a neighborhood with a poverty rate of 13.6 percent, while the average middle-income African-American child lives in a neighborhood with a poverty rate of 21.1 percent.

In other words, the worst-off white family will tend to live in a higher-income neighborhood than a middle-class African-American family. Williams introduced this study by noting that residential segregation is "the secret source that drives racial inequality."

It affects the ability of children of color to get a quality education and seek employment opportunities, he explained. Residential segregation also has negative impacts on health outcomes. Williams went on to say that the ZIP code "shapes all of the opportunities that drive health in the U.S."

Discrimination and racism affect how patients of color are treated

Systemic inequities based on race, ethnicity, and gender seep into health care and affect the way that members of certain communities are treated when seeking medical services. For instance, a study quoted during the panel found that more than half of Hispanics who were treated at UCLA did not receive pain medication when being treated for a broken bone, in comparison to only one-quarter of white patients with the same complaint. The biggest predictor for not receiving pain medication at this hospital was simply being Hispanic.

This is not an isolated incident: A recent survey conducted by NPR, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation demonstrated the pervasiveness of discrimination in people's lives. It found that many women, people of color, and LGBTQ people report experiencing discrimination when seeking medical care.

For example, 32 percent of African Americans reported experiencing discrimination when going to a doctor or health clinic, as did 25 percent of Latina women. The same survey revealed that a significant proportion of people have avoided seeking medical care altogether out of concern that they would suffer discrimination, including 22 percent of African Americans and 15 percent of Native Americans.

The health impact of racism

Panelists contextualized these findings by describing the short- and long-term physical impact of experiencing discrimination as a serious stressor to the body that can literally lower one's life expectancy. Research has shown that experiencing repeated instances of discrimination and racism can cause people to live in a constant state of stress, wherein blood pressure and heart rate are elevated, a condition that is also known as the fight-or-flight response.

This constant stress has implications for mental health, and also has serious consequences for physical health. Stress triggers cortisol production in the brain which, when it is overproduced, has negative impacts on physical health. Studies have shown that African-American and Latino people in the U.S. have significantly higher rates of cortisol production than white people, and linked the overproduction to the experience of racism.

These disparities are also found in cardiovascular health. According to a study conducted in 2009, African-American women have significantly higher mortality rates from coronary artery disease and hypertension than white women-rates that are 69 percent and 352 percent higher, respectively. Additionally, African-American women are three-to-four times more likely to die due to complications during childbirth than white women.

We need to work to change this

A culture of discrimination is incompatible with a culture of health. Given our nation's demographic shifts, with people of color becoming a majority population within the next 25 years, achieving the best possible health and health care for everyone in the United States requires addressing these inequities. It's time we work to transform our health system.

In order for these health system transformation efforts to be truly effective and representative of the communities they serve, more diverse voices need to join the conversation about improving the health system, making it truly meet the needs of marginalized communities.
One way Families USA is tackling the legacy of racism and the health disparities associated with it is through our Health Equity Initiative. To learn more, view the webpage describing our Health Equity Task Force for Delivery and Payment Transformation.

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A Culture of Racial Discrimination Is Incompatible with a Culture of Health

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Racial discrimination in the United States is pervasive and affects health outcomes and access to health care on multiple levels-from the interpersonal, to the institutional, to deeper structural divides. Such ingrained racism creates significant barriers for people of color, making it harder for them to get equal access to jobs, housing, education, and health care services.

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Though the 2018 primaries are slowly becoming a historic breakthrough for women, women are still underrepresented in Congress, in state governments, and in federal positions. There are many reasons for this, but some include the fact that women generally are not endorsed (in comparison to men), they are still perform all the primary and secondary household and childcare duties, and are discouraged by the 2008 and 2016 election in which both Clinton and Palin lost.
This is similar to the theme of culture and society. Women's roles (as caretakers) still linger in society and are therefore underrepresented in government and politics.

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast

The amendment guaranteeing women voting rights is nearly 100 years old, but women have only recently become regulars in major parties' presidential nomination fights. All those decades of slow progress culminated this year in Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman who is the presumptive nominee of a major party.

That slow creep into presidential campaigns reflects a larger trend: Women make up a bigger share of national and state lawmakers than ever, and yet the share of women in major political positions remains disproportionately low. Women make up around 19 percent of all members of Congress and less than 25 percent of all state legislators. They also make up six of the nation's 50 governors, or 12 percent.

For comparison, here's how that stacks up to a selection of other jobs in America.

From one standpoint, those are just some interesting comparisons - Huh. Women make up about as big a share of Congress as they do the clergy.

But there's some real perspective here. For one thing, a substantial chunk of the clergy has to be men. Several large American religious denominations, including Roman Catholicism, which accounts for 1 in 5 U.S. adults, for the most part do not allow women to be ordained. Lawmaking of course has no such restrictions, but Congress' women's share is still stuck where it is among clergy.

Likewise, while many Americans may not think of lawmaking as a man's job, state legislators and governors are in the same neighborhood, proportion-wise, as stereotypically masculine jobs, like ranchers and cops.

And yes, it's maybe a little cheeky to put "president" on the chart, as that office will always be nonrepresentative - after all, 100 percent of the current presidents are men (and if a woman were elected, 100 percent would be women). Similarly, all of America's current presidents are black.

But then, it's also true that 100 percent of all presidents have been men, and all but one have been white men. The presidency has remained relatively homogenous, and it's the most prominent example of just how much women aren't involved in the highest levels of politics.
Where The Numbers Stand
Here's a look at women as a share of congressional members, state legislators, and governors has changed over the years.

The share of state legislators who were women took off starting in the 1970s, according to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. But it has leveled off since 2010. In governors' mansions, the share of female governors spiked at 18 percent (that is, nine governors), in 2004 and 2007.

In Congress, one major spike that sticks out is 1992, the so-called Year of the Woman. In the next year's Congress, the number of women climbed from 29 to 47, and four new women also entered the Senate, bringing the total of female senators to six. (Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison became a senator shortly thereafter, in June 1993, bringing the total in that Congress to seven.) Today, there are 104 women in Congress - the highest total ever, but still far lower than women's total share of the population.
Why Aren't More Women In Office?
Americans have warmed to the idea of a woman as president over the years. In the 1960s, just over half of Americans said they could vote for a woman for president, a share that rose quickly over the next few decades, according to Gallup. And in 2015, 92 percent of respondents said they'd vote for a "generally well-qualified" woman from their party, roughly similar to the share who said the same of Catholics and blacks.

That's just a poll question about women as president, but if you take it as a (rough) barometer for how Americans feel about women in political office in general, it shows that overwhelmingly, people are willing to vote for women (though there's still that 8 percent who aren't willing to vote for a woman as president).

In which case, what's keeping women out of office?

One huge issue is that women aren't getting on the ballot in the first place. In a 2012 report, American University professor of government Jennifer Lawless and Loyola Marymount University political science professor Richard Fox studied "potential candidates" of both genders - people like lawyers and activists who might reasonably get involved in politics - to determine what was keeping women from running.

They came up with seven main barriers to women running for office. In the authors' words:

1. Women are substantially more likely than men to perceive the electoral environment as highly competitive and biased against female candidates.

2. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin's candidacies aggravated women's perceptions of gender bias in the electoral arena. (That is, the authors write, women saw how Clinton and Palin were treated in the 2008 election and decided not to run.)

