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Video on Cornelia Fine's other book about gender

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Video on Cornelia Fine's other book about gender

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Oakland California Victim in BUS BURNING FIRE

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Article about Juveniles tried as adults.

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Article about Juveniles tried as adults.

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Most juveniles tried as adults, and/or placed in adult facilities, are being denied education and subjected to various dangers, both of which can lead to permanent setbacks and high rates of recidivism.

The majority of states have already started passing reforms to make it more difficult to prosecute juveniles as adults, but there is a long way to go.

Juveniles in the adult system

Following the tough on crime era, the practice of trying youth as adults has become much more common in recent years. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of juveniles in adult jails went up by nearly 230 percent.

Around 250,000 youth are tried, sentenced or incarcerated as adults in the United States every year. On any given day, around 10,000 juveniles are housed in adult jails and prisons - 7,500 in jails and 2,700 in prisons, respectively.

Of the juveniles held in adult jails, most of them are awaiting trial, as 39 states permit or require that youth charged as adults be held in an adult jail before they are tried. Though as many as a half of them will not be convicted or will be sent back to the juvenile justice system, most will have spent at least one month in the adult jail, and one in five of them will have spent over six months there.

The juveniles held in adult prisons have been convicted as adults; the laws and standards of this practice vary wildly by state. The majority of youth prosecuted in adult court are charged with nonviolent offenses.

Federal law states that youth transferred from juvenile facilities to the adult system must be separated by sight and sound from adult inmates, but many states have either refused to comply with these laws (and forfeited federal grant money) or stated that they will comply only to stall on progress.

A lack of education

There are numerous federal and state laws granting all juveniles the right to education, which apply to youth in correctional facilities. However, many youth housed in adult facilities do not have access to any education. A 2005 survey of adult facilities found that 40 percent of the jails and prisons had no educational services at all.

Additionally, the Individuals with Disabilities Act requires that incarcerated youth with learning disabilities and other mental disorders be granted education that serves individual needs and prepares students for college, employment and independent living. Yet, that same survey found that only 11 percent of correctional facilities provided special education services and an even smaller 7 percent actually provided vocational training.

The other dangers

The issue of course goes beyond a denial of education and other much-needed rehabilitative services. Youth in the adult system are at extreme risk for sexual victimization, more than "any other group of incarcerated persons", according to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. And the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 asserted that children are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult prisons than in juvenile facilities, often within the first 48 hours of their incarceration.

Further, youth in the adult system are subject to mentally harmful practices and have less mental health services available to them than in the juvenile system. Many juveniles are placed in isolation, which can severely exacerbate or even cause mental disorders that have the potential to affect them for the rest of their lives. Tragically, youth housed in adult jails are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than those in juvenile facilities.

The ultimate consequences: Moral and financial

Youth sentenced as adults receive an adult criminal record, which restricts them from many employment and educational opportunities as well as financial aid. We know from numerous research reports that a lack of education and employment means higher chances of recidivism.

So, it makes sense that young people who go through the adult system are 34 percent more likely than those in the juvenile system to be re-arrested. Not only is this devastating for these young individuals, it also perpetuates a larger cycle of youth incarceration that is incredibly expensive to taxpayers as they must continue to foot the bill for recidivism.

Solutions: Keeping kids out of the adult system

There are notable success stories that suggest keeping kids out of the adult system can be extremely beneficial.

Since 2005, 29 states and Washington, D.C. have passed laws to make it more difficult to prosecute and sentence juveniles as adults, including raising the age required for adult prosecution and establishing alternatives to detention.

New York started implementing reforms in 2011, during a period of budget struggles and several investigations by the Justice Department into failing juvenile facilities. The new task force established a program to keep young offenders in local juvenile facilities as well as focus on their education, mental health and substance abuse issues. Since then, the number of detained youth has declined by 45 percent.

After Texas passed laws to keep kids in facilities closer to home as well as decrease prosecution for minor offenses by students in school (like disrupting class or possessing tobacco), they cut the number of children in adult court by 83 percent.

Takeaway

As juveniles continue to be tried and imprisoned as adults, we continue to see all of the repercussions. Not only are juveniles at extreme risk of sexual and other abuse, which is inarguably unacceptable, they also get denied counseling and educational services they desperately need.

Thus, the time they spend in these facilities can set them back educationally, mentally and emotionally. These setbacks are enhanced by the adult criminal record they receive, preventing them from important educational and employment opportunities in the future.

All of these consequences result in a disproportionate amount of youth in adult facilities ending up incarcerated again later in life, which derails their futures and bankrupts the system.

The cycle does not benefit anyone, and it is far past time to push for reform in all 50 states.
Have something to add to this story? Comment below or join the discussion on . Header image: Shutterstock
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Juveniles Tried As Adults: What Happens When Children Go to Prison - [FKD]

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Most juveniles tried as adults, and/or placed in adult facilities, are being denied education and subjected to various dangers, both of which can lead to permanent setbacks and high rates of recidivism. The majority of states have already started passing reforms to make it more difficult to prosecute juveniles as adults, but there is a long way to go.

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About gender identity, gender expression, gender and sexual orientation

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About gender identity, gender expression, gender and sexual orientation

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Three to Infinity, by Lonny Shavelson. Sasha and Nemo both appear in the full version.

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Documentary Films & Community Conversation FREE

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Are there only two genders? What does it mean to be gender fluid? Do you know someone who identifies as agender? Gender-queer? Cisgender? Transgender? What do these terms mean? The Appreciating Diversity Film Series has chosen a thought provoking and fascinating documentary on the topic of gender identity. Local Berkeley director Lonny Shavelson spotlights individuals and their loved ones, as they share their lives. "Three to Infinity: Beyond Two Genders" explores the world where gender is a spectrum of possibilities.

This is the first feature length documentary on the topic of genders outside the binary male/female choice. According to director Lonny Shavelson, "... There is a wealth of gender variations: effeminate men, masculine women, men sexually attracted to men, women to women, and some to both." In the past, "invariably individuals were forced to decide: male or female. And although some transpeople switched from one gender to the other, it was still: Two genders." Over time, Shavelson noticed that people who do not identify as male or female (non-binary gender) are becoming increasingly common.

The Appreciating Diversity Film Series chose this film because it challenges assumptions and offers opportunities to walk in another person's shoes. "New ideas bounced around my brain while seeing this film," commented member Ilene Wagner. "My mind was blown. I saw many things I hadn't realized before," added member Julie Chang. This film immerses viewers in a world where gender is more than two possibilities.

For example, Sasha F. was set on fire while sleeping on a public bus in San Francisco because he was wearing a skirt. Sasha said, "Some people have a file in their brain that says, 'gender, male or female.' I don't see that file." We also hear from the parents of gender fluid individuals as they come to understand their children's identities.

The film was voted the best feature documentary of "The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival", May 2015.

In Piedmont: Wednesday, September 30
Ellen Driscoll Playhouse 325 Highland Avenue, Piedmont, CA 94611 6:30 PM Free reception | 7 - 8:20 PM screening followed by discussion
In Oakland: Saturday, October 3
The New Parkway , 474 24 th Street near Telegraph, Oakland, CA 94612
3:00 pm

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Are there only two genders? What does it mean to be gender fluid? Do you know someone who identifies as agender? Gender-queer? Cisgender? Transgender? What do these terms mean? The Appreciating Diversity Film Series has chosen a thought provoking and fascinating documentary on the topic of gender identity.

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Here's What It's Like to Be Gender Queer

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Here's What It's Like to Be Gender Queer

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"When somebody forced me to pick a gender, I didn't know what to say. And that caused a great deal of tension in everyone else," said Aidan Key in the documentary "Three to Infinity: Beyond Two Genders."
What is Gender Queer?
The paucity of public awareness about the community of people who don't view themselves within the binary categorizations of male and female (hereafter primarily referred to as gender queer in this article) motivated journalist and filmmaker Lonny Shavelson to produce and direct "Three to Infinity." The film won the award for Best Feature Documentary at the 2015 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival and will air at San Francisco's DocFest in June and Vancouver's Queer Film Festival in August.

Shavelson chose to focus completely on the stories of the 11 individuals profiled in "Three to Infinity" rather than relying on the input of gender studies experts and psychologists. According to Shavelson, the entirety of the 84-minute film's expenses ran under $1,500.

In addition to living with a lack of public understanding, members of the gender queer community are often threatened by violence. "Violence is a part of my life, my lovers' lives. We have the scars and the missing teeth to prove it," said Char Crawford, one of the film's subjects. Another, Sasha Fleischman, was set on fire on an Oakland bus.
I spoke with Lonny Shavelson about the lack of awareness surrounding the gender spectrum (covered by ATTN: earlier this month) and the challenge of combating ingrained gender stereotypes. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. How would you present the idea of gender as spectrum to those who aren't familiar with the concept?
Number one it's in the title, which helps. As long as there was written and oral history, we have been divided into two groups, male and female-the idea is that once you open that concept up so that there are more genders than male and female, let's just say there might be three-you have to acknowledge that there must be infinite genders after that. There are so many possible varieties in the spectrum. That's where I came up with the title "Three to Infinity." Once you start with three, you go to infinity.

Another way to express it is that every individual, once you move away from that binary male and female concept, has the potential to have their own individual gender. It could be a little bit more male or a little bit more female. It could be "I have nothing to do with gender at all." And it could be "I incorporate various elements" or "I incorporate no elements, and I'm inventing something new." There's an entirely wide spectrum of gender, and then if you add in the concept of how gender relates to sexuality, you have an even wider spectrum. It's really infinite.
How did you decide to focus on this issue?
I decided to focus on this particular issue because there just wasn't enough information out there. What I found was that I kept meeting people who were saying they were gender queer or gender neutral, lots of different names, but all kind of implying the same general thing and I found that I just didn't know much about it. More surprisingly, all the editors I was working with at different places also hadn't heard much about it. I kept hearing more from the community of gender queer people that they're there, and they're growing, and that this [issue] is crucial to know about, but I found that the community of cis people [people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth], or even trans people in general, really didn't know what exactly gender queer meant.

So it seemed like there was a big gap in knowledge, and I was thinking about if I wanted to do a radio story, or write an article, or do a short film. It struck me as I looked into this issue that it got more and more intriguing and complex and rich, and that it really deserved its own film.
What would you say are the most common challenges faced by individuals who identify as neither female nor male?
I think right now the biggest challenge is knowledge. Many people who are gender queer say, "I'm really tired of having to teach people what gender queer means." The biggest gap at the moment is that a lot of people who are more open-minded are kind of stunned the first time they hear about it. A lot of people who are gender queer find they are constantly explaining what it means. I think that's a very significant challenge. Also, there are so many names for gender queer: agender, gender neutral, I could go on for about 50 or 60 names, which Facebook has done.

Language is in an obstacle in a couple of ways. One, there's no common name that says "this is what I am," so it's very confusing for people to keep hearing about all these different interpretations, and to understand what the difference between agender and gender neutral is. It's pretty subtle, but it's there. Pronouns are also an extremely difficult problem. It's hard for people to keep calling somebody "they" if they are an individual. It takes awhile to get used to saying they as a [singular] pronoun, or any other choice of pronoun. These are all technicalities-there are issues about pronouns, there are issues about names, there are issues about bathrooms, but in the end the major issue is lack of knowledge about a growing part of our population.
ATTN: has covered the fight for gender-neutral bathrooms-what other policy changes do you think are most imminent or necessary in relation to this community?
The fundamental policy change that's needed is to stop using gender where gender doesn't have to be known. I would venture that if you go to most websites and sign on, they invariably will ask what your gender is when it's A) none of their business and B) it should change nothing about what they know about you. We continue to focus on gender as such an important way of understanding somebody when it really offers very little information about the person. People can be one gender or the other, or an infinite number of genders, and it doesn't tell you a whole lot about what they're like as an individual.

