We all need to use our political powers to support police reform and stand up for the Black Lives Matter movement. In addition to voting in every election and giving your business to companies that reflect your values, you should also regularly voice your concerns directly to your political representatives. You can find the name of your federal, state, and local representatives via the Common Cause online database tool.
Read MoreImagine a society where you can be accused of committing a wrong; where you are never permitted the right to counsel or the opportunity to confront your accuser; where you are never permitted the opportunity to fully investigate the evidence against you; where in a matter of days your entire case is processed in a kangaroo court of biased officials at the whim of popular politics rather than faithful to the facts; and when you are invariably found guilty, you are swiftly deprived of life, liberty, and/or property. It is exactly this fate that thousands of students have faced in our nation’s schools when accused of a sex offense, be it an unwelcome sexual comment to a classmate, discrimination, harassment, stalking, assault, or rape.
Read MoreYes: there are laws against police brutality and abuse of power. There are local commissions run by independent citizens, political appointees, and/or police supervisors responsible to investigate all such complaints. Local prosecutors are required to bring criminal charges against police whenever appropriate. Local personal injury lawyers do help a small percentage of victims to bring lawsuits against police and their departments for such violations. But we know that all this is still not nearly enough to solve the problem.
Read MoreThe US education system is under attack from many sides. Public schools are underfunded, leaving students and teachers to quixotically try to make up the difference in school supplies and other pedagogic resources through bake sales and online charity funding sites. Charter schools, though they provide a substantially better education for their select students, essentially form an elite, quasi-privatized subsystem that diverts scant public funds from public schools. Tracking, which is the process of segregating students into cohorts with which they stay throughout their public school careers based on their intellectual, academic, and/or test-taking abilities (think “honors track”, “gifted and talented classes”, “special education classes”, “remedial education”, and other subsections of our public school system), further deprives the great majority of students of the high quality education that is gifted upon elite students.
Read MoreNature is more than an economic resource. It is a temple of spiritual nourishment. Ideally, if you are far enough from the city and deep in a natural landscape, you will find solace from city noises and lights, from cars, trucks, and hopefully even planes. You will be able to hear the wind, the quiet shuffle of the leaves, or a squirrel’s claws against the wooden branches of a tree. Better still, you will be able to hear nothing at all: “the sound of silence.” And at night, you’ll see the moon like you’ve never seen it before, and you’ll see the stars: so many stars! You’ll be able to breathe clean air, and it will feel sweet and healing to your lungs - like you are feeding yourself with each breath. The water will be so cool and clear, and with a bit of filtration, it will taste so alive and delicious, rather than the stuff we have pouring from our taps and even purchased in fancy bottles. In the woods, up in the mountains, by the beach, and on the rivers, there are gorgeous opportunities to experience so many profoundly simple and necessary activities.
Read MoreThis week, Michelle Carter was imprisoned in Massachusetts for a jarring version of the crime of involuntary manslaughter. This case has an astounding twist: she was found guilty of manslaughter for sending text messages and having phone conversations to urge her 18 year-old long-distance boyfriend, Conrad Roy, to kill himself, something he’d allegedly been wanting and planning to do for a long time and finally did. Carter was 17 at the time of Mr. Roy’s suicide. Even when Mr. Roy was having second thoughts about killing himself, Ms. Carter urged him to carry forward and finish the job. He did. The Massachusetts high court decided that Ms. Carter, by her text messages and phone conversations, overwhelmed Mr. Roy’s fragile willpower and thus directly caused his death, nevermind the fact that she was nowhere near the location of his suicide at the time they were texting and talking with each other.
Read MoreIt is our civic duty to know what our government is doing. For many unfortunate people in our nation, such reading material is a too familiar synopsis of what hell they have personally experienced at the hands of biased, bullying, and corrupt government officials at all levels of government. Knowledge is power. With action at the voting booth, we can begin to make a difference. Speak out. Resist. We all deserve a true democracy – nothing less.
Read MoreHaving just finished watching on Netflix the 12-part documentary by Oliver Stone, “Untold History of the United States” (2012), I find myself amazed. At risk of coming off as conceited, I am amazed at myself and at my many history teachers: for how did I, having studied Western history at the highest quality grade schools, university, graduate schools, and law school, having been an exceptional and curious student, and having continued to study such topics as history and politics well past my academic years, not know so much of the essential information gifted us in this documentary (and its companion 700-page book) by famed film-maker Mr. Stone and co-author Peter Kuznick, an American University historian?