3. Women are much less likely than men to think they are qualified to run for office.

4. Female potential candidates are less competitive, less confident, and more risk averse than their male counterparts.

5. Women react more negatively than men to many aspects of modern campaigns.

6. Women are less likely than men to receive the suggestion to run for office - from anyone.

7. Women are still responsible for the majority of child care and household tasks.

There's evidence of that among women at both the national and state level. Female members of Congress from both parties told NPR's Tamara Keith in 2014 that women need an extra nudge (or three) before they finally decide to run for office. Women state lawmakers likewise told NPR earlier this year that they had to be talked into running.

And there's also a reinforcing element to women's lack of representation in politics - that is, that women in office appear to help attract more women to office. An analysis from Obama's 2012 Analytics Director Amelia Showalter (highlighted by Vox's Matt Yglesias this week) found that electing a woman to a major office like governor or U.S. senator today is associated with a 2 to 3 percent increase in women's representation in state legislatures four years down the road.

Showalter's findings aren't necessarily separate from Lawless and Fox's list; it's possible that if more women campaigned, other women would react less negatively to campaigning, or they might be more likely to consider themselves qualified.

There's also a partisan split in Congress; there are 22 Republicans compared to 62 Democrats in the House (by the Center for American Women in Politics' numbers) and 6 Republicans to 14 Democrats in the Senate. Why do Republican numbers remain lower than Democrats'? Polarization may be a reason, as the New York Times' Derek Willis wrote last year.

"A root cause of the gap is that Democratic women who are potential congressional candidates tend to fit comfortably with the liberal ideology of their party's primary voters, while many potential female Republican candidates do not adhere to the conservative ideology of their primary voters," he suggested.
Growing Diversity Of All Types
Women aren't the only underrepresented group in politics. Minorities are also relatively few on the Hill - at the start of this Congress, 17 percent of members were nonwhite, compared with 38 percent of the population, according to the Pew Research Center.

Likewise, Congress is far more heavily Christian than the rest of the nation. Around 8 percent of congressional members at the start of the 114th Congress were non-Christians, compared with 27 percent of American adults, according to Pew.

Still, Congress is far more diverse than it once was, and the presence of those groups is likewise becoming more commonplace on the campaign trail. This year's massive presidential field was also remarkably diverse, including two women, two Latinos, one Jew, one Indian-American, and one African-American among the major-party candidates. (In addition, Democratic candidate Lawrence Lessig "has been vague on his personal faith," as Religion News Service reported last year.)

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Almost 1 in 5 Congress Members Are Women. Here's How Other Jobs Compare

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subscribe to NPR Politics Podcast podcast The amendment guaranteeing women voting rights is nearly 100 years old, but women have only recently become regulars in major parties' presidential nomination fights. All those decades of slow progress culminated this year in Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman who is the presumptive nominee of a major party.

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This article about racism today in America relates to the APUSH theme of American and National Identity as it exposes the racism that is still prevalent today, which was present in the founding of the United States. This article identifies how people of color often face prejudice throughout their lives because of the deeply embedded racism in America, but they experience this uniquely in coffee shops where people of different cultures and races encounter each other despite economic background. And due to the divides in racial group and discrimination people of color face, everyone has their own definition of their national identity which is different for every group.

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When two black men were arrested in a Starbucks store in Philadelphia in April, it prompted a national debate. The coffee chain swiftly announced it would close 8,000 of its US stores on Tuesday 29 May, so staff can undergo racial bias training.

Many believe such incidents do not only happen at Starbucks. Businesses across the US, some say, are guilty of a behavior so commonplace it is starting to be given its own term: "coffee shop racism".

Alfredo Weeks, an instructor at the Columbus College of Art and Design and co-owner of a graphic design studio, was moved to write about the phenomenon.

"I open the door to a coffee shop, and as soon as I get inside I feel the stares," he wrote. "From colleges to coffee shops there is an undertone of Jim Crow era discrimination deeply embedded in today's culture."

According to Weeks, the video of the men being arrested in Starbucks exposed discrimination that people of colour and black people in particular face every day. While such behaviour is clearly not restricted to coffee shops, in recent months a number of high-profile examples have been seen in cafes.

In May, Starbucks was in the news again after an employee wrote a racial slur on a customer's cup. In October last year, two community board members in Brooklyn complained after they saw a coffee shop employee give Halloween candy to white children, but not black children

This month, a video emerged showing a white man verbally abusing a woman who was wearing a niqab at a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf store in Riverside, California. Staff refused to serve the man.

Why have coffee shops become a place where America's racial divisions and biases are being exposed?

Rashad Robinson, executive director at Color of Change, said changing neighborhood demographics may be partly to blame. Cities across the US are experiencing gentrification, typically as white people move into black or hispanic neighborhoods, leading to rent increases and different business dynamics.

A lot of these coffee shops where we're seeing these problems are opening up [in] gentrifying neighborhoods

Rashad Robinson, Color of Change

"A lot of these coffee shops where we're seeing these problems are opening up [in] gentrifying neighborhoods," Robinson said. "Starbucks is a perfect example. You know when the Starbucks shows up there's all the stories of, like: 'Oh there goes the neighborhood.'"

In such gentrifying neighborhoods, he said, there is often not much interaction between newcomers and people who have lived there for decades. But one place where people from different races and economic backgrounds do encounter each other is the local coffee shop.

"They are definitely spaces where people are congregating in a country that's increasingly segregated in so many other ways," Robinson said.

"People don't go to school together. They don't worship in the same places. They have moments where they're living in the same neighborhood but oftentimes people are being pushed out and people are coming in, and that represents the neighborhood changing. So they're not in harmony, oftentimes.

"So these things are happening and people don't always have the expertise of relating to one another."

Away from chains like Starbucks, the world of "third wave" coffee - shops where coffee is treated as an artisan or craft beverage not unlike wine - is predominantly white, said Keba Konte, owner of Red Bay Coffee, a roastery and coffee shop in Oakland, California.

Konte wasn't sure if racist incidents could be said to occur more frequently in coffee shops than anywhere else - he pointed to a recent incident in a Waffle House restaurant in Alabama where employees called 911 on a black woman, who was then arrested - but said a "euro-centered" environment in some coffee shops could lead to discrimination.

Specialty shops are very white-centered in terms of the culture, the aesthetic, the music, the flavors, the employees

Keba Konte, Red Bay Coffee

"Coffee shops, especially the specialty coffee shop, they're very white-centered in terms of the culture, the aesthetic, the music, the flavors, the employees," Konte said. "So if you're in an environment that is really built around, you know, white culture, then I think these things tend to happen."

On the day Starbucks closes its stores, Konte, whose staff is entirely made up of women, people of color and the formerly incarcerated, will be hosting a live-streamed round table discussion, featuring black business owners. As a black man, he said, he was all too familiar with what the men in the Philadelphia Starbucks experienced.

"There are a lot of these videos that are documenting this kind of abuse," he said. "Some of them end in arrest, some of them end in the police killing someone. We understand that for every video that captures these incidents there are dozens and dozens of these events that are not captured on video."

'TEXT BOOK racism'

If the incidents captured in coffee shops reflect society at large, they can also be indicative of substandard treatment elsewhere. The Starbucks arrests prompted Junaid Nabi, a medical doctor and fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, to write a blog on "How coffee shop racism harms black patients".