We pay way too much attention to gender in this country, and it creates divisions, problems with prejudice and a lot of difficulty. If we would just let people be the gender that they want to be and not have it required on driver's licenses, every time you get onto an airplane, every time you apply for credit-everything you do, people are making you check a box about your gender, and there's really not much reason for that.
Would you say that transgender concerns and issues are different in any way than the concerns and issues of the gender queer population?
Technically, you have to say that somebody's who gender queer falls under the trans umbrella because the definition of trans is not that you have switched to another gender, from male to female or female to male. The definition of trans is that you are not feeling that the gender you were assigned at birth is your gender. That doesn't mean that you have to switch to the other gender, it means that you could switch to infinite numbers of other genders. I think in some ways there's a bit of a disservice in that definition because the great majority of people think of trans as the switch of genders from one to the other, and technically trans just means that you're not the gender you were told you were in the first place. I think gender queer and the rest should be separated from that [trans] umbrella, mainly for the reasons of public understanding.
You mentioned the importance of focusing less on gender. What other steps do you think our society needs to take to combat ingrained gender stereotypes?
I think this particular movement will move forward as the gay and lesbian movement moved forward: as more people came out, it became more public and more known. You begin to see that there's nothing special about your gay neighbor that deserves any prejudice or fear. As trans people are coming out, you're getting an understanding, and as you read about, hear about, and see and know more trans people, prejudice decreases. I think the same will be true of gender queer people as they really make their voices heard and are known more. There's no need for a massive policy shift; it's more of an awareness.
Do you view combating gender stereotypes even within the cis community, i.e. men are X and women are Y-do you think that's integral to this progress as well?
Sure. As I said earlier, what we need to do is pay much less attention to gender in general. When you apply for a bank loan, should the bank know if it's a male or female on the loan application? Right now it's there. Why do people want to know if you're male or female? Because there are stereotypes associated with it, and that's just got to go. The more that gender queer people teach us, the more we'll be aware of gender stereotypes for cis people, for gender queer people, for trans people, for anyone.

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Here's What It's Like to Be Gender Queer

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"When somebody forced me to pick a gender, I didn't know what to say. And that caused a great deal of tension in everyone else," said Aidan Key in the documentary "Three to Infinity: Beyond Two Genders." What is Gender Queer?

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1000 Blank White Cards is a party game played with cards in which the deck is created as part of the game. Though it has been played by adults in organized groups worldwide, 1000 Blank White Cards is also described as well-suited for children in Hoyle's Rules of Games.

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200 Women, a book and exhibition featuring two hundred 'real women,' with 'real stories' from different parts of the world, answering five fundamental questions.

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Some Information of gender neutral bathrooms

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Some Information of gender neutral bathrooms

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Over 60 million refugees worldwide. Less than 0.1% will get the chance at a new life. This is their story.

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The city of Clarkston has a celebration planned for July Fourth, complete with a community pool party, hot dogs on the grill and sparklers for the kids.

It sounds like a scene from thousands of small towns across the country, but the holiday has a particular poignancy for many of the 13,000 residents in the small Georgia city, 31.8 percent of whom were not born in the U.S.

The celebration will mark a joyous day for people like Maryam Ahmad Jan, 29, a single mother who escaped a dangerous situation in her native Afghanistan with her young son and daughter in February to settle in the town located just east of Atlanta.

The fear she felt getting off the plane with her children has been replaced by hope for a better future.

"Compared to the past, living in America is much different," Jan told TODAY through an interpreter. "I see my children. I see smiles on their faces. I see lots of changes in my daily life. I see them happy, and I'm extremely happy."

Clarkston has become what mayor Ted Terry calls the "Ellis Island of the South," a destination for international refugees that packs 40 nationalities speaking 60 languages into the town's 1.4 square miles.

Amid angry rhetoric about immigration policies in America, Terry, 35, believes Clarkston shines as an example of how a diverse group of people can live together and make it work.

"It really gives me a lot of hope in a future world because if ... we can find this pathway to show that you can have a peaceful, more prosperous world, then I think that we could really see that take hold in a lot of other parts of America and it will be something that we are proud that we were part of," Terry told TODAY.

A stroll through the pedestrian-friendly town takes visitors past mosques, Buddhist temples, Christian churches and restaurants like the Kathmandu Kitchen & Grill and an Ethiopan café.

"These are individuals and families, just like me and you, that ... really have the same motivations, the same fears, the same pain, the same need to provide for their family as we do," Paedia Mixon, CEO of nonprofit resettlement organization New American Pathways, told TODAY.

They are people who are fleeing genocide or war, people who have been tortured, imprisoned for their beliefs or skin color, or had family members killed - people like Jan, who couldn't talk specifically about her plight out of fear it could endanger family still living in Afghanistan.

"We have passed through a lot of difficulties, me and my children, that we should not have," Jan told TODAY through interpreter Abdul Haikal. "And I want to put myself in any kind of situation to support and take care of my children."

Jan's adjustment to America has been assisted by New American Pathways, which works with the U.S. government to facilitate housing, employment, English lessons and more for recently arrived refugees.

Refugees are given six months of government assistance by resettlement programs, but New American Pathways aims to help them beyond that time frame to help them find success going forward. A skilled weaver, Jan has already found work as she aims to adjust to her family's new life in Clarkston.

"Maryam has been an inspiration to me," said Mary Martha Myette, a Clarkston resident who is co-sponsoring Jan and her family through New American Pathways.

"She is a woman who has quiet grace. She is very strong, she's hardworking, she's an amazing person. We consider each other as family."

Jan is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Haikal, who came to Clarkston with his wife and son from Afghanistan on a special immigrant visa in 2012. He was working with U.S. military in Afghanistan and had to flee due to a security situation.

Haikal recently became a U.S. citizen and works with New American Pathways to help pave the way for those who have come to Clarkston after him.

"America is the land of opportunity, a country that knows the worth of being a human, that knows the rights of being a human," he said. "I will be able to take care of my family in America."

A Changing City

Clarkston grew as a stop on the Georgia Railroad in the late 1800s, and had a majority white population until many began leaving for the suburbs in the 1970s.

The city started to become a refugee destination in the 1980s, when people fleeing from Vietnam and other repressive Southeast Asian countries began arriving.

"A lot of leaders and fearmongers from that time were saying, 'We can't take Vietnamese refugees because the communists could infiltrate the ranks and spread communism," Terry said. "It turned out to be one of best decisions we made, as many of our business leaders and officials are now first- or second-generation Americans from that time who bring a lot to the community."

"There's a lot of rhetoric out there that's dehumanizing," Mixon said. "The idea of we versus them, us versus them, is a very antiquated idea. I think we are all cut from the same cloth. We all deserve dignity and to be treated with compassion."

In the past 25 years, Georgia has resettled 37,000 refugees - a majority of whom have come through Clarkston - with an average of about 2,500 to 3,500 each year, statewide. There are currently an estimated 23 million refugees and an unprecedented 65 million people dislocated from their homes in the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

However, the number of refugees entering the U.S. has dipped dramatically since last year. Executive orders by President Donald Trump put a cap on the total amount of refugees the country will accept, and banned anyone entering from seven countries - five with Muslim majorities.

Trump set the limit at 45,000 refugees for 2018, the lowest ceiling since presidents began setting the limit on refugee admissions in 1980. Georgia is expected to resettle about 1,000 refugees this year, according to Mixon.

Making It Work

Clarkston is in DeKalb County, a blue swath in a red state where Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, issued a 2015 executive order to ban Syrian refugees that he later rescinded.

Add in Georgia's troubled history with race, and Clarkston appears to be an unlikely place to regularly take in refugees. So how does the city make it work?

"The way people look at Southern culture, you could look at it and see why refugees wouldn't be welcome, but you could also look at it as ours is a culture of hospitality, ours is a culture of faith, and that's really been a big part of the refugee program," Mixon said.

Mixon has been working with refugees in Clarkston for 20 years and notes that relations between the existing community and refugees have had their rough patches. There has been much more coordination between refugee resettlement organizations and city government in recent years, which has helped reduce friction, Mixon said.

Terry also cites the town's small size and population density as factors that allow newly arrived refugees to acclimate successfully. Everything in the city is in walking distance, and public transportation is readily available for refugees who often work at factories an hour away.

"This is a great place to start off in America," Jan said. "It's diversified. There are people from all over the world. It's very accepting."

The city also offers affordable apartment housing, English classes, a variety of places of worship, and local businesses catering to refugee needs.

The new arrivals, who typically have already spent eight to 10 years in a refugee camp or dislocated from home, also usually have a skill that can help them find employment quickly. Eighty-nine percent of the refugees are self-sufficient within six months and not dependent on government aid, Terry said.

"We get people from places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo who have these amazing skill sets," Terry said. "They're some of the most resilient people in the world. They've been through hell and back, and they survived. They are also willing to do jobs that Americans won't do, so that they know their children will have opportunities."

The existing infrastructure of refugee and faith-based organizations is also crucial to the town's ability to absorb so many newcomers. Another important factor is a welcoming population that includes people like Myette, the woman co-sponsoring Jan's family.

"The fear that (Jan) had, although she was very well-composed, she was very afraid (at first),'' Myette said. "And then to see her after her first day at work, the smile on her face - the difference in the photographs is just amazing to see."

Clarkston was named one of Georgia's 50 safest cities with populations over 10,000 by the National Council for Home Safety and Security, which uses the most recent crime data from the FBI as well as population statistics and internal research.

There are still areas for improvement, as the poverty rate is 35.6 percent, nearly three times the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"Working with refugees isn't charity," Mixon said. "It's an investment in people who bring really important skills to America. I think one of the things that we don't think about is how important that resourcefulness and optimism has been in building this country and building our culture and making America thrive."

When the citizens of Clarkston gather for the July Fourth party on Wednesday, holding their sparklers and celebrating the quintessential American holiday, they won't be Bhutanese or Ethiopian or Sudanese. They will be Georgians celebrating a country that has given their lives hope.

"Let's be one nation, one America, living under one great flag," Haikal said.
Follow TODAY.com writer Scott Stump on Twitter.

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How this small town has welcomed thousands of refugees - and thrived

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The city of Clarkston has a celebration planned for July Fourth, complete with a community pool party, hot dogs on the grill and sparklers for the kids. It sounds like a scene from thousands of small towns across the country, but the holiday has a particular poignancy for many of the 13,000 residents in the small Georgia city, 31.8 percent of whom were not born in the U.S.

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12 important films about refugees | DW | 16.11.2017

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Ai Weiwei's documentary covers the global phenomenon of refugee flows, but many other films have previously tackled the issue as well.

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Coach of the Fugees

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Don't feel sorry for refugees -- believe in them | Luma Mufleh

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new video loaded: San Quentin's Giants

transcript

San Quentin's Giants

At one of California's most notorious prisons, baseball teams take the field.