Read MoreUS history is finally clear on the fact that the CIA paid mercenary Iranians to cause riots and protest the leadership of Iran in 1953 when the USA subversively overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and replaced him with the monarchy of the Shah in order to promote the USA’s own oil interests in the region. Of course, the US administration in 1953 internally justified its own shameful actions as promoting democracy in Iran, whatever that means.
Read MoreIn short, the USA and all the world’s nations stand to benefit from intelligently drafting and fairly enforcing laws that restrict and punish hate speech whilst upholding free speech to ensure that political, social, and artistic creativity flourish and racism and illegal discrimination are eradicated from the public domain. Laws rationally banning public hate speech can be drafted and should be drafted, for nobody can doubt the power and efficacy of the pen. Surely we can all learn this lesson from the martyred artists of Charlie Hebdo, may they rest in peace.
Read MoreIndeed, technology is a double-edged sword. Perhaps part of the litigiousness of our nation, and especially of California, New York, and New Jersey, is caused by the ultimate distance that technology has placed between us, what with people feeling far more heady and sharp-tongued to slash and burn at each other’s character, business, and style on the internet’s social media sites, review sites, video posting sites, and all their comment sections, not to mention through the modes of email, text message, and of course the telephone.
Read MoreTo stop the inevitable migration of artists, middle class families, and progressive white collar professionals from our nation’s cosmopolitan centers to outskirt towns and emerging middle American metro-areas, we need more aggressive housing safety regulations, much more expansive rent-control laws, and more affordable housing projects in Oakland and the cities across the nation like it, from Brooklyn, NY and Somerville, MA to LA, Austin, Seattle, and Portland.
Read MoreIt is this sense of control over children that pervades the US legal system’s treatment of minors in every part of their lives, including their ability to unilaterally and without parental supervision or approval partake in many activities until they reach the Age of Consent set by each state. In so many other nations and throughout time including the present, children under the age of 18 have been working professionally in various types of jobs, getting married, having sex, raising their own children, running companies, and even ruling nations. We know that children are better educated now than at any other time in history. Arguably with the kinds of experiences and information that they can access in the world today and especially online, children are more in touch with who they are, their place in the world, what they believe, and what they want to accomplish: all the hallmarks of maturity.
Read MoreOk, your street needs paving, and it’s been pockmarked with potholes for a while. Your air smells like sewage, so it’s time to look into your county’s wastewater treatment center. Or you need a better source of electricity in your state than you’re currently getting. So what do you do? Wait for your politician to do something about it, right Wrong! Because you’ll be old and gray before that happens, as we all know. But this is representative democracy at its finest. And representative democracy is really just a bunch of baloney parading around as democracy. It’s basically oligarchy — a political system where a small group of people (e.g., career politicians, the rich, the well-connected) control the government.
Read MoreNext time you hear about somebody suing somebody else for money to try to make up for some injury, more likely than not remember this: We are paying for it in the long run. We pay for the Courts and the Judges. We pay the legislators who spend their time making regulations (laws) that provide remedies for victims protected by such laws.
Read MoreThe Justice System – from cops to courts to jails – is just not working. So why continue on with it? Are we dupe enough to believe that we can actually improve upon a system that already swallows hundreds of billions of dollars every year, that employs millions of people many of whom with stellar educations and noble intentions?
Read MoreLook at the brutality that we have created, look at the injustice. It is time that we rethink this structure. We are adults, we have minds, and we must use them to create a better world. The police state simply creates a more antagonistic Society, judges render no real justice, and prisons do not rehabilitate but simply exacerbate.
Read MoreJudge Jed Rakoff, a federal judge at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, wrote a fantastic article in November 2014 for The New York Review of Books entitled “Why Innocent People Plead Guilty“. Shortly after, he provided an interview about the topic to AlterNet, an online magazine. In it, he discussed how federal criminal defendants accept plea bargains 97% of the time and on average state criminal defendants accept them 94% of the time.
Read MoreDuring his campaign, Mr. Obama promised us to create a meaningful universal health care law that would provide all Americans with necessary health care coverage. I suppose by that he meant that he would institute the Republican, pro-insurance industry requirement that we all get in line to spend what little money we have to purchase private insurance policies from big insurance companies, lest we be held liable for violating the ironically named "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Law" - an Orwellian name for a law that is itself unconstitutional.
Read MoreIt’s important to mediate on what we accomplish in our life’s work, what kind of company we work for, what its impact on the world really is, and also to think about how we spend our money, what companies and habits we support, and our impact on our communities and the planet. It’s important to think about how we treat people with whom we interact each day in small ways and large as we walk the streets, drive our cars, shop, talk on the phone, and so on.
Read More