"This reprehensible incident is an important reminder of how implicit racial bias - or in this case coffee shop racism - works," Nabi wrote. "[But] the service industry is not the only sector where this is a problem. Implicit racial biases are in fact important indicators of the broader negative perception of black people - which in clinical practice often leads to low-quality care and harm."

Nabi said the same "implicit bias" that led to the Starbucks manager calling the police can lead to black patients being undertreated for pain compared to white patients. He cited a study by psychologists from the University of Virginia that found a "significant number" of white medical students believed in false biological differences between white and black patients, such as "black people's skin is thicker" and that "black people's blood coagulates more quickly".

Kamau Bell, a comedian who hosts the show United Shades of America on CNN, spoke about his own brush with coffee shop racism. Staff at a shop in Berkeley, California, he said, ordered him to leave after he arrived and began chatting with a group of white women, one of whom was his wife.

Bell said staff accused him of harassing the women. When Bell's wife pointed out the mistake, he said, a staff member insisted it had not been race related.

"Actually a black man being told to leave a restaurant because the restaurant believes that his presence is harassing four white women and their kids, even though there is literally no evidence to support that, is TEXT BOOK racism," Bell wrote in a blogpost soon after the event.

"It is so old school it has a wing in the racism museum, right between the sit-ins at lunch counters and a southern redneck telling a black man on a business trip, 'You ain't from around here, are ya, boy?'"

Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle after the video of the arrests in Philadelphia emerged, Bell said the incident was "bigger than two black men kicked out of a coffee shop".

"The same racism that gets the black men kicked out of the coffee shop," he said, "is the same racism that gets that black teenager shot at when he's asking for directions".
Topics

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Coffee shop racism: where America's racial divisions are exposed

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When two black men were arrested in a Starbucks store in Philadelphia in April, it prompted a national debate. The coffee chain swiftly announced it would close 8,000 of its US stores on Tuesday 29 May, so staff can undergo racial bias training. Many believe such incidents do not only happen at Starbucks.

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This article connects to Theme 4 which talks about how ideas and social mores have shaped the United States. Specifically it connects to the sub section of the theme that talks about how women affect society and politics. The women's march heavily affects society is in brings people together of different backgrounds. Women are able to talk about issue that plague them such as voting rights and abortion. This affects politics as it gains national coverage and because the Presidents takes notice of these events and the topics spoken at the event

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transcript

Women's March 2.0: Scenes of a Protest

A year after millions of women protested President Trump, marchers gathered across the country and the world.

"It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains." "Trump can't read. Trump can't read. All he does is watch TV." "Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like." "Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like." "And together let's make sure all young girls everywhere know that they have a voice. They can use it. One woman's voice is powerful. But all of our voices are completely unstoppable." "Well I went down to the White House and I took back what he stole from me." "Women's rights are human rights!"

A year after millions of women protested President Trump, marchers gathered across the country and the world. Credit Credit... Andrea Bruce for The New York Times

A year after millions of people turned out for the Women's March and took to the streets en masse to protest President Trump's inauguration, demonstrators gathered on Saturday in cities across the United States, galvanized by their disdain for Mr. Trump and his administration's policies.

A deluge of revelations about powerful men abusing women, leading to the #MeToo moment, has pushed activists to demand deeper social and political change. Progressive women are eager to build on the movement and translate their enthusiasm into electoral victories in this year's midterm elections.
Here are some highlights:
* More than 200,000 protesters attended the march in New York on Saturday, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles said 600,000 attended the march there, while organizers of the Chicago march said 300,000 attended that event. Thousands also turned out in Washington, Philadelphia, Austin and hundreds of other cities and towns around the country and world.

* Several speakers urged women to channel their energy into helping Democrats win races in the upcoming midterm elections. A rally called "Power to the Polls," organized by the leaders of last year's Women's March in Washington, will be held on Sunday in Las Vegas.

* President Trump said in a tweet that it was a "perfect day for all Women to March," while touting "unprecedented economic success and wealth creation" under his watch.

* Read our analysis of how activists have tried to sustain the energy from last year's marches - and the challenges they face next.

That's what Vanessa Medina, a 32-year-old nurse, said prompted her to participate this year, even though she didn't march last January. Ms. Medina, of Clifton, N.J., cited the Time's Up campaign against sexual harassment and Republicans' attempts to defund Planned Parenthood as her reasons for protesting.

"I want equal pay," her 11-year-old daughter, Xenaya, chimed in. "And equal rights."

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Ann Dee Allen of Wauwatosa, Wis., stood by a vendor table on 60th Street and Broadway, holding a T-shirt and a handful of buttons she had just bought for the demonstration.

"I feel differently about it this year," said Ms. Allen, 61, who works in communications for a health care organization. "Last year, I just felt kind of angry and impassioned. This year, I feel like I'm in it for the long haul."

Women filled Central Park West from 61st Street north as far as the eye could see. A D.J. spun songs. The wind kicked up.

Desiree Joy Frias, 24, of the Bronx, and her grandmother, Daisy Vanderhorst, wore red capes and curved white hoods - the telltale outfits of the enslaved child-bearers of "The Handmaid's Tale," which was recently adapted for television from Margaret Atwood's dystopian science fiction novel.

"We both watch the show," said Ms. Frias, a law school graduate who said she belongs to an activist group called the "Handmaid Coalition." "We're a group of men and women that believe fiction should not become reality."

In the middle of a park surrounded by gleaming downtown skyscrapers, hundreds of thousands of people assembled. Some hugged strangers. Others were still coloring in their signs.

"I'm done with men feeling like they have some sort of power over women, and I'm definitely done with having a president who believes that he has the power to take things from them, to take things that are provided - like Planned Parenthood - from women, when they deserve the same sort of health care as anybody else," said Amanda Kowalski, 28, who works in financial services.

Claudia Grubbs, a 42-year-old high school teacher, returned after marching last year, which she said spurred her into donating to organizations that support women in politics.

"Over the last year, every day when I read the news or watch the news, I'm horrified at the things that Trump and his administration are doing, and I feel like going to the march will help re-center me, refocus me and not make me feel like I don't know what is happening to our country," she said. "I feel like it'll help me gain a sense of balance and a sense of purpose, and help me pursue things that I want to pursue."

Ashley Bennett, a Democrat from Egg Harbor Township, N.J., unseated a longtime local Republican politician in her first campaign for office last November. She ran for Atlantic County freeholder against John L. Carman after he posted a meme on Facebook during last year's march asking, "Will the women's protest be over in time for them to cook dinner?"

Ms. Bennett told the crowd at Saturday's march in New York that she was scared to run at first, and that she asked herself, "Am I the right person? Can I really do this? But then I realized that if you wait until you feel ready, you may never take action."

In Washington, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, took the stage with other legislators who arrived from the Capitol. She praised the women who have already launched campaigns, many for the first time.

"They marched, and now they have run for office, and some of them have already won their office," she said. "We want women to know their power in so many respects - by showing up not only on the day of the march, but in airports, in town halls."

"It's women who are holding our democracy together in these dangerous times," added Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. "To change the system, we need to change the players and have women at the table."

On Twitter Saturday afternoon, the president seemed to celebrate the women's demonstrations, even though the protests across the country had a distinct anti-Trump message.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the unemployment rate for women aged 20 and older has been falling steadily since 2012, years before Mr. Trump took office.

On Friday, Mr. Trump addressed the thousands of anti-abortion protesters gathered in Washington for the March for Life.