SAN QUENTIN BASEBALL Version 26 - 10/23/14 Closeups of prisoners playing baseball. Chris Deragon (VO) There's two sounds that I love the most about baseball. It's that snap when you throw a ball and you, and you hit that person's glove perfect. And it's "pop"! Or, when you hit a baseball with a hard wood bat and it cracks. That crack of the bat is just a phenomenal sound. Anthony Sorrell (VO) Baseball is a game of patience. You fail more than you succeed. Anthony Sorrell playing on the field. Anthony Sorrell Come on two nine! Anthony Sorrell (VO) It's not a time to get down on yourself thinking about what you did last at-‐ bat. You have to think about what can I change, what can I fix? And you have to be patient. Just like life. And just like doing time. San Quentin Prison exteriors. San Quentin Prison interiors. Chris Deragon walking down corridor past cells, raking the diamond, and interview to camera. Chris Deragon (VO) While you're in prison, it's really difficult to find things that you can be proud of. I've caused a lot of hurt, I've caused a lot of pain, and I owe a debt. Eric was, Eric was murdered for nothing. LOWER THIRD Chris Deragon 3rd Baseman, San Quentin Giants Frankie Smith unrolling string on baseball diamond. Prisoner sweeping dugout. Frankie Smith interview to camera. Frankie Smith (VO) I'm here for second-‐degree murder of David Palmer, an altercation we had in 2002. Unfortunately, it took a man's life in the process of regaining mine. I feel bad about that and I always will. I look at prison as a, a growing experience for me as a man. LOWER THIRD Frankie Smith Inmate Skipper, San Quentin Giants B-‐roll of prison gates and security. Jose Sandoval (VO) It's scary at first because all the, you know, the, the things you hear about this prison and you've got your guard up at all time. LOWER THIRD Jose Sandoval Shortstop, San Quentin Giants Footage of prison cafeteria during lunch. Chris Deragon (VO) Prison is a segregated environment. You stick to your own. If I go against that, then there could be repercussions. I could get in trouble, I could get jumped on, I could get beat up. Frankie Smith (VO) You have to keep your ground, you have to draw that line. That's probably the hardest part. Prisoner putting up photos in his cell. Chris Deragon (VO) I was 32 years old, and I wanted to make changes. I no longer wanted to make my life about prison. B-‐roll of prison interiors and exteriors. Anthony Sorrell interview to camera. Prisoners prepping diamond for game. Anthony Sorrell (VO) Well, when I first got here at San Quentin, and I heard there was a team, I was happy. A bunch of guys, convicts, trying to change our lives for the better, trying to play as a team. Right away I wanted to try out. Team members walking out on the yard to the baseball diamond. LOWER THIRD Anthony Sorrell Centerfielder, San Quentin Giants John Windham interview to camera. John Windham (VO) When I think about baseball, I think about family, you know? Camaraderie. LOWER THIRD John Windham Catcher, San Quentin A's Players getting ready for game, warming up. Frankie Smith (VO) Baseball is American. Baseball is apple pie. Baseball is, uh, memories I really can't, I can't explain. Memories that I cherish. Anthony Sorrell (VO) When you have nine guys on a field and you're communicating, it's a great feeling! I mean, if it wasn't for sports, who knows what I'd be going through right now. Frankie Smith (VO) Baseball means a day that I can leave prison for two and a half hours, three hours. It means a day where my decisions make a difference. Frankie Smith in dugout taking notes. Anthony Sorrell to camera. Anthony Sorrell (VO) For me, when I'm on that field, I am not locked up. This is home field like no other. San Quentin Giants huddled up. Team 1-‐2-‐3-‐GIANTS! Slow Motion footage of baseball game San Quentin Giants vs. San Quentin A's. Frankie Smith (VO) Baseball is not gonna get you out of prison. Baseball is a way for you to learn and live in prison, maybe find camaraderie, and some diversity in your life so you can maybe change in other ways. John Windham to camera. Prison exterior. John Windham (VO) I've been incarcerated for twenty-‐five years. The baseball program to me it was a university, it was a place to learn and grow. A boy becoming a man. To me it's school. At school we play ball. Frankie Smith taking notes on clipboard. Opposing team members shaking hands and high fiving down the line. Frankie Smith tossing baseball. Frankie Smith talking to camera. Frankie Smith (VO) I think prison, like anything else, is what you make of it. You throw away color, you throw away whatever, whatever gangs you were in, or whatever your outside life was. You get out on this field, you're a team. Baseball is a game you gotta play it the same way no matter where you are. Frankie Smith looking into camera. Overhead pan of prison compound FADE OUT TO BLACK

Recent episodes in Op-Docs: Season 3

A collection of the third season from 2014. Op-Docs is the editorial department's channel for short opinion documentaries, produced by independent filmmakers.

A collection of the third season from 2014. Op-Docs is the editorial department's channel for short opinion documentaries, produced by independent filmmakers.

Show more videos from Op-Docs: Season 3

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new video loaded: San Quentin's Giants transcript At one of California's most notorious prisons, baseball teams take the field. SAN QUENTIN BASEBALL Version 26 - 10/23/14 Closeups of prisoners playing baseball. Chris Deragon (VO) There's two sounds that I love the most about baseball.

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Teary-Eyed Elon Musk On Not Giving Up, Even When Your Heroes Are Against You

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The primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government. They are some of the most-viewed and sought-out documents in the holdings of the National Archives.

Revolution and the New Nation

Expansion and Reform

Civil War and Reconstruction

The Development of the Industrial United States

The Emergence of Modern America

The Great Depression and World War II

Postwar United States

A note about the documents included on this page: These documents were originally selected for the project Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives, a national initiative on American history, civics, and service. They were identified to "help us think, talk and teach about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in our democracy...These documents reflect our diversity and our unity, our past and our future, and mostly our commitment as a nation to continue to strive to 'form a more perfect union.'" The original list included only documents created prior to 1965. In the future, this page will be updated with additional documents created after 1965. The original list also included several documents from the Library of Congress (Federalist Paper No. 10, Federalist Paper No. 51, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address) and the New York Public Library (George Washington's Farewell Address)."

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The primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government. They are some of the most-viewed and sought-out documents in the holdings of the National Archives.

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Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada - Wikipedia

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Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada , 305 U.S. 337 (1938), was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that states which provided a school to white students had to provide in-state education to blacks as well. States could satisfy this requirement by allowing blacks and whites to attend the same school or creating a second school for blacks.

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Article about visit to the world's largest camp in Dadaab, Kenya.

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Humans had dreamed of soaring like birds for centuries, but only since 1903 has science made it possible.

In 1917 -- just fourteen years after the Wright Brothers made their first historic powered flight -- the United States decided to establish the first civilian laboratory dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of flight. It was on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in Hampton, Va.

"Just prior to the first world war, Jerome Hunsaker was sent by President Wilson to look at aeronautics in Europe," said Ed Kilgore, a NASA employee from 1944-1982. "We had about 30 airplanes at that time. Russia, England, Germany had over 1,000. Hunsaker came back telling this sad story. On that basis Wilson signed an order that we should form an aeronautical laboratory within an overnight boat or train ride from Washington, D.C. Langley Field fit that criteria."

For most of the first half of its 90 years in existence the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory concentrated on aviation.

"No place has played a larger role in the history of American flight technology or flight technology in general than Langley Research Center," commented Tom Crouch, noted aviation historian at the Smithsonian Institution. "It's hard to think of an airliner in the air today that doesn't have Langley's signature on it. It's hard to think of a military airplane flying today that Langley wasn't involved with in one way or another."

Langley research established many of the basic building blocks of aeronautics, changed the shape of aircraft and helped allow jets to fly at supersonic speeds.

Then came 1958 and the dawn of the space race. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which had established Langley, became NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The newly named Langley Research Center added space exploration to its repertoire.

Langley started Project Mercury and the Space Task Group, which oversaw the burgeoning U.S. space program, and the original seven astronauts.

"They were on campus every day. Every day you saw them on the flight line. You saw them in the grocery store," said Ray Hook, a NASA employee from 1958-1994. " They were exciting guys. They were highly selected for their mental and physical capabilities."

Even after the Space Task Group moved to Houston Langley continued to use its decades of scientific know-how to help send Americans into space and eventually to the moon.

"What Langley gave to this group was a bunch of people who were expert in what they did and way ahead of their time," said Kilgore who helped pull together space activities at Langley.

Simulators designed and operated at Langley helped astronauts learn how to rendezvous and dock in space and land on the moon. Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was one of the dozens of astronauts who trained at Langley.

When the U.S. decided to develop a reusable spacecraft NASA turned once again to Langley. Researchers in Hampton put space shuttle designs through thousands of hours of wind tunnel testing.

To this day NASA Langley researchers carry on the legacy of their pioneering predecessors. Whether its testing airbags for space capsule landings, developing technologies to allow aircraft to fly at supersonic and hypersonic speeds or studying Earth's atmosphere to better understand global climate change ... NASA Langley remains on the leading edge as it has since 1917.

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Humans had dreamed of soaring like birds for centuries, but only since 1903 has science made it possible. In 1917 -- just fourteen years after the Wright Brothers made their first historic powered flight -- the United States decided to establish the first civilian laboratory dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of flight.

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Founded February 12, 1909, the NAACP is the nation's foremost, largest, and most widely recognized civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, leading grassroots campaigns for equal opportunity and conducting voter mobilization.
Founding group

In 1908, a deadly race riot rocked the city of Springfield, the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham Lincoln. Such eruptions of anti-black violence - particularly lynching - were horrifically commonplace, but the Springfield riot was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the NAACP. Appalled at this rampant violence, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard (both the descendants of famous abolitionists), William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth.

Echoing the focus of Du Bois' Niagara Movement for civil rights, which began in 1905, the NAACP's aimed to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, the equal protection of the law, and universal adult male suffrage, respectively. Accordingly, the NAACP's mission was and is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP seeks to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.

The NAACP established its national office in New York City in 1910 and named a board of directors as well as a president, Moorfield Storey, a white constitutional lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association. Other early members included Joel and Arthur Spingarn, Josephine Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Sophonisba Breckinridge, John Haynes Holmes, Mary McLeod Bethune, George Henry White, Charles Edward Russell, John Dewey, William Dean Howells, Lillian Wald, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard, and Walter Sachs. Despite a foundational commitment to multiracial membership, Du Bois was the only African American among the organization's original executives. He was made director of publications and research and in 1910 established the official journal of the NAACP, The Crisis.

The Crisis

The Crisis
W.E.B. Du Bois founded The Crisis magazine in 1910 as the premier crusading voice for civil rights. Originally subtitled, "A Record of the Darker Races," The Crisis was a groundbreaking outlet for discussing critical issues confronting the African American community and sharing the intellectual and artistic work of people of color. In its first decade, The Crisis focused on vital issues like lynching and World War I. From 1920-1921, Du Bois also published a children's edition of The Crisis, called The Brownies' Book, the first periodical exclusively for black youth in American history.

In time, The Crisis became a voice of the Harlem Renaissance, as Du Bois published works by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and other famous African American literary figures. In 1928, expanding the magazine's artistic reach, Du Bois founded Krigwa Players (CRIGWA: Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists) to foster theater production about, by, for, and near the African American community.

