By Jessica Corbett/Common Dreams

A New York Times investigative report on President Donald Trump’s nearly two-year environmental record and how his industry-friendly policies are impacting communities nationwide “reminds us that the Trump soap opera has dire real-world consequences.”
The “must-read” report focuses on examples from California, North Dakota, Texas and West Virginia, with special attention paid to policy changes at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department – which have both seen Trump-appointed agency heads resign amid numerous ethics probes.
Acknowledging a previous Times analysis of the 78 environmental rules – including many implemented under former President Barack Obama – that the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress have worked to eliminate, the report details how the EPA, at the behest of industry lobbyists, quashed a ban on the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has “sickened substantial numbers of farmworkers” in rural California, where more than a third of U.S. produce is grown.

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Posted on December 28, 2018

By The Uptown People’s Law Center

A federal court has ordered the State of Illinois to address its “failure to . . . meet the constitutional requirements with respect to the mental health needs of” its approximately 12,000 prisoners with mental illness. This case reached a settlement agreement in 2016, but the Illinois Department of Corrections failed to live up to the agreement, and constitutional violations continued, according to the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Harold Hirshman, senior counsel for Dentons.
In October, the court issued a 50-page decision finding that IDOC has been deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ mental health, in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

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Posted on December 27, 2018

By Max Krochmal/TakeCare

Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. is not now and has never been a democracy.
While some may dismiss such a claim as semantic hyperbole or ancient history, it’s worth remembering that the “Founding Fathers” (all men) created a patrician republic that constrained rather than encouraged popular participation.
Indeed, the U.S. Constitution of 1787 replaced a previous, more inclusive system of state governments organized under the Articles of Confederation.
The new supreme law of the land made its purpose clear: it extended slavery, banished indigenous peoples, ignored women, disfranchised workers, planned for conquest, and – intentionally – awarded disproportionate power to Southern white agricultural businessmen.
More than two centuries of fine-tuning have not confronted these traditions in a meaningful way.

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Posted on December 22, 2018

By Carly McCann and Donald T. Tomaskovic-Devey/The Conversation

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have brought renewed attention to workplace sexual harassment. However, the vast majority of allegations go unreported, and those who do report tend to face troubling outcomes.
Our new research, released last week, analyzed all sexual harassment complaints filed with the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and state Fair Employment Practices Agencies between 2012 and 2016.
We found that nearly all sexual harassment goes unreported, and those who do report tend to face severe retribution and limited redress.

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Posted on December 19, 2018

By ONE Northside

The residents of the Darlington Hotel and the Lorali, some of the few remaining affordable Single Room Occupancy buildings in Uptown, face eviction as the buildings go up for sale and are remodeled. These two SROs (single room occupancy buildings) are critical affordable housing in Uptown, as gentrification rapidly encroaches on the neighborhood.
The owners of the Darlington Hotel have been negotiating with developer Jim Sayegh of Elmdale Partners in the Darlington’s last few months on the open market. Sayegh says that the project will create 46 units, but plans to maintain only six units as affordable. Nineteen tenants currently live at the Darlington, many of whom have lived there for nearly two decades.

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Posted on December 14, 2018

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

“Charter schools can do more with less” is a common refrain of school choice advocates, who criticize traditional public schools for wasting money. The promise of greater efficiency has been an attractive argument for charters as states struggle to keep up with ever rising educational expenses. Many charter supporters go so far as to say poverty is a poor excuse for underachievement.
In fact, income and wealth consistently rank as the strongest predictors of academic success. But racism is the reason students in black neighborhoods don’t get the finances they need.
Racism creates systems that undervalue black schools, homes and lives, leading to fewer resources for the people who need every cent. If charter backers and other school reformers are really going to uplift black and brown students, they must recognize this and fight funding inequities created by that devaluation of black worth.

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Posted on December 11, 2018

By Liz Szabo/Kaiser Health News

In the run-up to the midterm elections, the soda industry poured millions of dollars into fighting taxes on sugary drinks, an increasingly popular approach to combating obesity, which affects 40 percent of American adults.
Soda makers have campaigned against sugary drink taxes in dozens of cities in recent years, mostly successfully. But after a string of recent defeats, the industry is now pushing statewide measures billed as grocery tax bans that strip cities and towns of their ability to tax soda. Two of these state initiatives were just on the ballot in Washington (passed) and Oregon (rejected).

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Posted on December 4, 2018