"We are with you all the way," he said in remarks broadcast to the National Mall. The president, who once described himself as "very pro-choice," has used his executive powers to curtail abortion rights.

The federal government shutdown that took effect early Saturday did not dissuade marchers from taking to the streets.

One of the sticking points that led to the shutdown - disagreement over extending legal status to immigrants brought into the country illegally as children - has become a rallying cry for organizers.

On the Metro headed to the Smithsonian, participants on their way to the Lincoln Memorial wore the symbolic pink hats that became popular during last year's march.

Michelle Bloom, 52, a Washington teacher, held a sign as her daughter, Jenna, 14, repaired hers with duct tape. She had made it in her mother's classroom Friday, tracing the handprints of her classmates who couldn't make it to the march.

"It's inspiring to see young and old coming together like this," Michelle Bloom said. But, she added, "I thought there would be more."

Women lined the frozen reflecting pool and slowly filled the grassy areas, but there was still space for kickball games around the Washington Monument. And people jogged and biked around the Mall, which would have been impossible a year ago, when the crowd of marchers was bigger.

The organizers of last year's march in Washington focused their energy this year on putting together an event Sunday in Las Vegas. The event, Power to the Polls, will serve as an opening rally for a national voter registration campaign.

While the crowds in Washington were not quite as large as they were in 2017, the Mall was still teeming with people.

Garrett Regunberg, 32, pointed to the rallies against President Trump's travel ban as an example of ongoing activism that has made a difference.

"There was a lot done in the first year to limit the damage that could have been done," he said. "The resistance is alive."

Marchers packed into downtown Chicago to listen to speakers like billionaire Democratic donor Tom Steyer, who has urged Democrats to make the ouster of Mr. Trump a central campaign issue this year.

With midterm elections approaching, Mr. Steyer said, "We are going to have to be organized, we are going to have to be engaged and we are going to have to go to the polls and flip those seats."

Marchers shouted anti-Trump chants and carried signs saying, "Vote" and "Immigrants Make America Great."

"I'm an activist and an artist and I'm here to fight for women's equality and equality for all minorities," said Michelle Hartney, 39, of Chicago, who said she attended the Women's March in Washington last year.

Some women avoided the marches on Saturday because they felt they were too focused on electing Democrats, at the expense of other issues. They wanted the movement to be more inclusive of people of color and other marginalized groups.

Nadya Agrawal, 26, joined the big rally in Washington last year. "But it just wasn't what I thought it would be," she said. "It felt more like a commiseration rather than the start of a lot of work."

Gatherings like these, she added, were no substitute for more focused activism. "I hope that the women who are at this rally are also going to the next Black Lives Matter protest, or marching on behalf of DACA," she said.

Other gatherings across the country faced similar criticism on social media and in public statements. In Cincinnati, Black Lives Matter activists said on their website, the march was not welcoming to minorities and was "a poorly veiled campaign to elect more Democrats to 'resist Trump.'" In Philadelphia, activists criticized the rally in an open letter after they learned that the police would be on patrol. (Organizers said the security was normal for a large event and marginalized groups were well represented.)

Deandra Jefferson, 24, who helped write the letter, said in a phone interview on Saturday that the march "caters mostly toward middle class, straight white women," and was not an effective way to dismantle oppression.

"They should stop organizing these marches until they decide what they're going to do the other 364 days of the year," she added.

The shutdown kept the president from traveling as planned to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this weekend.

Despite his absence, several hundred protesters gathered north of the mansion, on the beach in front of Worth Avenue. Many people waved "Impeach Trump" signs.

Organizers of the second Women's March in Ottawa shifted the focus to issues directly affecting Canadian women. Many marchers wore red scarves as a gesture of support for the large number of indigenous women whose murders or disappearances have received relatively little attention from the police.

The march, which began at the Parliament buildings, was one of about three dozen across Canada.

Among those who addressed the crowd in Ottawa was Catherine McKenna, the environment minister, who has been one of the leading international voices against President Trump's climate policies.

Late last year, Ms. McKenna confronted a reporter from a right-wing Canadian news outlet, Rebel Media, over its repeated references to her as Climate Barbie. Earlier, a Conservative member of Parliament apologized for describing her that way on Twitter.

"I realized that when I spoke out in my small case of being called Climate Barbie - when I did it I felt better, but I also saw that so many other people stood up for me and they also felt empowered," Ms. McKenna said in an interview outside of a concert venue at the end of the march.

Although Ms. McKenna credited Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who regularly describes himself as a feminist, for encouraging women to enter politics, she said their numbers still must increase, and not just in Canada.

"I really believe that we wouldn't have had an ambitious Paris climate agreement if we didn't have strong women negotiators," she said. "That's one of the untold stories."

The actress and director Asia Argento, one of the first women to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, has been mostly vilified by Italian commentators. But the several hundred women who congregated in a downtown Rome piazza on Saturday morning gave her a rousing welcome.

"I'd like to see how many of you today acknowledge that you have put up with abuse, by raising your hands. And not just sexual. Abuse of power. Because we are women, because we don't have power," said Ms. Argento, as numerous hands timidly rose from the crowd.

The women chanted slogans in Italian and English in solidarity with a global sisterhood whose vision "is in sharp contrast with the Donalds of the world and other self-proclaimed geniuses," said one of the keynote speakers, Loretta Bondi, of Rome's Casa Internazionale delle Donne, or International Women's Center.

Women also gathered in other corners of the world, including Frankfurt, Germany; Kampala, Uganda; and Osaka, Japan, where a small group chanted "Time's up!" in English and Japanese.

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Women's March 2018: Protesters Take to the Streets for the Second Straight Year (Published 2018)

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A year after millions of people turned out for the Women's March and took to the streets en masse to protest President Trump's inauguration, demonstrators gathered on Saturday in cities across the United States, galvanized by their disdain for Mr. Trump and his administration's policies.

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Unsatisfied with the current state of the nation's political system - affordable healthcare, gun control, and climate change - , and tired of being overlooked, youth have now become increasingly more involved in politics and learning to find their voices through activism. Many have already registered to vote and have become increasingly proactive in both local and national scenes. This issue connects with Theme 1 as this new generation works to change the identity of the nation that has become of recent years through their newfound activism and emerge a better and reborn nation.

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Volunteers with Sunrise Movement registered voters at an event in Lancaster, Pa., this month. A surge of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 have registered to vote this year. Credit Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

LANCASTER, Pa. - On an overcast afternoon this month, a block party was in full swing, the hot dogs were going fast, and Chris Underhill, freshly graduated from high school, was savoring a new milestone: He had registered to vote for the first time.

Filling out the form offered by a political activist not much older than him took about three minutes. But its significance was not lost on Mr. Underhill, 18, who grew up in this city on the edge of Amish country, 75 miles west of Philadelphia. An aspiring actor who helped organize a local march following this year's deadly mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., Mr. Underhill said his everyday worries mirror those that fuel the anxieties of his generation, such as how to pay for college and losing access to health care.

And then there's the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

"This country's just gone off the walls since Trump got elected," he said, echoing the impressions of thousands of new Pennsylvania voters his age. "But now I have the power to vote and make it better, starting with Lancaster and then going bigger."

Weary of a political system that many young Americans see as rigged against their generation, and fired up to elect candidates who they believe support the issues they care about, a surge of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 have registered to vote this year, according to data from 39 states compiled by Targetsmart, a Democratic polling firm.

