Black
Lives, Feminism, Role Models
"Even if their stories
weren't told in the headlines or transcribed in the history books, black women
have always been at the front line in the
fight for equality. Many of the struggles and rewards we have today are off of
the shoulders of black women, both known and unknown. These women are essential in
understanding feminism and the fight for civil rights.
Composed of various
class backgrounds, sexual orientations, and voices, black women are anchored
in intersectionality —
a term developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1993 to describe the
oppression individuals face due to their position in society. From speaking
about issues of empowerment and suffrage to making the connections
between race, ability, and gender into conversations around equality, black
women have long been teaching about the multifaceted and interlocking systems
of oppressions that effected marginalized people.
To better explain this
history, The National Museum of African American History and
Cultureproduced #APeoplesJourney: African American Women and the Struggle
for Equality, an animated visual media that displays the roles of
black women feminists through time, in partnership with YouTube for Good.
Lanae Spruce, manager
of social media and digital management for NMAAHC, described the video to Teen
Vogue as an opportunity to amplify women and tell stories they never
heard before about black women leaders; to highlight those stories and expand
upon narratives in order to instill a platform that describes the rights of
black people and women."
Immigration, Workplace
“Presented as a compassionate but pragmatic compromise,
IRCA coupled a one-time amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants with an
employer sanctions regime to punish those who knowingly hired persons not
authorized to work in the United States.
But the law came into the world with a fatal defect.
Because of the clout of strange-bedfellows — a left-right coalition that united
immigrant rights activists, Latino politicians, businesses, and libertarians —
IRCA was stripped of a mandate for the executive branch to develop a secure
means of verifying that workers were authorized. Instead, workers were allowed
to present documents from a wide assortment of easily counterfeited
identifiers, and employers were required to accept any document that
“reasonably appears on its face to be genuine.”
The result was a proliferation of counterfeit documents
and fraud on a massive scale. Far from stopping illegal immigration, IRCA had
actually stimulated it, according to Philip Martin, an immigration scholar at
the University of California at Davis. “Perhaps the most important effect of
immigration reform was to spread unauthorized workers from the Southwest to the
rest of the country,” said Martin.”
Middle East, Women
"Saudi Arabia’s extreme repression of
women has long been illustrated by their prohibition from driving. Some women
who have protested that restriction — or flouted it — have been harshly
penalized or arrested.
Late Tuesday night local time, Saudi
Arabia’s King Salman issued a royal
decree declaring that women will soon
be allowed to apply for drivers’ licenses and drive legally.
The decree is a win for women, but it’s also a tactical win for the state.
Refusing to allow women to drive has been a public relations disaster for the
Saudis for years. Giving them the keys, they hope, will not only ease public
international pressure but also give women the chance to contribute more to the
economy.Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam. The ban on women drivers has long been explained as being religiously motivated, but it is the only country in the world, of any religion, that had instituted such a ban."
Rural America, Higher Education
"It’s not that rural
students aren’t academically prepared. They score better on the National
Assessment of Educational Progress than urban students and graduate from high
school at a higher percentage than the national average, the U.S. Department of Education reports. At
the regional high school Gordon attended in Lenox, Iowa, the graduation rate is
typically at or near an impressive 100 percent.
Yet even the
highest-income white students from rural areas are less likely to go to college
right from high school than their well-off white city and suburban
counterparts, according to the National Student Clearinghouse,
which tracks this data: 61 percent, compared to 72 percent from urban schools
and 74 percent from suburban ones.
Overall, 59 percent of rural
high-school grads—white and nonwhite, at every income level—go to college the
subsequent fall, a lower proportion than the 62 percent of urban and 67 percent
of suburban graduates who do, the clearinghouse says. Forty-two percent of
people ages 18 to 24 are enrolled in all of higher education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics,
but only 29 percent come from rural areas, compared to nearly 48 percent from
cities.
The reasons for this are as myriad
as they are consequential, affecting everything from regional economic
competitiveness to widening political division."
Politics
"When an estimated 4 million people turned up for the
Women’s March protest in Washington, D.C., and 650 sister marches across the
United States in January, just a day after President Donald Trump’s
inauguration, both participants and observers asked, “What’s next?”
Nearly
eight months later, the march’s organizers are planning a major follow-up
event: a multi-day forum, called the “The Women’s Convention,” aimed at
building support ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The convention is
scheduled to take place in Detroit on Oct. 27-29.
We need to
take the organizing power we gained from the Women’s March and convert that
into political power,” said Bob Bland, the national co-chair of the Women’s
March on Washington. “Our goal is for people to come out of this with
revolutionary new knowledge, training and connections.”
The
convention is the latest high-profile effort to maintain the grassroots energy
from the January march, which was likely the single largest protest in U.S.
history. Organizers expect 5,000 people will attend the convention; nearly
1,500 people have registered so far."
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