Now published quarterly, The Crisis remains the official publication of the NAACP and is the NAACP's articulate partner in the struggle for human rights for people of color. A respected journal of thought, opinion and analysis, The Crisis continues to explore past and present issues concerning race and its impact on educational, economic, political, social, moral, and ethical issues. In addition, each issue is highlighted with a special section, "The NAACP Today" reporting the news and events of the NAACP on a local and national level.

A Period of Growth

By 1913, with a strong emphasis on local organizing, the NAACP had established branch offices in such cities as Boston, MA, Baltimore, MD, Kansas City, MO, St. Louis, MO, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, MI. NAACP membership grew rapidly, from around 9,000 in 1917 to around 90,000 in 1919, with more than 300 local branches.

Joel Spingarn, a professor of literature and one of the NAACP founders formulated much of the strategy that fostered much of the organization's growth. He was elected board chairman of the NAACP in 1915 and served as president from 1929-1939. Writer and diplomat James Weldon Johnson became the Association's first black executive secretary in 1920, and Louis T. Wright, a surgeon, was named the first black board chairman in 1934.

A series of early court battles, including a victory against a discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by means of a grandfather clause ( Guinn v. United States, 1910), helped establish the NAACP's importance as a legal advocate. The fledgling organization also learned to harness the power of publicity through its 1915 battle against D. W. Griffith's inflammatory Birth of a Nation, a motion picture that perpetuated demeaning stereotypes of African Americans and glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

Among the Association's top priorities was eradicating lynching. Throughout its 30-year campaign, the NAACP waged legislative battles, gathered and published crucial statistics, organized mass protests, and produced artistic material all in the name of bringing an end to the violence. After early worries about its constitutionality, the NAACP strongly supported the federal Dyer Bill, which would have punished those who participated in or failed to prosecute lynch mobs. Though the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill, a Senate filibuster defeated it for good in 1922. Despite repeated opportunities in years to follow, such as the Costigan-Wagner Bill, Congress never passed any anti-lynching legislation. Many credit the NAACP report "Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1919" and the public debate that followed with drastically decreasing the incidence of lynching.

In 1930, Walter F. White succeeded Johnson as executive secretary. White was instrumental not only in his research on lynching (in part because, as a very fair-skinned African American, he had been able to infiltrate white groups), but also in his successful block of segregationist Judge John J. Parker's nomination by President Herbert Hoover to the U.S. Supreme Court.

White presided over the NAACP's most productive period of legal advocacy. In 1930 the association commissioned the Margold Report, which became the basis for the successful reversal of the separate-but-equal doctrine that had governed public facilities since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In 1935, White recruited Charles H. Houston as NAACP chief counsel. Houston was the Howard University law school dean whose strategy on school-segregation cases paved the way for his protégé Thurgood Marshall to prevail in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, the decision that overturned Plessy.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was disproportionately disastrous for African Americans, the NAACP began to focus on economic justice. After years of tension with white labor unions, the Association cooperated with the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations in an effort to win jobs for black Americans. White, a friend and adviser to First Lady - and NAACP national board member - Eleanor Roosevelt, met with her often in attempt to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to outlaw job discrimination in the armed forces, defense industries, and the agencies created by the New Deal.

Roosevelt ultimately agreed to open thousands of jobs to black workers when labor leader A. Philip Randolph, in collaboration with the NAACP, threatened a national March on Washington movement in 1941. President Roosevelt also set up a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to ensure compliance.

Throughout the 1940s, the NAACP saw enormous growth in membership, recording roughly 600,000 members by 1946. It continued to act as a legislative and legal advocate, pushing for a federal anti-lynching law and for an end to state-mandated segregation.

Civil Rights Era

By the 1950s the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by Marshall, secured the last of these goals through Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools. The NAACP's Washington, D.C., bureau, led by lobbyist Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., helped advance not only integration of the armed forces in 1948 but also passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Despite such dramatic courtroom and congressional victories, the implementation of civil rights was a slow, painful, and oft times violent process. The unsolved 1951 murder of Harry T. Moore, an NAACP field secretary in Florida whose home was bombed on Christmas night, and his wife was just one of many crimes of retribution against the NAACP and its staff and members. NAACP Mississippi field secretary Medgar Evers and his wife Myrlie also became high-profile targets for pro-segregationist violence and terrorism. In 1962, their home was firebombed and later Medgar was assassinated by a sniper in front of their residence. Violence also met black children attempting to enter previously segregated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and other southern cities.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s echoed the NAACP's goals, but leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, felt that direct action was needed to obtain them. Although the NAACP was criticized for working too rigidly within the system, prioritizing legislative and judicial solutions, the Association did provide legal representation and aid to members of other protest groups over a sustained period of time. The NAACP even posted bail for hundreds of Freedom Riders in the '60s who had traveled to Mississippi to register black voters and challenge Jim Crow policies.

Led by Roy Wilkins, who succeeded Walter White as secretary in 1955, the NAACP collaborated with A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and other national organizations to plan the historic 1963 March on Washington. The following year, the Association accomplished what seemed an insurmountable task: the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Assisting the NAACP throughout the years were many celebrities and well-known leaders, including Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte. As an NAACP director of branches, Ella Baker stressed the importance of young people and women in the organization by recruiting members, raising money, and organizing local campaigns. Daisy Bates served as an NAACP national board member, Arkansas state conference president and advisor to the Little Rock Nine. NAACP stalwart Kivie Kaplan, a businessman and philanthropist from Boston, served as president of the NAACP from 1966 until 1975, personally led nationwide NAACP Life Membership efforts, and fought to keep African Americans away from illegal drugs.

Close of First Century

As de facto racial segregation remained and job discrimination lingered and urban poverty and crime increased, NAACP advocacy and action remained critical for the African American community.

In 1977, Wilkins retired and was replaced by Benjamin L. Hooks - the first leader of the NAACP to be titled "executive director" instead of "executive secretary." During his fifteen year term, Dr. Hooks implemented many NAACP programs that continue today, such as Women in the NAACP and NAACP ACT-SO (Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) competitions. Additionally, his term included the Bakke case (1978), in which a California court outlawed several aspects of affirmative action.

In the 1990s, the NAACP struggled to find a leader who could replace the prolific Dr. Hooks. In 1993, Benjamin F. Chavis (now Chavis Muhammad) became executive director/CEO. In 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams (widow of Medgar Evers) became the third woman to chair the NAACP, a position she held until she was succeeded by Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond in 1998. In 1996, the National Board of Directors selected Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and head of the Congressional Black Caucus, to serve as president and CEO. In doing so, the board changed the name of the leadership position once more and eliminated the elected office of president.

The New Millennium

The NAACP entered the 21 st century reinvigorated and, in 2000, launched a massive get-out-the-vote campaign. As a result, 1 million more African Americans cast their ballots in the 2000 presidential election than in 1996.

The NAACP's initiatives for the 21 st century can best be summarized by its six "Game Changers": economic sustainability, education, health, public safety and criminal justice, voting rights and political representation, and expanding youth and young adult engagement.

Recent leaders have included Bruce S. Gordon, Benjamin Todd Jealous, Dennis Courtland Hayes, and Cornell William Brooks. Presently, Derrick Johnson serves as President and CEO, and Leon W. Russell serves as chairman of the National Board of Directors.

***

Yet the real story of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization lies in the hearts and minds of all those who refused to stand idly while race prejudice tarnished our nation. From bold investigations of mob brutality, protests of mass murders, segregation and discrimination, to testimony before congressional committees on the vicious tactics used to bar African Americans from the ballot box, it was the talent and tenacity of NAACP members that saved lives and made change.

While much of NAACP history is chronicled in books, articles, pamphlets, and magazines, the true movement lies in the faces of the multiracial, multigenerational army of ordinary men and women who united to awaken the consciousness of a people and a nation. With such a powerful membership base, all 2,200 chapters of the Association continue to persevere. Together, the NAACP will remain vigilant in its mission until the promise of America is made real for all Americans.

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NAACP | Nation's Premier Civil Rights Organization

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Founded February 12, 1909, the NAACP is the nation's foremost, largest, and most widely recognized civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, leading grassroots campaigns for equal opportunity and conducting voter mobilization.

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© Nikhil Gangavane/Dreamstime.com

The earliest known use of the swastika symbol-an equilateral cross with arms bent to the right at 90° angles-was discovered carved on a 15,000-year-old ivory figurine of a bird made from mammoth tusk. The ancient engraving is hypothesized to have been used for fertility and health purposes, the pattern similar to one that is found naturally occurring on the mammoth-an animal that has been regarded as a symbol of fertility.

From its earliest conception, the symbol is believed to have been positive and encouraging of life. The modern name for the icon, derived from the Sanskrit svastika, means "conducive to well-being." It has been used by cultures around the world for myriad different purposes throughout history: as a symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; as a stylized cross in Christianity; in ancient Asiatic culture as a pattern in art; in Greek currency; in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque architecture; and on Iron Age artifacts. While the symbol has a long history of having a positive connotation, it was forever corrupted by its use in one cultural context: Nazi Germany.

In 1920 Adolf Hitler adopted the swastika as a German national symbol and as the central element in the party flag of the National Socialist Party, or Nazi Party, which rose to power in Germany the following decade. By 1945, the symbol had become associated with World War II, military brutality, fascism, and genocide-spurred by Nazi Germany's attempted totalitarian conquest of Europe. The icon was chosen by the party to represent its goal of racial purification in Europe. Hitler and his Nazi Party believed that a line of pure Germanic ancestry originating in the Aryan race -a grouping used to describe Indo-European, Germanic, and Nordic peoples-was superior and that other, less-superior races should be ousted from Europe. Ancient Indian artifacts once owned by Aryan nomads were found to frequently feature the swastika, and the symbol was co-opted from its ambiguous historical context in the region to exert the dominance of so-called Aryan heritage.

Since World War II, the swastika has become stigmatized as a symbol of hatred and racial bias. It is used frequently by white-supremacy groups and modern iterations of the Nazi Party. Along with other symbolism employed by the party, the use of the icon has been outlawed in Germany.

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How the Symbolism of the Swastika Was Ruined

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The earliest known use of the swastika symbol-an equilateral cross with arms bent to the right at 90° angles-was discovered carved on a 15,000-year-old ivory figurine of a bird made from mammoth tusk.

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USA vs USSR Fight! The Cold War: Crash Course World History #39

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Air Travel and The Space Race: Crash Course History of Science #37

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The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow . Jim Crow Stories . Segregation in the U. S. Government | PBS

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and replaced them with whites. He also refused to appoint black ambassadors to Haiti and Santa Domingo, posts traditionally awarded to African Americans. Two of Wilson's cabinet ministers, Postmaster General Albert Burelson and Treasury Secretary William McAdoo, both Southerners, issued orders

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic? and is produced in partnership with National Geographic Society.

When President Donald Trump signed legislation renewing the federal marine debris program, he blamed Asia for fouling the world's oceans. He named Japan, China, and "many, many countries" for dumping plastic waste that floats over to the West Coast.

"And we're charged with removing it, which is a very unfair situation," he said.

What Trump didn't acknowledge is that plastic waste polluting the seas cannot be assigned entirely to Asia alone. East and West are inextricably connected by their plastic trash, as wealthy nations sell their recycled plastic scrap to Asia for the simple fact it's easier to ship it around the world than process it at home.

That convenience was cast in a new light last January, when China, the biggest importer, stopped buying most recycled waste. After 25 years as the world's salvage king, China refused to buy any recycled plastic scrap that wasn't 99.5 percent pure-a move that upended a $200 billion global recycling industry with profound consequences on both sides of the world. (Read more about that here.)