Pennsylvania is leading the groundswell, with registered voters 34 and younger now outnumbering those 65 and older, according to the latest statistics from the Pennsylvania State Department issued Aug 13. States like Arizona, New York, Florida and Virginia have also seen sharp increases.

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Chris Underhill, 18, registered to vote for the first time. "This country's just gone off the walls since Trump got elected," he said. "But now I have the power to vote and make it better." Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

Pennsylvania residents who are younger than 30 years old now make up nearly two-thirds of new voter registrations, up from less than half in the weeks before the February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, an attack that left 17 students and staff members dead and sparked a wave of nationwide student-led protests and demands for gun control.

Though Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania, capturing 12 of the 18 congressional districts and all 20 electoral votes, progressive organizers said they hope the rise in young registered voters will help elect Democrats in competitive midterm statewide and congressional races.
[Read: Trump Won Pennsylvania. Democrats Want the State (and His Voters) Back.]
Young Democrats outnumber their Republican counterparts by more than 400,000 statewide, but the solidy conservative Lancaster County counted about 3,600 more Republicans between the ages of 18 and 34 as registered to vote, according to the state's statistics.

The surge of youth registrations, said Jarret Smith, Pennsylvania's youth director for NextGen America, can be attributed to a network of grass-roots organizations and passionate activists who have spent the spring and summer knocking on doors, confronting candidates and building relationships with residents - not just in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but across the towns, smaller cities and college campuses where they said voters have long been ignored.

"The number one thing we hear is how angry young people are at Washington," said Mr. Smith, 27, whose liberal group is focused on registering and mobilizing voters in 11 states. "We've found that the top issues are affordable health care, gun control and climate change, and they don't feel they're being represented."

In Pennsylvania alone, Mr. Smith said, the group has registered about 13,000 young voters this year, out of 93,000 voters it has registered statewide since May 2016. It's aiming for 15,000 more as college students return to campus for the fall semester. The organization has traditionally targeted four-year college campuses, but it recently has expanded to community colleges and other areas with large youth populations, like the cities of Erie, Allentown and Reading, which is more than 63 percent Hispanic.

This summer, 18 volunteers with Sunrise Movement, an activist association composed of young people concerned about the environment, lived together in three houses across the state, registering voters and holding rallies. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

NextGen America strategizes with an array of groups in Pennsylvania, including local chapters of the Sunrise Movement, an activist association composed of young people concerned about the environment. In addition to campaigning to stop climate change and registering voters, the group said, Sunrise activists have convinced more than 800 political candidates nationwide to sign a pledge to reject funding from the fossil fuel industry.

In July, their cause made national headlines after Scott Wagner, a Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, called an 18-year old Sunrise member "young and naïve" for asking whether his dismissal of climate change was connected to the $200,000 she said he has received from fossil fuel executives, lobbyists and political action committees.
[Read: A Politician Called Her 'Young and Naïve.' Now She's Striking Back.]
This summer, 18 Sunrise volunteers lived together in three houses across Pennsylvania, registering voters, holding rallies and telling as many people as they could about the $60 million the fossil fuel industry has spent since 2010 on lobbying efforts and political donations in the state. Pennsylvania is the only major gas-producing state that does not require oil and gas companies to pay a drilling tax, which could be worth around $100 million annually.

Sophia Zaia, 23, the group's regional leader, grew up in Austin, Tex., and remembers a drought that left her family without running water for weeks.

"Climate change was such a huge issue, but I never felt there was anything I could do about it," she said as she and a dozen other young activists prepared to sneak into the Philadelphia mayor's City Hall office in early August with a petition demanding that he reject fossil fuel money.

After graduating from Swarthmore College, where she was involved in a fossil fuel divestment campaign, Ms. Zaia said she felt compelled to find a job in climate activism.

Jeremy Ornstein, right, a member of Sunrise Movement, urged people in Philadelphia to register to vote. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

But building a movement takes patience.

"Sometimes I'm not in the mood to go out and talk to strangers," said Emma Walker, 20, a Sunrise volunteer from Jamaica, recalling the tediousness of voter registration. More challenging, she said, is hearing African-Americans and working-class people say their vote doesn't matter.

"The anger I have at the system really motivates me," she continued. "I keep reminding myself that we're part of this wave of youth activism that's going to change the course of American politics."

Not all of the youthful energy is coming from the left. Eager to capitalize on conservatives' support for Mr. Trump - the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state in nearly three decades - the 35 chapters of the Pennsylvania Young Republicans have reached about 250,000 voters this year through voter registration drives, knocking on doors and phone-banking, said Rick Loughery, the group's chairman.

C.J. Weigle, 23, is president of the York County Young Republicans, the second-largest chapter in the state. He said the group has signed up "a lot of independents and folks who've never registered before."

"My generation has had enough of the status quo, on both sides," he continued. "We see in Trump someone who presents a better option."

In Lancaster County, a solidly Republican area, a group called Lancaster Stands Up is trying to shift the political makeup. They have found a target in the congressional incumbent, Lloyd K. Smucker, a Republican who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has not held a town-hall meeting since he took office in January 2017.

From left, Deshawn Nesbitt, Jonathan Seth and Justin Buthdy walked home after registering to vote in Lancaster. "The only way things are going to change for us is if we make ourselves heard," Mr. Seth said. Credit Hilary Swift for The New York Times

"The Koch Bros own Lloyd $$$," declares a poster on a wall of the group's headquarters in Lancaster, where 30 percent of the residents live below the poverty line.

Founded shortly after the 2016 election, Lancaster Stands Up has grown to more than 800 members, many of whom have volunteered to register voters and canvas for Mr. Smucker's Democratic rival, Jess King, a nonprofit leader and Mennonite. The group includes Claudia Llewellyn, 29, an undocumented resident of Lancaster who fled gangs in Honduras and came to the United States as a child. As a "Dreamer" who is married to an American, her fate may be decided by the midterm elections, and she said the fear of deportation has driven her to register around 60 people so far.

"It's my duty," she said. "I can't vote, but I can help others make their voices count."

Lancaster Stands Up has made a concerted push to register voters in the city's poorer neighborhoods, where many of the residents are black, Hispanic and immigrants.

Jonathan Seth, 19, a charity worker whose parents immigrated from Cambodia and Pakistan, registered to vote at the early August block party, where music was blaring as children ran around and the smell of grilled hot dogs wafted in the air. Mr. Seth then convinced two of his young friends to register, too.

In interviews, the three men said they hoped their votes could help solve a raft of local problems facing their community, like low wages, underfunded schools and strained relationships with the police. In July, a viral video of a white Lancaster police officer using a Taser on a black man prompted outrage, particularly after the officer was not disciplined.

"The only way things are going to change for us," said Mr. Seth, "is if we make ourselves heard."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: They're Young. They Want Change. And Now They Can Vote.. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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They're Young and They Want Change. Now They're Ready to Vote for the First Time.

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LANCASTER, Pa. - On an overcast afternoon this month, a block party was in full swing, the hot dogs were going fast, and Chris Underhill, freshly graduated from high school, was savoring a new milestone: He had registered to vote for the first time.

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This issue is primarily focused around Theme Five, migration and settlement, as immigrants are making their way to the US and more to give themselves better lives. However, this article also touches on Theme Two, Politics and Power because the press and those against immigration are turning Mollie Tibbets' death into a reason to keep immigrants out. Much of today's topics can be bent to suit a party's needs, such as Mollie Tibbets' who was killed by an immigrant, giving Trump and others the "reason" to be even more against immigration in the US.

