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When President Roosevelt came into office in 1933, the Great Depression had reached its lowest point. Roosevelt inherited an America with a quarter of the workforce unemployed, two million homeless, and a sizeable mandate from the American people to enact much-needed economic change. He responded with the New Deal, an unprecedented series of domestic programs to defeat and prevent another depression. The New Deal was (and, alas, is) subjected to criticism from conservative figures critical of governmental regulation, who held tight to the belief that the economy would work itself out in the long run. Harry Hopkins, a Roosevelt adviser, famously responded to this criticism with, “people don’t eat in the long run, they eat every day.” The success of the New Deal lies not only in its quick response to the economic woes that permeated the lives of American people but also in its remarkable foresight. The programs implemented, such as Social Security and the Federal Housing Administration, sought to ensure that the American people could not only receive the immediate relief they needed but could depend on that same security in the future. Today we face a new looming threat to the future of our economic and physical security: environmental degradation and climate change.
4 Min Read
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Mala Krusa is a small village in Kosovo with a painful history. On March 25, 1999, the day after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began, a special police unit entered the village, separated and killed the men and boys, dumped them in mass graves, and forced the women and children out of the village. Agron Limani, a resident of the Mala Krusa village, lives in a house adjacent one of the mass graves that was recently exhumed and in which his brother, father, and uncles were buried. Limani commented, “We cannot talk about reconciliation while graves are still open. Let’s first shed light on the crimes, find our people and put justice in place” [1].
4 Min Read
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The United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in June, citing the body’s fixation with Israel and their inclusion of nations with egregious human rights offenses. Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, told the media that the UNHRC is “a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights” [1]. However, in the same month, the Trump administration continued the family separation policy on the Mexican border—which, according to a panel of child psychologists, caused “irreparable harm” to children who were detained and separated from their parents indefinitely [2].
4 Min Read
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In April, President Trump signed into law a pair of bills, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (FOSTA-SESTA), that passed nearly unanimously in the House and Senate. The bills aim to prevent sex traffickers from profiting online by holding website publishers responsible if third-party users post ads for prostitution, including consensual sex work. Legislatures attempting to protect sex trafficking victims consider FOSTA-SESTA a victory. With unanimous bipartisan support rallied around the newly implemented laws, it seems that the U.S. government has found a way to help victims of sex trafficking with virtually no cost. However, the most vocal opposition to the passage of FOSTA-SESTA comes from the population the bills are purportedly designed to protect: sex trafficking victims and sex workers.
4 Min Read
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In the 1980s, with Reaganomics in full force, presidential candidate Jesse Jackson saw the need for a unified voice for the millions of disenfranchised Americans. As a result he initiated a political organization known as the Rainbow Coalition, a movement that transcended party politics and touted leftist policy initiatives to transform social programs, voting rights, and affirmative action. Jackson’s “big tent” coalition garnered support from an array of communities: African American, Jewish, LGBT, disabled veterans, farmers, and many more were able to unite under a common goal. The Coalition revived, if only for a moment, a sense that mass movement could change the political discourse on social and political issues from a platform that ran much deeper than the Republican-Democrat dichotomy. However, the momentum was short lived. Jackson was running as a Democrat, and was stiffly opposed by members of his own political establishment. Detroit Mayor Coleman Young said, “The major task of Black America today is to get rid of Ronald Reagan. We cannot afford to support a black candidate who cannot win” [1].
7 Min Read
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