Bales of trash piled up in California, in the U.K., in Australia, and elsewhere, as exporting nations scoured the world for new buyers. Across Southeast Asia, recyclers operating in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia bought, but were quickly overwhelmed by, the sheer volume that China once easily absorbed.

By the time Trump called out Asia "as abusers" for "making our oceans their landfills," Malaysia was drowning in plastic scrap. Malaysia's environment minister did not miss the irony in the president's remarks.

"I hate seeing my country as the dumpsite for the developed world," said Yeo Bee Yin, whose full title is Minister for Energy, Technology, Science, Climate Change, and Environment. She declared that "no developing nation should be the dumping site for the developed world."

And in an interview with National Geographic, she added a scold to the United States: "You have to mind your waste in your own backyard. Especially the non-recyclables."

The accumulation of plastic in the oceans has worsened as two trends reveal a bleak picture of the future of waste. The planet's growing heap of trash in general is forecast by the World Bank to grow by 70 percent in 30 years. And, the astonishing growth of plastics production-half of the 7,800 million tons ever produced has been made since 2004, with 40 percent of it disposable-is outpacing almost all other manufactured materials as well as the ability of developing nations to deal with it. In other words, garbage is only going to get worse.

At his White House bill-signing ceremony, Trump did make a relevant point about Asia's own trash. In 2015, when the first global measurement of plastic waste revealed an average of 8.5 million tons flow offshore every year, China topped the list of 192 coastal countries as the largest polluter of plastics. Among the next 19 countries on a Top 20 list, 11 are in Asia.

Among rivers that carry the most plastics out to sea, compiled for a 2017 study published in Nature, 15 of the top 20 are in Asia. Six are in China. Asia has serious problems with plastic pollution. But shipping waste to Asia only makes it worse.

Imported plastic waste adds, on average, another 12 percent to the plastic waste China generates domestically every year, according to a study published in Science Advances last June. In 2016, that translated into 8.1 million additional tons on top of the 67 million tons of domestic trash created in China.

Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, a nonprofit based in Washington and Geneva, says China's closing the door to trash "exposes the myth that the United States is capable of dealing with its own plastics problem."

"The way we have been dealing with our waste problem is to export it," he says. "It makes our plastic problems invisible by shifting them. It also demonstrates that it is not simply an Asian problem."

How the recycling mess emerged

If the aluminum can is the world's most perfect recyclable container, plastic is the opposite. Aluminum can be recycled innumerable times to make new aluminum cans. Plastic can be recycled only a limited number of times, and is difficult to recycle. Each variety of plastic requires a different recycling process, and plastics are made from thousands of different formulas.

Even the seven most common types of plastic used in consumer manufacturing-stamped on the bottom with a number inside a triangle-are replete with inconsistent resin composition, color, transparency, weight, shape, and size that complicate and often rule out recycling. For example, a #1 soda bottle has different melt properties than a #1 lettuce container, making the lettuce container a contaminant for the soda bottle. Colored soda bottles cannot mix with clear soda bottles. Yogurt containers cannot mix with milk jugs, even though both are white. Filmy cling wrap can be recycled in theory, but is too often contaminated by food. The limitations are too many to count.

Sorting all that out is a huge chore. "That's where the economics go haywire," says Douglas Woodring, founder of the Hong Kong-based Ocean Recovery Alliance.

Wealthy nations can't even think about hand-sorting certain plastics, even though it is sometimes the only effective way to maintain purity as plastic is reprocessed. It's long been more economical for American recyclers to bale plastic scrap and ship to Asia, where labor is cheap and environmental standards present a lower hurdle to mount.

"I never thought plastic recycling would work," says Roland Geyer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of the study "Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made. " "There is a viable business model around metal, but plastics never has had that. It's too low-value, too contaminated, with too many different polymers mixed together. And you can only make it work with a really low cost of labor."

For a time, China, as the center of the global recycling trade, made it work. As it became the world's leading manufacturer of cheap clothing and other synthetic goods, its appetite for plastic feed stock grew. After shipping goods to the West Coast, China had empty ships to fill on the return trip and offered rock-bottom shipping prices to West Coast recycling companies to sell their plastic trash. The United States quickly became one of China's largest customers.

By 2016, half the world's plastic scrap intended for recycling was traded internationally. China has imported 45 percent of the world's total waste since 1992. (When Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 after 156 years as a British colony, is added in, China's share becomes 70 percent.)

Today, Recology, San Francisco's employee-owned recycling company, pays $300-to-$500 to ship a container of recycled plastic across the Pacific-a fraction of the $3,500-to-$4,000 price tag for transporting that same container across the United States to plastic processing plants that are mostly located in the South, according to Robert Reed, a company spokesman.

"A high level of uncertainty exists in the recycling markets today," Reed says. "No one has a crystal ball to see or predict what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year."

Steve Wong, chairman of a recycling firm in Hong Hong and a one-time big player in the Chinese recycling market, estimates that China's waste purchases this year amount to just one percent of the eight million tons it once bought every year.

In the meanwhile, the U.S. is among the countries on the hunt for other Asian buyers, as Asia remains its primary destination for its exported trash. Between January and June of this year, 81 percent of American trash exports were shipped to Asia, according to an analysis by Greenpeace Unearthed, an investigative journalism project in the U.K. funded by Greenpeace. To cite one example, American recyclers sold 101 tons of plastic waste in Thailand in the first six months of this year-a 1,985 percent increase over the 4,409 tons sold during the same period in 2017. Sales of trash to Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkey, and South Korea also showed sharp increases by June of this year.

Malaysia becomes ground zero

With China's door to plastic waste effectively closed, hundreds of small-operation Chinese plastics recyclers relocated to other Southeast Asian countries. They set up new factories, often illegally. They began buying imported plastic trash for reprocessing. In the first half of the year, imports of plastic trash increased by 56 percent in Indonesia, doubled in Vietnam, and rose in Thailand by 1,370 percent, according to an analysis of trade data by the Financial Times.

In Malaysia, Yeo watched in dismay as plastic waste made a massive detour across Southeast Asia, and overnight turned Malaysia into the world's largest importer of plastic trash. Between January and June, Malaysia received hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic scrap-215,000 from the United States,115,000 tons from Japan, 95,000 from the U.K., and 37,000 from Australia, according to figures provided to National Geographic by Yeo's office.

As Chinese recyclers relocated, their goal, described in Plastics Today, an industry newsletter, was to melt plastic scrap into pellets to sell to China, betting that the pellets cleaned up enough in the process to get past Chinese customs inspection. At China's border stations, however, things have not gone quite that smoothly. Inspectors have not only been on the lookout for contamination, but also for smuggled low-grade plastic waste hidden in pellet containers. As of June, China had begun 134 criminal investigations involving 254,000 tons of smuggled trash.

Meanwhile, as the renegade plants began melting scrap, their new hosts moved to shut them down. Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Indonesia imposed a slate of restrictions on imported non-recyclable plastic, including bans, inspections, freezes on new licenses, new taxes and fees, and raids on illegal operations.

In Malaysia, Yeo and two other ministers also shut down 30 factories that had been importing plastic waste illegally. Yeo says the government is taking steps to permanently ban non-recyclable plastics and allow imports of only high-value recycled plastic.

"At the height of my anger, I wanted to send it back to the country of origin," she says. "What I realized is there is no tracking. There is a gap between what the citizens know about their waste and what actually happens to their waste. The United States is the biggest exporter of plastic waste to Malaysia. I believe Americans must know what happened and take shared responsibility as global citizens."

Yeo has been on the job only a few months. She was appointed after national elections in May changed the ruling party for the first time in 61 years. Watching what she describes as the "mushrooming of illegal factories" in her country inspired her to push for more comprehensive reforms and turn Malaysia greener, with zero single-use plastics, by 2030.

The government is phasing out plastic shopping bags, starting with charging a fee on them. For a country of 32 million people, where the Malaysian Plastics Manufacturing Association estimates citizens use, on average, 300 plastic shopping bags a year, that's called a good start. Tesco Malaysia, a division of the U.K.'s supermarket chain, announced it would give discounts to customers who reuse shopping bags. Yeo also announced a ban on straws dispensed at restaurants in Malaysia's federal territories that takes effect in 2020.

"What we are envisioning is not only reducing our plastics usage, but transforming the plastics industry in Malaysia," Yeo says. "Is there something we can do to provide a solution to the world?"

If it seems unusual for the new government to be focused so ambitiously on plastic waste while facing other major challenges, including cleaning up a world-class financial scandal that drove the former government from power, Yeo says China's ban forced Malaysia's hand.

"It was a good wake-up call," she says. "What the China ban told the world is that we must rethink plastic use globally and we of this generation must solve the problem. By 2050, our world will have more than 10 billion people. Can you imagine how much plastics will have accumulated by then?"

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. This story is part ofPlanet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do toreduce your own single-use plastics, andtake your pledge.

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China's ban on trash imports shifts waste crisis to Southeast Asia

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This story is part of Planet or Plastic? and is produced in partnership with National Geographic Society. When President Donald Trump signed legislation renewing the federal marine debris program, he blamed Asia for fouling the world's oceans. He named Japan, China, and "many, many countries" for dumping plastic waste that floats over to the West Coast.

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Trail running was a key component to the full life Micah True lived

"The world would be a better place if we all lived more simply". - Micah True 2011

Photo by Luis Escobar
This article appeared in our July 2012 issue.
Living simply amid the complexities of the modern world was something that came easy for Micah True, the man who became known as Caballo Blanco, Spanish for "White Horse," in the 2009 bestseller Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall. A holdover hippie, True purposefully lived most of his life without much money or many material possessions.

But, as the world first learned from McDougall's almost larger-than-life portrayal of him, True lived a bountiful life full of rich experiences, both as a trail runner and as a selfless humanitarian who dedicated the last 15 years of his life to trying to help Mexico's indigenous Raramuri people-a.k.a. the Tarahumara Indians-of the Copper Canyon, where he had lived part-time since the mid-1990s.

True was an iconoclast, an individualist, often stubborn, sometimes obstinate, a bit goofy and, by choice, somewhat of a loner, too. He traveled light and moved freely through life, as he did on the trails, but his simple and sometimes primal messages made lasting impressions and connected people-both in life, and in death.

While the mystery remains about how True died, trail running on March 28 in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness, his legacy isn't in question. Those who knew True best-especially those who spent time with him in the Copper Canyon-say he lived his life by the spirit of Korima, the Raramuri word for sharing whatever you have and giving without any expectation of return.

"The thing about Korima is that it's a circle of sharing and it's just what comes from your heart, and Micah had a enormous heart," Maria Walton, True's girlfriend since 2009, said at a memorial service for True in Boulder. "He was just a simple man who had a simple vision that touched everyone with love."

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Michael Randall Hickman wasn't necessarily born to run when he came into this world on November 10, 1953, in Oakland, California, even if there would soon be plenty of signs he had both the body and mind to become a good athlete. What was more apparent early on is that he quickly became accustomed to living a nomadic life, largely because his father was a gunnery sergeant in the Marines and the family moved all over California before eventually settling near San Jose. The second oldest of four siblings, Michael took boxing lessons as a youngster, partially to fend off bullies that hounded him for being the outspoken new kid in so many schools.