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Mollie Tibbetts's body was discovered this week in Iowa. Her death has become a focus for conservative politicians and media. Credit Credit Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Trump and congressional Republicans, who are eager to find an issue that can help minimize the losses they expect in the midterm elections, are leaning hard into crime, illegal immigration and public safety to paint a bleak picture of how the country would become less safe under a Democratic-controlled Congress.

This week, they sought to put a face with that picture. The news that a missing Iowa college student, Mollie Tibbetts, had been found dead, and that a man the authorities said was an undocumented immigrant was charged with her murder, was seized upon by Republicans, who had already been sounding dire warnings about spreading violence and insecure borders.

"A person came in from Mexico illegally and killed her," said Mr. Trump, speaking about Ms. Tibbetts in a video he posted to Twitter. "We need the wall, we need our immigration laws changed, we need our border laws changed."

Then, framing the matter as a choice between the two parties in the upcoming elections, he added, "We need Republicans to do it because the Democrats aren't going to do it."

In messages and ads directed at voters - especially women, who are most motivated by concerns over personal safety, polling shows - Republicans say that if the Democrats are victorious in November, violent crime and drugs will become greater scourges, the MS-13 gang will run rampant, and communities will unravel. Republicans point to the sudden popularity on the left of the "Abolish ICE" movement, which seeks to dismantle the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, as evidence of how Democrats would harm public safety.

Republicans say they believe they have an advantage over Democrats on the issue of immigration when it is presented as a matter of personal security. And, armed with party research that shows voters are far less likely to support candidates who have said they want to "abolish ICE," Republicans have begun hitting those Democrats with ads, using their own words.

An ad from the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC supporting House Republican candidates, features audio of Sharice Davids, a Democrat running for a Republican-held seat near Kansas City, saying she would support eliminating the agency. "Sharice Davids: Open borders, amnesty - a risk we can't take," the ad says.

"Democrats do not want to have an election on these things," said Pat Caddell, a veteran pollster who has worked for Republicans and Democrats and is now helping a group led by Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, that is trying to protect the Republican House majority. "On immigration, the Democratic Party has been pulled so far left. And that's the story of our politics this year: deserting the center."

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At a rally in West Virginia on Tuesday, President Trump called Mr. Rivera an "illegal alien" and the country's immigration laws "a disgrace." Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

On the surface, these efforts represent the latest flare-up in the intractable national debate over immigration policy. But the death of Ms. Tibbetts - police say the 20-year-old was killed by Cristhian Rivera, an immigrant farmworker, who stuffed her in the trunk of a car and then dumped her body in a field - has exposed a deeper cultural and political divide.

The din of outrage coming from all sides - on the left, accusations of callous exploitation and fearmongering; on the right, criticisms that political correctness is trumping public safety - underlines the growing disparity between those who largely trust Mr. Trump's diagnoses of the country's problems and believe he and Republicans should be given more time to fix them, and those who are disgusted with his leadership and want to throw him and his party out of power.

"She was killed by a person who is exactly what Trump has been warning about," Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said on Fox News, bringing to mind Mr. Trump's first speech as a presidential candidate in 2015, in which he blamed Mexico for sending criminals and rapists across the southern border. "The left has to bear the burden of being the party that is tolerating Americans being killed by people who are here illegally," he added.

Senator Tom Cotton, the Arkansas Republican who has been one of the president's biggest defenders on issues of immigration, tweeted, "Mollie would be alive if our government had taken immigration enforcement seriously years ago."

The news of the break in the Tibbetts case on Monday was a tragic ending to her disappearance a month ago. But the timing, as far as Mr. Trump and his allies were concerned, could not have been better. Word that an immigrant had been charged in her death came the same afternoon that Mr. Trump's longtime lawyer and fixer implicated him in a scheme to pay off alleged paramours and his former campaign manager was found guilty of eight counts of financial fraud.

The stories, and the different ways they were covered, played to the themes that Mr. Trump returns to frequently: illegal immigration and the crime and economic devastation he says it wreaks; a corrupted, one-sided justice system that he says punishes him and his allies but no one else; and a political system controlled by elites in both parties who he believes never accepted his victory.

Fox News set the tone for how prominently the Tibbetts story would feature in the media universe the president and his supporters follow most closely. As other networks covered the president's growing legal exposure, Fox alone broke in with news of Ms. Tibbetts's death. Its coverage of her disappearance, and of the discovery of her body, has been exhaustive, with correspondents on the scene in Iowa featuring in multiple segments every hour. On Wednesday night, the host who was filling in for Laura Ingraham opened the program by boasting, "Fox News is the only network fully covering the case."

That most other major news outlets paid the story comparatively little attention only gave Mr. Trump more ammunition to make his case that the media cannot be trusted.

Chris Buskirk, a conservative writer and radio host, summed up the attitude of many of Mr. Trump's defenders. "See, the mainstream media is at it again," he said. "In fact, let's do our fourth hour with Michael Avenatti," he added, joking about the frequency with which Mr. Avenatti, a frequent critic of the president, appears on cable news shows.

The immigration status of Cristhian Rivera, who was charged with killing Ms. Tibbetts, has been seized on by Republicans pushing for stricter laws. Credit Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

The authorities have said that Mr. Rivera, the man charged in Ms. Tibbetts's death, was in the United States illegally. His lawyer has disputed that claim. Most social scientists who have looked at crime among immigrants have concluded that noncitizens are less likely to engage in criminal activity. A recent study by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, for example, found that in Texas, conviction and arrest rates for undocumented immigrants were lower than those for native-born Americans.

That has not stopped Mr. Trump, his White House or its supporters from suggesting otherwise. The administration regularly sends out emails to journalists with stories of immigrant crime, including one this week about a killing in Minnesota with the subject line, "Authorities: Immigrant in U.S. illegally killed Shakopee woman, slashed own throat."

Violent crimes by immigrants have become staples in conservative media, and Breitbart News and Fox News often lead the way. In February, for instance, after a young child was killed in North Carolina when an impaired driver hit the ambulance that was carrying him and his mother, Fox News and other right-wing outlets seized on reports that the man was from El Salvador and was thought to be in the country illegally. Fox News was similarly abuzz earlier this month after a convicted rapist pleaded guilty to re-entering the country illegally.

Mr. Trump himself often uses these types of violent crimes to resurface his positions on immigration. Last year, after a woman was killed in Los Angeles by a drunken driver who officials said was an illegal immigrant, the woman's fiancé said that Mr. Trump had called him to offer condolences and to reiterate his promise to secure the border.

And even before he was elected, Mr. Trump dedicated some of his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to the story of Sarah Root, 21, who had been killed in Nebraska by a Honduran immigrant who was driving drunk.

Then there is the case of Kathryn Steinle, whose killing on a San Francisco pier in 2015 was taken up by conservatives as a symbol of what was wrong with the country's immigration laws. Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump had invoked her name, using her death to justify his hard-line immigration policies. When the suspect, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges late last year, Mr. Trump called the verdict "disgraceful" and "a complete travesty of justice," promptly renewing his call to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

Some members of Ms. Tibbetts's family have objected to the swift politicization of her death. "I don't want Mollie's memory to get lost amongst politics," an aunt, Billie Jo Calderwood, told CNN. Samantha Lucas, a second cousin who told CNN that she did not know Ms. Tibbetts well, said she believed Ms. Tibbetts "would not want this to be used as fuel against undocumented immigrants."

The details that have trickled out about Ms. Tibbetts's life reveal only a glimpse of who she was: a cross-country runner who sat on the homecoming court, had an infectious smile and, recalled her brother, could be "a little clumsy."

The circumstances of her disappearance and death, however, are now well known.

Sydney Ember contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Lament Quickly Turns Into Politics In Wake of Young Woman's Death. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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How Politics Took Over the Killing of Mollie Tibbetts

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WASHINGTON - President Trump and congressional Republicans, who are eager to find an issue that can help minimize the losses they expect in the midterm elections, are leaning hard into crime, illegal immigration and public safety to paint a bleak picture of how the country would become less safe under a Democratic-controlled Congress.

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It is only recently that more and more women are being vocal about the massive oppression or harassment they have faced. Trump's election process concluded with a message from people across the world who advocated for women's rights through the Women's March which sparked the increase of feminist involvement and. These movements connect to Theme 2 because they are an example of how activist groups are continually working for social change.

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After a turbulent year fending off efforts to diminish our power and silence our voices, women are harnessing their outrage, writes Marianne Schnall--newly energized, politically engaged and more resolute than ever. In the new year, women will demand real change.

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We regularly hear about sexual assault and harassment cases in the news, the perpetrators being everyone from regular citizens to celebrities and powerful figures we look up to. Recently, however, victims have made a platform for themselves to speak out and be heard– the #MeToo movement, which has made very clear the severity and regularity of sexual assault. This relates to Theme 3, which expresses how popular movements and activism play into our justice and belief systems. Sexual assault/abuse/harrassment have always been "taboo topics", but being forced to suppress the offender's crime only enforces the idea that one can get away with such an act.

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mario batali sued by woman who claims he groped her - cnn

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Mario Batali sued by woman who claims he groped her

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Mario Batali is being sued by a woman who claims the celebrity chef kissed and groped her at a Boston restaurant and bar last year, according to court documents obtained by CNN.

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The ACA is an act that was initiated during Obama's presidency with the goal of expanding access to health insurance. Currently, the ACA is being undermined by the republican party who cut the ACA budget by 90%, which limits the coverage given to those at and below the poverty line. This is linked to theme two, politics and power, because parties' beliefs in how the federal government should use their money can impact federal laws. These laws directly affect the social and economic life of many people in the nation.

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The Trump administration is proposing to restrict an innovation in the Affordable Care Act that was intended to improve Medicare and slow spending in the vast federal insurance system for older Americans. Health-care researchers have hailed the model's promise to improve quality and efficiency, but government data suggest it is not saving enough money.

The changes, announced Thursday by the administrator of the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, would significantly curtail Accountable Care Organizations. The ACOs can be teams of doctors, hospitals or other providers who become responsible for all the health-care needs of a specific group of patients.

Under the ACA, these teams have choices about their financial arrangements with the government. They can either collect bonuses if they provide better care at lower cost than the regular Medicare program, or they can collect greater amounts if they also are willing to accept the risk of owing money in case they end up overspending.

More than 80 percent of 561 teams in this Medicare Savings Program are using the bonus-only version, with more than 300,000 clinicians and 10 million patients taking part. Now, federal health officials want to limit such teams, saying federal data show that this version has ended up costing Medicare extra money.

Until now, ACOs have been allowed six years in which they can take part without assuming responsibility for potential losses. The proposed rule changes would limit that to two years.

"We believe the time has come to put accountability into the Accountable Care Organizations," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said Thursday in a conference call with journalists. She said it was "a shocking reality" that four-fifths of these teams have been unwilling to shoulder financial risk in the program so far.

Verma repeatedly dodged questions about how the change would influence the number of ACOs participating in Medicare.

But a 607-page proposal in the Federal Register predicts that 109 fewer such organizations would be part of Medicare within a decade. And according to CMS figures, nearly 300 ACOs have already been in the bonus-only version of the program for two or more years - so would have to switch or drop out after a six-month grace period next year that CMS envisions.

Among some health-care researchers, this version of managed care, run by physicians or hospitals instead of insurers, have been held out as a bright light for improving both the quality and efficiency of the United States' notoriously expensive health-care system. The government conducted early experiments before the ACA was passed in 2010, with mixed results.

In 2012, an expansion of Medicare ACOs became one of the first broad changes to the delivery of care to flow from the sprawling - and politically polarizing - law.

In an interview Thursday, Donald M. Berwick, who led CMS during part of the Obama administration, said, "ACOs are a really important component of a fleet of major experiments this country is doing to shift" the payment of medical services from how much is delivered to the value of the care. But he added, "it's a fragile experiment" and that changes that lead to "a chilling of interest" in teams participating "may be the wrong direction."

Clif Gaus, president of the National Association of ACOs, said the proposal "is really upending . . . a program that is showing savings and huge quality improvements." Gaus said that CMS's forecast significantly understates how many would drop out, saying that a recent survey of its members showed that 70 percent would leave Medicare.

"That's the disaster," he said.

Under current rules, ACOs tell patients at the end of a year that their primary-care doctor is part of such a team. Verma said that the new rules also would require patients to be sent written notices, but not before choosing a physician.
Read more Trump administration widens availability of skimpy, short-term health plans Administration slashes grants to help Americans get Affordable Care Act coverage States act on their own to fill holes Washington is knocking in Affordable Care Act

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Trump administration proposes further dismantling of Affordable Care Act through Medicare

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The Trump administration is proposing to restrict an innovation in the Affordable Care Act that was intended to improve Medicare and slow spending in the vast federal insurance system for older Americans. Health-care researchers have hailed the model's promise to improve quality and efficiency, but government data suggest it is not saving enough money.

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Theme Four, Culture and Society, states that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression shaped the United States. A woman's choice to have an abortion is a controversial social issue plaguing the country as a result of religious and moral beliefs. Christians believe that all lives are sacred and that life begins at conception; therefore, abortions should not be prohibited. This religious view influences the stance taken on this issue and consequently adds to the social dilemma of the morality of abortions.

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The following Sunday Forum is in response to "Trusting women to make abortion decisions is a Christian norm" (July 28) on the idea that Christianity should expand its tolerance of abortions past particular circumstances.
'Right to life'

Missing in the author's rationale is any consideration for the rights of the unborn child, and also missing is responsibility for the act that, in nature's way, lead to the child's conception. There is no religious justification to have an abortion as a matter of convenience.

The right to life of the unborn baby is conveniently ignored. "Abundant life" is only available to the parents in the author's view. She makes no attempt to define when the unborn child becomes entitled to "abundant life" as found in Jesus' teachings.

A professor of religious studies, with all the knowledge that implies, should not succumb to cherry picking Bible verses to prove a preference. Certainly the professor corps is more learned and disciplined that.

Carlton Betts

Cape Carteret

'Opposed'

A fetus (hereinafter, the unborn person) has a heartbeat at around six weeks after conception, and a heartbeat is an indication of life. The unborn person has a developing nervous system and the sense of touch by the eighth week after conception, so the unborn person could probably feel pain.

The Roman Catholic Church does not prohibit abortion in all circumstances although their exception is much narrower . To put it simply, there is an exception for abortions done for the express purpose of saving the mother's life (as in removing a cancerous womb), so long as the primary purpose is not to end the unborn person's life.