Being a teenager in the late 1960s wasn't easy. It was a changing time in the United States, when the happy sheen of the 1950s dissolved into a decade painted by social revolution, growing economic disparity, racial tensions and the Vietnam War. It was against that backdrop that Hickman would enroll at Humboldt State and pursue eastern-philosophy and Native-American studies. To pay for school, Hickman, who sported long blonde hair throughout the 70s and 80s, began fighting for money in bars under the name Gypsy Cowboy.

His wayward path eventually led him to Los Angeles, where, among other things, he briefly worked as a stagehand for CBS while still trying to make it as a semi-pro boxer. While he was intrigued by the physical, mental and tactical challenges of boxing (and later kickboxing), he came to the realization many years later that he was probably too much of a thoughtful idealist to become a stone-cold killer in the ring. He had his share of success, though (his professional record wound up at 9-11, but some of those losses were bouts in which he was paid to take a fall, according to former Daily Camera sports reporter Neill Woelk, who wrote about Hickman as a fighter in the early 1980s). In 1980, he cashed in some of his earnings for a brief respite in Maui, where he hoped to find his purpose in life.

There, he met a running hippie named Smitty, who lived in a cave, and spent several hours a day trekking over wild trails along mountain ridges. In addition to this first foray into trail running, Hickman, then 26, ventured further into a transient, evanescent lifestyle, learning to live minimally, eating wild fruit and sleeping on the beach and in caves.

Hickman's time in Hawaii was curtailed when he met a woman named Melinda, a vacationing graduate student from Seattle, with whom he fell in love and followed to Boulder. That affair also turned out to be short-lived, though, when she left him for another man and moved back to Seattle.

"He kind of bounced around a bit before he landed in Boulder," says longtime friend and running companion Dan Bowers. "Even when he was here, he was never really tied down to this place. He had friends in Boulder-a lot of friends-but he was always kind of a lone wolf."

With the idea that he wanted to live the most righteous life possible, Bowers said, he eventually changed his name to Micah True-an idealistic moniker blended from the Old Testament prophet Micah and his canine companion True Dog. He continued his career as a pugilist, and in 1981 and 1982 won his first six fights in Denver, but as he approached 30, he was in search of something else.

Although Boulder had already made a name for itself as one of the country's top running towns, relatively few people were really running the growing trail network that covered the iconic local mountains of Mount Sanitas, Green Mountain and Bear Peak. Around the same time that his boxing career sidetracked briefly into kickboxing, True found that running those steep, unforgiving Boulder trails gave him a much greater level of strength and fitness than he had ever known, not to mention an untethered sense of freedom and a visceral connection to the natural world.

"Mountain runners are a different breed," True told the Boulder Daily Camera in June 1986. "They're less concerned with their times and more in touch with the mountains."

At the time, trail running was in its infancy. Although dozens of trail races were thriving-including the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, which officially became a foot race in 1977-most were small regional events that were completely off mainstream runners' radars.

True ran his first trail races in 1985 during the second season of a series known as the Colorado Mountain Race Circuit. He loved the unique challenge of racing on the trails, even if he wasn't very successful in what were relatively short-distance events. (That series of five- to 15-mile races is long gone, but several of the events-including Pikes Peak Ascent, Kendall Mountain Run and Vail Hill Climb-remain popular nearly three decades later.) "I was never that fast, but I found the longer I went the better I was," True recalled in a 2009 interview. "That's why I really liked the ultra events."

Then 31, True finished 167 th in the Pikes Peak Ascent in 3 hours 19 minutes, a modest competitive effort but one that piqued his interest for longer, more grueling races. He continued to build his aerobic base with multi-hour training runs-often solo-in the mountains.

"I'd go run for hours and never see anybody at all, and then I'd bump into Micah with this big smile on this face," says Diane Israel, who, along with True were among the first Boulder trail runners to make a name for themselves.

At that point, True was living partially off the grid in a small cabin near 9000 feet off of Magnolia Road between Boulder and Nederland while earning money from his one-man moving company. He didn't have many clothes, didn't make or spend much money and didn't possess half of the stuff that most 30-somethings have. Although he would often bump into some of the world-class marathoners training in Boulder, True eschewed the rising public interest in 10Ks, marathons and other road races.

As Mike Sandrock, a local running writer who used to train with some of those elite marathoners recalls, True quickly developed a reputation as a freethinking ultrarunner. One day while a group of runners that included Sandrock and Australian Rob de Castella passed True on a Boulder trail, True mentioned that he was two-thirds of the way through what would be a six-hour run.

"I remember 'Deke' saying, 'That's fantastic Micah, but that's why I'm glad I'm a marathoner," Sandrock says. "Even back then, Micah was doing his own thing, following his own path. That's what made him who he was."

Not surprisingly, True didn't have an interest in running the growing Bolder Boulder 10K race, but instead opted to run one of the first ultra-distance runs in the region, Wyoming's Rocky Mountain 50-Mile Run between Laramie and Cheyenne. His training and passion for trail running were paying off, as he won his ultra debut in May of 1986 in a little more than six hours.

"Mountain races are different because there are less runners and more open terrain," True said at the time. "I guess that's why I'd rather run 50 miles with 25 crazies than run a 10K with 20,000 people."

True eventually delved deeper into ultrarunning and placed 10th at the Leadville 100 in 1987, running 22 hours 33 minutes. He also did some mountain biking and cycling, but the primal act of running is what fueled his fire. At the time, he was typically running more than 170 miles per week, starting many mornings with a 25-miler at 4 a.m. and often doubling up with another 10-miler at lunchtime.

"I was fortunate to win my first ultra, and that kind of sent me on my way," True said in 2009. "I was kind of hooked on it, but I quickly found I liked the running part more than I liked the racing part. It's not that I didn't like racing, but it's more that I really enjoyed the long peaceful training runs a lot more."

In the town of Urique in the Copper Canyon, Mexico, True awaits the arrival of Jenn Shelton and Billy Barnett, after their misadventure, as told in the bestseller Born to Run. Photo by Luis Escobar.

True maintained his simple, nomadic life style, even though Boulder had already become much more of a yuppie enclave than the hippie outpost it had once been. (True laughed in 2011 about how he built his own adobe house in Mexico by paying local laborers to carry rocks from a creek bed, but could barely afford to pay rent in Boulder.) As such, True had a penchant for traveling, both near and far and always doing it on the cheap. That often meant driving deep into Mexico and Central America, where he would typically immerse himself into the local culture while running to his heart's content.

On one such trip to Guatemala in the late 1980s, he and Boulder friend Evan Ravitz spent time near the small highlands village of San Antonio Palopo, where, in three days, they racked up 75 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing on the volcanoes adjacent to Lake Atitlan.

"We'd circle Lake Atitlan, which Aldous Huxley called 'the most beautiful lake in the world,' Micah running, me on a mountain bike," Ravitz recalls. "He'd take off up the first steep five miles to the top of the giant caldera the lake sits in and then I'd pass him 3000 feet above the lake where it leveled out."

Ravitz believes he was the first one to tell True about the Copper Canyon and the Raramuri people. He had been visiting the region since 1984 and said True was fascinated by his stories.

Still sporting his flowing blonde locks, True connected with people wherever he went. He had a salt-of-the-earth demeanor that allowed him to appreciate the simple lives of less fortunate people. It was in Guatemala that True was first dubbed "Caballo Blanco" by a group of young girls he and Ravitz met at the lake.

After his early trail-racing successes, True became obsessed with training. That meant running copious amounts of miles, which led to injuries and then to burnout. By the late 1980s, he backed away from racing but was still an aerobic fiend, both as a long-distance trail runner and as a mountain biker.

However, after suffering a bad biking accident in 1993, he decided to "celebrate still being alive" that year by returning to run the Leadville 100.

At the 1992 race, a group of Tarahumara Indians had been brought to Leadville by Tucson-based wilderness guide Rick Fisher and his ultrarunner wife Kitty Williams. The story of those runners has long been part of trail running lore, as has the vilification of Fisher as a pushy promoter. Fisher and Williams started a campaign to use the tribe's long-distance running roots as a means to publicize their plight and help them buy food. The experiment went bust the first year, partially because the original group of Tarahumara runners Fisher recruited had trouble adapting to the American customs and the unique nuances of ultraunning. As a result, each of the five runners dropped out. (The Tarahumara runners would often shyly wait at aid stations to be offered food, and Fisher had tried to get them to wear shoes donated by a sponsor.)

In 1993 Fisher brought a new group of Tarahumara runners to Leadville with great fanfare and finally experienced the success he predicted a year earlier. Clad in his preferred footwear-homemade huarache sandals-Victoriano Churro, a 55-year-old Raramuri runner, passed True at the 60-mile mark and went on to win the race. True wound up a respectable 28 th, but more importantly, he became enthralled by the ancient Raramuri running culture.

In 2009, he recalled in an interview how he had been fascinated to know that these people had existed for years with running playing a significant role in their culture. He had been using running as his sustainable baseline of sorts for much of the 1980s and early 1990s by the time he went to Leadville that year. In many ways, his simple life was mirroring what the Raramuri had emulated for hundreds of years.

True was inspired anew to again run Leadville in 1994, but the increased popularity led to the race being sold out the week registration opened, a time when True happened to be on another one of his odysseys in Mexico and Guatemala. But later that spring, Fisher tracked down True and asked if he'd be a pacer for one of Fisher's five new runners that year. True jumped at the opportunity and paced Martimiano Cervantes to a third-place finish. At the front of the race, Juan Herrera ran with Ann Trason for most of the race, before taking the lead in the final 30 miles. He went on to win in a new record time of 17:40. (That mark would stand for 11 years until Matt Carpenter ran his blistering 15:42 effort; Trason's 18:06 remains as the women's record.)

True made the first of what would become an annual pilgrimage into the Copper Canyon later that year. The Raramuri people were known to run hundreds of miles over several days as a means of communication and persistence hunting, as well as various sporting activities.

"My Spanish was definitely limited, and so was Martimiano's, as he is a very traditional Raramuri who speaks the Raramuri language and very little Spanish, yet our communication, under the full moon and during our whole race journey had been very good," True wrote on his website about his experience pacing Cervantes in Leadville in 1994. "We understood each other completely. Sometimes, laughter speaks much more clearly than words."

True in his element - on a backcountry trail. Here, running near Santa Maria, California. Photo by Luis Escobar.

"It's a really good read. It's a nice book, really inspiring," True said in 2009 after reading Born to Run for the first time. "After the first 40 pages, I thought, 'What the hell is he talking about?' Chris drew readers in with this character that is supposed to be me, but he made me out to be some sort of legendary badass. When I called Chris on it, he said, 'I was told to write the book from the beginning to the end and these were the things I heard and were my first impression.'

"But to his credit, as the book went on, it really captured us all. It did take some liberties with our personal lives, and it was very controversial, but when you get a half-million dollar advance to write a book, you've sold out right away and you have to answer to people."

Although True had some differences with McDougall after Born to Run came out, they maintained a cordial relationship. While True became somewhat of a reluctant savior, his uncomplicated genuineness never wavered, nor did his dedication to the Raramuri way of life. He eschewed the fame that came his way, but he graciously accepted the opportunity to help the plight of Raramuri.

"He wasn't a guy who cared about publicity or having his name in the headlines. What he did for the Tarahumara people, he lived it," says David Weil, a Boulder massage therapist and longtime friend of True. "He was bi-cultural for sure. Whatever money he earned in Boulder, he spent or gave away down there."