Even in the circumstance of saving the life of the mother (not "life or health" as this may be too broad an exception), an unborn life is being terminated.

The unborn do not have many people speaking for them. My faith, which states life begins at conception, is why I, a Catholic man, am opposed to the practice of abortion. Although opposed to the practice of abortion, I do not judge the people who have abortions as Jesus instructed us not to judge.

I cannot speak to the circumstances which would cause a woman to decide to have an abortion, and people need to be treated with compassion, but regardless of the circumstances, let us not lose sight of the fact that a life is being terminated.

'Choice'

I would like to comment on PRIM, the conditions which many Christians consider acceptable for abortion: Prenatal health, Rape, Incest, life of the Mother.

Unfortunately, these conditions are usually not clear-cut. For instance, a woman diagnosed with a cancerous condition in pregnancy with a 100 percent fatality rate if the pregnancy is continued would meet the PRIM conditions. What if the cancer had a 50 percent mortality rate? A 20 percent mortality rate in a woman with 3 young children?

These "messy" circumstances are much more likely to be the case. Those who accept some conditions as acceptable for abortion are pro-choice, they just want someone else other than the pregnant woman (the church, the government) to determine who can make that choice.

Those who oppose abortion without exception devalue the life of the woman. Abortion should be kept a safe, legal, private decision. Long-term, compassionate ways to reduce a woman's need to make such decisions can be achieved by supporting family services, contraception and medical research.

Cynthia Hampton

Henderson

Christian perspective

Peters asserts that abortion, within parameters, is consistent with Christian morality. I disagree with her argument.

A biblical/historical Christian perspective teaches the sanctity of human life and the value of people created in the image of God. This view of the person includes the person barely noted by Peters - the unborn child. For an unborn child, abundant life begins with a right to life, whether the child is "wanted" or not.

Peters claims that a woman should have a baby because she wants to be a mother. Thus, the litmus test for abortion rests on whether the child is wanted.

Conversely, a hallmark of biblical/historical Christianity is care for the "unwanted." Hospitals, adoption agencies and pregnancy centers were formed and exist with the purpose of enfleshing Jesus' words to care "for the least of these."

Christian principles focus on a right to life and a high view of persons, born and unborn.

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8/5 Sunday forum on abortion | News & Observer

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The following Sunday Forum is in response to "Trusting women to make abortion decisions is a Christian norm" (July 28) on the idea that Christianity should expand its tolerance of abortions past particular circumstances. Missing in the author's rationale is any consideration for the rights of the unborn child, and also missing is responsibility for the act that, in nature's way, lead to the child's conception.

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This is connected to theme 2 because it focuses on how there is a continued misuse of guns in America. The March for our Lives movement draws attention to our lack of dialogue surrounding the issue and the misconceptions that surround the usage of guns. In our society today, we see the constant debate over the legitimacy of the 2nd Amendment and its role in the future of our nation.

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jacksonville shooting adds to florida's string of gun attacks - cnn

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Florida grapples with another shooting, this time at a Jacksonville game tournament

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A lone armed man opens fire in Florida. Bullets fly, killing and injuring people.

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New policy actions under the Trump administration has created ambiguity regarding the status of Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants, separations of families, and widespread fear of deportation. This is connected to the theme of migration, as currently the occurrences of illegal immigration (driven by poverty and a desire for a better life) into the US has increased. This has caused Americans to reconsider the definition of an American citizen, who US laws protect, and the stigma surrounding illegal immigration and border control.

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To be a young professional and a "Dreamer" in this political climate, as I am, means not having the luxury of a five-year plan. Instead, an expiration date looms over all life decisions. Should I pursue certain career opportunities, or go home because I don't know how much time I'll have with my family? Can I commit to buying a car or a house if I don't know how long I will be here?

For those of us enrolled in DACA - the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that keeps immigrants brought to the U.S. as children from being targets for deportation - the ground no longer feels solid beneath our feet. Despite that, more than 95% of us have jobs or are in school. Half have purchased a vehicle and 12% bought a house. About 6% started a business. We trusted our lives and livelihoods to the government.

We did our part. Now it's time for Congress to do its part.

I recognize that Dreamers are not the only group the broken U.S. immigration system has failed. The Trump administration has sowed chaos in all immigrant communities. Congress meanwhile has largely stayed on the sidelines even though only it can enact lasting solutions to any or all of these problems.

Dreamers grew up in this country, and we believe in American values as much as anyone.

Dreamers have written, called, lobbied, protested and risked our safety to share our stories publicly and stay relevant on Capitol Hill. We have done this for ourselves, but also on behalf of immigrant groups even less protected than we are. Yet it does not seem to be enough to get our political representatives to fulfill their promises.

Since the rescission of DACA last September, there have been hundreds of votes in the House of Representatives, yet only two addressed the fate of Dreamers. Both bills - which included harmful cuts to legal immigration and offered no viable path to citizenship for Dreamers - failed overwhelmingly last month. The House Republican leadership put these bills forward aware of their shortcomings, yet refused to make any compromises or cooperate with their colleagues across the aisle. They now continue to refuse to accept their responsibility to legislate.

Polls show that 86% of Americans support a permanent legislative solution for Dreamers. So one has to question whether our elected officials are fulfilling their duty in a representative government. If the current Congress is unable to work together, I hope that 86% of Americans vote for candidates who are capable of passing immigration reform in November.

Dreamers have been on a roller coaster for 10 months. We have come close to a solution, and then some new political crisis diverts public attention. Falling out of the headlines also means falling off the congressional agenda. Despite countless promises from legislators, we are constantly put off.

There is plenty of legislative middle ground where a majority would agree on ways to secure the border, protect Dreamers and ensure that immigration continues to bring prosperity to this country. Dreamers - not just the 800,000 DACA recipients, but some 3 million or more immigrants brought here as children - are living from court case to court case. Our futures hang on whatever some judge or elected official says next. It is all consuming and exhausting.

Dreamers grew up in this country, and we believe in American values as much as anyone. Indeed, we often feel we have to prove ourselves worthy of the American Dream. We believe in hard work and have not taken the opportunities DACA has given us for granted. We believe in the rule of law, too. We had no choice in our immigration status and want to work toward a solution that will allow us to follow the law. We believe in democracy and the right that people have to engage in the legislative system to create change. Finally, we believe in America as a beacon of hope, where for centuries there has been room for immigrants to come and contribute to this nation's success.

It's time for Congress to show us that it stands for these values as well.

Sayra Lozano, a DACA recipient and immigration rights advocate, holds a master's in business administration from Southeastern University.

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Dreamers are still here and we're still waiting for a fix

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To be a young professional and a "Dreamer" in this political climate, as I am, means not having the luxury of a five-year plan. Instead, an expiration date looms over all life decisions. Should I pursue certain career opportunities, or go home because I don't know how much time I'll have with my family?

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This is connected to the fifth theme because it's the truth of immigration in our day and age. According to article, America is no longer a nation of immigrants and that speaks to the fact that opportunities have dried up for immigrants with recent political sentiments.

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"A nation of immigrants isn't a mission statement," he said, "it's a slogan."

"The biggest problem with our immigration system is that it lacks a clear national interest objective," he added.

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Is America a 'Nation of Immigrants'? Immigration Agency Says No

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"A nation of immigrants isn't a mission statement," he said, "it's a slogan." "The biggest problem with our immigration system is that it lacks a clear national interest objective," he added.