In addition to the intrusion of the modern world, an extended drought, the ongoing Mexican drug war and a downturn in tourism in recent years has left the Raramuri in dire straits.

In 2003, True started the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon, because he wanted to find a way to help the impoverished Raramuri people help themselves. He supplied cash prizes and vouchers for bulk corn (at times out of his own pocket) and often turned down corporate donations to protect the Tarahumara from exploitation, though he also later helped convince the local government to match the prizes.

The race provided food and money, but True didn't want to just give them handouts to meet their material needs-he also wanted to show them that they were respected and honored by many other people and that they should be proud of their culture because that was not a lesson that they heard very often.

"And they responded," says Mike Miller, a Durango, Colorado, trail runner who ran the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon in 2009. "And Micah did the same for many of us. Us 'dispersers.' He gave us a name, called us Mas Locos, and when the world was at war he brought us together in peace at the bottom of a canyon in Mexico, because that's what dispersers do-they connect us. He taught us, like the Raramuri, that we are not alone, that there are others out there like us who have never really felt part of this modern world. He provided a venue where we could express all these innate qualities that we all share-strength, perseverance, peace, love, humility. And like the Raramuri, he instilled in us a sense of pride in who we are, and we went home changed people."

"We were both admirers of the indigenous, but he was able to help them far more than I," Ravitz says.

Although True was always surprised at the number of speaking engagements and media opportunities that came his way after the book was published, he spoke passionately about the race and sustainable agricultural projects he helped create for the Raramuri.

"I think he was proud of being included in the book the way he was, but he never really understood all of the attention he got from it," Walton says. "He was proud because it was bringing an awareness to the Raramuri and the beautiful spirit that they have."

The 10 th Copper Canyon race on March 4 was the largest yet, drawing more than 300 Raramuri runners, 160 Mexican nationals (including two-time New York City Marathon champion German Silva) as well as about 80 more people from around the world. True had a profound impact on just about everybody who experienced the unique cultural immersion of the race, an alliance of runners he long ago dubbed Club Mas Loco.

"My outlook on life started to change after that race," says Boulder resident Chris Labbe, who participated in the race in 2009 and later helped True create a non-profit to support the Raramuri people. "The people down there changed me. It wasn't just Micah, but the people Micah brought together. You just had to be humbled by the way he lived."

Not surprisingly, when news spread in late March that he had gone missing in a remote section of New Mexico's Gila National Forest, dozens of Mas Locos (including McDougall) came from far in wide to help the search efforts, many hopping on airplanes within hours of the news or driving through the night.

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On Friday, April 6, more than 100 runners showed up at Chautauqua Park in Boulder near the base of the iconic Flatirons to honor True with a trail run. Organized by a handful of Boulder runners who had logged countless hours with True on the dozen or so trails leading out of that park, the memorial was meant to be an organic event, not a pre-planned production. "We'll just show up and run," said longtime Boulder trail runner Buzz Burrell, one of the organizers. "That's what he was all about, and that's how he would have wanted it.

Sandrock reminded everyone to mind the trees during the run because, in Raramuri lore, the spirits of the dead go into the trees. With that, several groups of runners headed off in different directions for 60- to 90-minute trail runs. Along the way, runners set various items-pinecones, leaves, rocks, feathers-on tree branches as a way of honoring True.

By the time runners meandered back to the park, another 100 or so people had arrived, friends and acquaintances of True-some dating back 35 years-not to mention many admirers who had never met him.

As the sun began to set behind Green Mountain, the group gathered informally in a circle and over the next 90 minutes shared stories that brought smiles and tears and heartfelt laughter. A bag of pinole (corn powder, a Raramuri food staple) was passed around for people to sprinkle into the wind as they offered up private blessings.

Several people spoke about True's understanding of Korima, how he was always giving everything he had without ever wanting anything in return. Someone said True became the living embodiment of the idea of "giving 'til it hurts," noting that with True, it never hurt.

Renowned ultrarunner and Born to Run character Scott Jurek talked about True's conviction and integrity, how simply True lived, how he respected his elders and history and how he managed to keep a good perspective on life and running.

"Anyone who knew Micah, knew he kept life fun, kept running fun," Jurek said. "If you went for a run with Micah, you got a history lesson, a sociology lesson, an anthropology lesson, a biology lesson. He was always interested in the world around him and he would pass that on whenever you ran with him or sat down to talk to him. He's going to be missed, but his spirit will always be alive and well with us."

"What inspired me was the way he brought everyone together," said photographer Diana Molina, who documented the 2011 Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon. "The Rararmuri just loved him. He was part of their world and it's not an easy world to enter. That race and the amazing union he managed to bring together was something magical."

Despite his post- Born to Run fame, True always insisted that he was simply a common man who cared about those around him. He was a stubborn, street-wise survivor, often quite witty and seemingly completely footloose and carefree, and took life as seriously as it needed to be taken.

"I have a theory that to breathe is to live-and the more you breathe, like on a long mountain run, the more you live," True said in 1986. "That sounds cosmic, but it's really a simple statement: when you run up in beautiful country, breathing all that clean air, there's no better way to live."

Brian Metzler was the founding editor of Trail Runner and is the editor in chief of Competitor Magazine.
At press time, we learned that True's death was attributed to idiopathic cardiomyopathy, which results in an enlarged heart. A memorial fund has been set up at www. caballoblanco.org and a new non-profit foundation is being launched to continue the Copper Canyon Run. Another U.S.-based non-profit that supports the Raramuri people (set up by True and supported by members of Club Mas Loco) can be found at www. norawas.org.

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Farewell, Caballo Blanco | Trail Runner Magazine

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"The world would be a better place if we all lived more simply". - Micah True 2011 Photo by Luis Escobar This article appeared in our July 2012 issue. Living simply amid the complexities of the modern world was something that came easy for Micah True, the man who became known as Caballo Blanco, Spanish for "White Horse," in the 2009 bestseller Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall.

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Famous 10,000 hour rule discovered by Malcolm Gladwell.

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Famous 10,000 hour rule discovered by Malcolm Gladwell.

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Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers & The 10,000 Hours Rule - #MentorMeMalcolm

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ISRI provides education, advocacy, and compliance training while promoting public awareness of the role recycling plays in the U.S. economy, global trade, the environment and sustainable development.

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Americans are consuming more and more stuff. Now that other countries won't take our papers and plastics, they're ending up in the trash.

Robert Galbraith / Reuters

After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven't recycled appropriately.

But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.

For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China-tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper-magazines, office paper, junk mail-and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.

Most are choosing the latter. "We are doing our best to be environmentally responsible, but we can't afford it," said Judie Milner, the city manager of Franklin, New Hampshire. Since 2010, Franklin has offered curbside recycling and encouraged residents to put paper, metal, and plastic in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklin's residents live below the poverty line, and the city government didn't want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin is releasing toxins into the environment, but there's not much she can do. "Plastic is just not one of the things we have a market for," she said.

The same thing is happening across the country. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22 years, but recently suspended it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent, and then stopped offering recycling pickup as a service. "It almost feels illegal, to throw plastic bottles away," the town manager, Kyle O'Brien, told me.

Without a market for mixed paper, bales of the stuff started to pile up in Blaine County, Idaho; the county eventually stopped collecting it and took the 35 bales it had hoped to recycle to a landfill. The town of Fort Edward, New York, suspended its recycling program in July and admitted it had actually been taking recycling to an incinerator for months. Determined to hold out until the market turns around, the nonprofit Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful has collected 400,000 tons of plastic. But for now, it is piling the bales behind the facility where it collects plastic.

This end of recycling comes at a time when the United States is creating more waste than ever. In 2015, the most recent year for which national data are available, America generated 262.4 million tons of waste, up 4.5 percent from 2010 and 60 percent from 1985. That amounts to nearly five pounds per person a day. New York City collected 934 tons of metal, plastic, and glass a day from residents last year, a 33 percent increase from 2013.
Read: 'We are all accumulating mountains of things'
For a long time, Americans have had little incentive to consume less. It's inexpensive to buy products, and it's even cheaper to throw them away at the end of their short lives. But the costs of all this garbage are growing, especially now that bottles and papers that were once recycled are now ending up in the trash.

One of those costs is environmental: When organic waste sits in a landfill, it decomposes, emitting methane, which is bad for the climate-landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the country. Burning plastic may create some energy, but it also produces carbon emissions. And while many incineration facilities bill themselves as "waste to energy" plants, studies have found that they release more harmful chemicals, such as mercury and lead, into the air per unit of energy than do coal plants.

And as cities are now learning, the other cost is financial. The United States still has a fair amount of landfill space left, but it's getting expensive to ship waste hundreds of miles to those landfills. Some dumps are raising costs to deal with all this extra waste; according to one estimate, along the West Coast, landfill fees increased by $8 a ton from 2017 to 2018. Some of these costs are already being passed on to consumers, but most haven't-yet.

Americans are going to have to come to terms with a new reality: All those toothpaste tubes and shopping bags and water bottles that didn't exist 50 years ago need to go somewhere, and creating this much waste has a price we haven't had to pay so far. "We've had an ostrich-in-the-sand approach to the entire system," said Jeremy O'Brien, director of applied research at the Solid Waste Association of North America, a trade association. "We're producing a lot of waste ourselves, and we should take care of it ourselves."

As the trash piles up, American cities are scrambling to figure out what to do with everything they had previously sent to China. But few businesses want it domestically, for one very big reason: Despite all those advertising campaigns, Americans are terrible at recycling.

About 25 percent of what ends up in the blue bins is contaminated, according to the National Waste & Recycling Association. For decades, we've been throwing just about whatever we wanted-wire hangers and pizza boxes and ketchup bottles and yogurt containers-into the bin and sending it to China, where low-paid workers sorted through it and cleaned it up. That's no longer an option. And in the United States, at least, it rarely makes sense to employ people to sort through our recycling so that it can be made into new material, because virgin plastics and paper are still cheaper in comparison.

Even in San Francisco, often lauded for its environmentalism, waste-management companies struggle to keep recycling uncontaminated. I visited a state-of-the-art facility operated by San Francisco's recycling provider, Recology, where million-dollar machines separate aluminum from paper from plastic from garbage. But as the Recology spokesman Robert Reed walked me through the plant, he kept pointing out nonrecyclables gumming up the works. Workers wearing masks and helmets grabbed laundry baskets off a fast-moving conveyor belt of cardboard as some non-cardboard items escaped their gloved hands. Recology has to stop another machine twice a day so a technician can pry plastic bags from where they've clogged up the gear.

Cleaning up recycling means employing people to slowly go through materials, which is expensive. Jacob Greenberg, a commissioner in Blaine County, Idaho, told me that the county's mixed-paper recycling was about 90 percent clean. But its paper broker said the mixed paper needed to be 99 percent clean for anyone to buy it, and elected officials didn't want to hike fees to get there. "At what point do you feel like you're spending more money than what it takes for people to feel good about recycling?" he said.

Then there's the challenge of educating people about what can and can't be recycled, even as the number of items they touch on a daily basis grows. Americans tend to be "aspirational" about their recycling, tossing an item in the blue bin because it makes them feel less guilty about consuming it and throwing it away. Even in San Francisco, Reed kept pointing out items that aren't easily recyclable but that keep showing up at the Recology plant: soy-sauce packets and pizza boxes, candy-bar wrappers and dry-cleaner bags, the lids of to-go coffee cups and plastic take-out containers.

If we can somehow figure out how to better sort recycling, some U.S. markets for plastics and paper may emerge. But selling it domestically will still be harder than it would be in a place such as China, where a booming manufacturing sector has constant demand for materials. The viability of recycling varies tremendously by locale; San Francisco can recycle its glass back into bottles in six weeks, according to Recology, while many other cities are finding that glass is so heavy and breaks so easily that it is nearly impossible to truck it to a place that will recycle it. Akron, Ohio, is just one of many cities that have ended glass recycling since the China policy changes.

For now, it's still often cheaper for companies to manufacture using new materials than recycled ones. Michael Rohwer, a director at Business for Social Responsibility, works with companies that try to be more environmentally friendly. He told me that recycled plastic costs pennies more than new plastic, and those pennies add up when you're manufacturing millions of items. Items made of different types of plastic nearly always end up in the trash, because recyclers can't separate the plastics from one another-Reed equates it with trying to get the sugar and eggs out of a cake after you've baked it. But because companies don't bear the costs of disposal, they have no incentive to manufacture products out of material that will be easier to recycle.

The best way to fix recycling is probably persuading people to buy less stuff, which would also have the benefit of reducing some of the upstream waste created when products are made. But that's a hard sell in the United States, where consumer spending accounts for 68 percent of the GDP. The strong economy means more people have more spending money, too, and often the things they buy, such as new phones, and the places they shop, such as Amazon, are designed to sell them even more things. The average American spent 7 percent more on food and 8 percent more on personal-care products and services in 2017 than in 2016, according to government data.
Read: The Amazon selling machine
Some places are still trying to get people to buy less. The city of San Francisco, for instance, is trying to get residents to think of a fourth r beyond "reduce, reuse, and recycle"-"refuse." It wants people to be smarter about what they purchase, avoiding plastic bottles and straws and other disposable goods. But it's been tough in a place centered on acquiring the newest technology. "This is our big challenge: How do you take a culture like San Francisco and get people excited about less?" Debbie Raphael, the director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, told me. The city passed an ordinance that required that 10 percent of beverages sold be available in reusable containers, and it is trying to make reuse "hip" through an online campaign and dedicated website, Raphael said. San Francisco and other Bay Area cities have banned plastic bags and plastic straws, but that option isn't available in many other parts of the country, where recently passed state laws prevent cities from banning products.

But even in San Francisco, the most careful consumers still generate a lot of waste. Plastic clamshell containers are difficult to recycle because the material they're made of is so flimsy-but it's hard to find berries not sold in those containers, even at most farmers' markets. Go into a Best Buy or Target in San Francisco to buy headphones or a charger, and you'll still end up with plastic packaging to throw away. Amazon has tried to reduce waste by sending products in white and blue plastic envelopes, but when I visited the Recology plant, they littered the floor because they're very hard to recycle. Even at Recology, an employee-owned company that benefits when people recycle well, the hurdles to getting rid of plastics were evident. Reed chided me for eating my daily Chobani yogurt out of small, five-ounce containers rather than out of big, 32-ounce tubs, but I saw a five-ounce Yoplait container in a trash can of the control room of the Recology plant. While there, Reed handed me a pair of small orange earplugs meant to protect my ears from the noise of the plant. They were wrapped in a type of flimsy plastic that is nearly impossible to recycle. When I left the plant, I kept the earplugs and the plastic in my bag, not sure what to do with them. Eventually, I threw them in the trash.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Alana Semuels is a former staff writer at The Atlantic.

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Americans are consuming more and more stuff. Now that other countries won't take our papers and plastics, they're ending up in the trash. After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers.

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Journalist Adam Minter has written a fascinating account of the global rubbish and recycling industry. I recommended his book, Junkyard Planet, as one of my top 'development books' of 2013. Here is part 1 of an interview I am conducting with Adam via email, and below the text a couple of captioned images of the global junk industry taken from Adam's blog, Shanghai Scrap, with his permission.
PB: One of the things that particularly struck me in your book is just how global the recycling trade really is. Consumers, cheap labour, multi-millionaires, shipping costs, the rising middle class in developing countries, the cost of commodities, and the desire everywhere to make a profit - all affect and are affected by the industry. In a way it is a key example of the globalisation of the world economy. It's an industry that almost all of us are impacted by, but which most of us know very little about. Although your family was involved in the trade, were you also surprised by the scale and interconnectedness of it?
AM: The scrap industry that I grew up knowing in the Minnesota was largely a local business. That is, we bought scrap from factories within 100km from us, and we sold to factories (with a few exceptions) within 1000km of us. That started changing in the late 1980s, when Chinese traders began to show up at our scrap yard in search of items that none of our customers in North America wanted - things like electric motors, Christmas tree lights, and other items that are labor intensive to recycle. That was a big shift for me and my family. Suddenly, demand from overseas was starting to create a market for things (electric motors for example) that had been rusting in North Dakota farm fields for decades, in some cases.

Still, it's one thing to feel the market demand, and another thing to travel to China and see it. In 2002, I walked into my first Chinese scrap recycling business, a massive operation that employed 600 or so women sorting shredded American and European automobiles. The volumes measured in the thousands of tons per month. I couldn't believe it.

And yet it wasn't until 2008, and the global financial crisis, that I felt I truly appreciated the inter-connectedness of the trade. When Lehman collapsed, American demand for consumer goods collapsed, and then Chinese demand for raw materials to make those goods collapsed - and with it collapsed the global scrap markets. One pin, if you will, came out and the entire reason for recycling, as well as the entire global recycling economy, ground to a halt. I must admit, I didn't see that coming, but ever since I've had a profound appreciation for just how dependent the process of globalisation has become on scrap of all kinds.
'Late morning, October 29, 2002, I walked into a warehouse in Shanghai's Baoshan District and snapped this photo. I'd been to plenty of US scrapyards, but this was my first Chinese one. The workers were sorting bits of shredded US and EU automobiles; next door, furnaces were melting the sorted aluminum into new aluminum for export to Japanese car manufacturers.' 'This March 2013 image was taken in Mandoli, a small village roughly 90 minutes from Delhi by car. In it, two men are dipping circuit boards into an acid bath (contained in the various blue plastic barrels) for the purpose of extracting - in effect, dissolving - the copper from the fiberglass. Later, they'll use another chemical process to refine the copper out of the chemical soup they've created.'

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Interview: Adam Minter on the Junkyard Planet

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Journalist Adam Minter has written a fascinating account of the global rubbish and recycling industry. I recommended his book, Junkyard Planet, as one of my top 'development books' of 2013. Here is part 1 of an interview I am conducting with Adam via email, and below the text a couple of captioned images of the global junk industry taken from Adam's blog, Shanghai Scrap , with his permission.

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Who’s Really Making a Killing on Junkyard Planet? | Adam Minter | TEDxBeijingSalon

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Last year, China stopped accepting plastic waste from foreign countries and its thrown the world recycling sector into chaos. If you live in Germany, Italy, Australia or Brazil it's likely that some of your plastic waste has ended its life in China being recycled into a higher quality product for reuse.
RELATED: PLASTICS: GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD OR A THREAT TO THE EARTH?
But last year China said it was going to stop accepting almost all foreign waste in an effort to improve its own environment and air quality.

This move had major recycling centers in the country looking for a new home as well as the companies that ship the plastic waste scrambling to find alternatives. It was like an earthquake," Arnaud Brunet, director general of Brussels-based industry group The Bureau of International Recycling, told AFP.

"China was the biggest market for recyclables. It created a major shock in the global market."

New locations needed

Most major recyclers have looked to other locations in Southeast Asia to continue their businesses with many choosing Malaysia as their new home. Reports from the countries officials suggest plastic imports tripled from 2016 levels to 870,000 tonnes last year.

But that number could even be higher as any plants have reportedly been set up illegally without proper paperwork.

Plastic recycling is a toxic process that requires melting plastics of the same type down to form plastic pellets that can be then used to manufacture new products. Poorly maintained factors cause huge amounts of toxic fumes that can significantly lower local air quality.

Australia goes local

Locals in Malaysia also reported massive piles of plastic waste piling up outside factories as they struggled to meet the demand the ban in China imposed. Countries used to sending their waste offshore have also been trying to adapt to the changes.

Many countries like Australia face huge increases in costs if they process waste within their own territories and there are some reports that recyclable materials have been placed in a landfill to deal with the excess.

However, others have managed to respond to the changes and are successfully using local systems to recycle plastics.

"We moved quickly and looked to domestic markets," Adam Faulkner, chief executive of the Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority, told AFP.

"We've found that by supporting local manufacturers, we've been able to get back to pre-China ban prices," he added.

Less waste is the only answer

Greenpeace reports that imports of plastic waste to mainland China have dropped from 600,000 tonnes per month in 2016 to about 30,000 a month in 2018. Areas once famous for their recycling centers are now a ghost town.

Founder of environmental NGO China Zero Waste Alliance, Chen Liwen said on a recent visit to the southern town of Xingtan last year the only evidence of a once thriving recycling center was empty factories and job ads for experienced recycling personnel in Vietnam.

"The plastic recyclers were gone -- there were 'for rent' signs plastered on factory doors and even recruitment signs calling for experienced recyclers to move to Vietnam," she told AFP.

However, the ban from China has not halted waste but simply moved it sideways.

Thailand and Vietnam did experience spikes in recycling centers but have made moves to limit the amount of plastic waste being imported.

These imports are expected to head towards countries with less strict legislation like Turkey and Indonesia. Despite what seems a massive effort towards recycling, only nine percent of the world's plastic is recycled.

This means a lot of our everyday products are heading towards the landfill.

"The only solution to plastic pollution is producing less plastic," says Greenpeace campaigner Kate Lin.

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China Bans Foreign Plastic Sending Recycling Industry Into a Spin

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China has banned almost all imports on foreign plastic waste throwing the world recycling industry into chaos. Major recycling centers have relocated to other parts of Southeast Asia while countries like Australia are trying to deal with plastic recycling in house.

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Todd Messer, Claire Rojstaczer, and Steve Garber

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Jerome Kagan's research on high/low reactive children

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Jerome Kagan's research on high/low reactive children

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Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

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Temperament | Temperament | Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

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Introduction Although the term "temperament" does not have a consensual definition, most scientists would agree on the following sense meaning: A temperamental bias refers to distinctive patterns of feelings and behaviours that originate in the child's biology and appear early in development.1 Subject and Problems

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Christopher McDougall explores the mysteries of the human desire to run. How did running help early humans survive -- and what urges from our ancient ancestors spur us on today? McDougall tells the story of the marathoner with a heart of gold, the unlikely ultra-runner, and the hidden tribe in Mexico that runs to live.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/navigation/

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Run Free - The True Story of Caballo Blanco

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https://www.thelocal.dk/20180504/germans-surrender-denmark-marks-70th-anniversary-liberation

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Bill Burr Doesn't Believe The Steve Jobs Hype - CONAN on TBS

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The power of introverts | Susan Cain | TED

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Testimony of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz

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HOESS: Yes. In the summer of 1941 1 was summoned to Berlin to Reichsfáhrer SS Himmler to receive personal orders. He told me something to the effect--I do not remember the exact words--that the Fáffrer had given the order for a final solution of the Jewish question.

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Jim Lovell Interview