While most of my friends and colleagues know that I was raped during a violent home invasion in my twenties and almost killed, they do not know this story. They do not know this story because it was such a crystallizing moment of shame and terror to me that I have only told it to two people in over 30 years – my spouse and a therapist – and it remains the hardest thing I have ever spoken aloud.
I did not mention it all the times I have been called upon to discuss the impact of the crime of rape in my life not only because of the searing shame it engendered, but also because it was too painful to talk about the moment when I believed with all my heart that I would be killed. It remains to this day the most difficult thing to say aloud, but because of the last few days and the attempt to minimize Donald Trump’s words as “locker room banter,” it is time to speak about what was previously unspeakable for me. Read more…
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at the second presidential debate.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Whew: Like watching a duel with axes at three paces! Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump battled tonight in their second presidential debate, and here’s my play-by-play commentary in the form of selected tweets. This isn’t a column or even a formal blog post; just journalism on the fly. Here goes!
Tim Kaine, left, and Mike Pence during the debate on Tuesday.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Tonight saw a proxy war between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, fought by Mike Pence and Tim Kaine. Here’s my take on the debate, not as a formal article but simply fact-checking and commentary in the form of play-by-play tweets as the battle unfolds.
First question is about fitness of each running mate. But people are more concerned about fitness of the Presidential candidates. #VPDebate
A self portrait painted by Macy, a survivor of sex trafficking in the United States.Credit Andrea Powell
Eighteen-year-old Macy [1] has an infectious smile despite everything. Like many of her college freshman classmates, she works part-time and has several roommates. Unlike those classmates, the shared house she lives in is a safe home for survivors of human trafficking.
Many victims of trafficking are not as fortunate as Macy, as horrific as her story is. In the fight to end sex trafficking in the United States, survivors are being arrested, and often prosecuted for prostitution. With a record of prostitution, it’s much harder for these young women to attend college, receive public assistance, and live independent lives. Sometimes they are even required to register as sex offenders. Though it’s difficult to find exact numbers, a recent study suggests that there are about 10,000 kids sold for sex each year.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump dueled tonight in the presidential debate, and here’s my play-by-play commentary. And no, this isn’t a column or even a formal blog post; it’s simply an assortment of my tweets during the debate. Think of it as journalism on the fly — and here goes!
“Our jobs are fleeing the country”–Donald Trump. Some jobs have fled. But also true that 9 million jobs created under Obama.
There is significant overlap between the profile of the average Trump supporter and the profile of the average gun owner.Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
In September Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about false equivalence, arguing that the media has helped create a perception that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are equal candidates. He concluded, “I’ve never met a national politician as ill informed, as deceptive, as evasive and as vacuous as Trump. He’s not normal.” Mike Weisser is an N.R.A. lifetime member and the owner of a gun shop in western Massachusetts; here is his response to that column.
If Nicholas Kristof truly believes that Donald Trump is “ill-informed”, “deceptive” and “evasive,” then I cordially invite him to spend a day in my gun shop in Massachusetts, listening to what my customers have to say about Trump and the presidential election. One thing that Kristof will learn is that his definitions of words like “truth” and “honesty” have absolutely nothing to do with the manner in which my customers define and shape their views. And I think this is an important lesson for Kristof and other “mainstream” journalists, if only because the type of people who own guns also happen to be the type of people who unswervingly support Donald Trump. Read more…
Lawyer Dennis Muñoz stands outside the Isidro Menendez Judicial Center in San Salvador.Credit Lauren Bohn
The congested road to El Salvador’s Ilopango Women’s Prison is lined with rundown snack shops and pink dogwood trees. Dennis Muñoz describes the concrete complex, which operates at 900 percent capacity, as “living hell.”
Few know the prison better than the 37-year-old lawyer. For the past eight years, he’s made countless visits to his clients there. In addition to being young and poor, the women all have one thing in common: they suffered miscarriages or complications at childbirth. In turn, they were sentenced up to 40 years in prison for aggravated homicide.
“There is a war against women in this country,” Muñoz explains, trudging from courthouse to courthouse in San Salvador’s gridlocked traffic. “And if you’re poor and uneducated like a majority of the women, you might be next.” Read more…
Marley Dias, the 11-year-old behind the nonprofit #1000BlackGirlBooks, looks through some of the books donated to her group.Credit Christopher Occhicone for The New York Times
Eleven-year-old Marley Dias has gotten a lot of attention for being the girl who got sick of reading about white boys and their dogs and did something about it.
#1000BlackGirlBooks, the soon-to-be seventh grader’s campaign to get more books about girls who look like her into the hands of fellow readers, has been featured on shows including “Ellen” and “Today.” Plenty of magazines, including Ebony, which placed her on its 2016 list of “coolest black kids in America,” have taken notice, too.
Now her campaign has expanded, and includes efforts to change reading lists in her own neighborhood, as well as a national literacy tour. Read more…
Computerized babies have long been used to caution teens against becoming parents. A new study suggests they do just the opposite.Credit Sean D. Elliot/The Day, via Associated Press
For more than two decades, educators with high hopes of preventing teen pregnancy have assigned their students computerized baby dolls, programmed to cry, coo, and make life complicated, just like a real baby.
“Having a baby can change a teen’s life in many ways… Experiencing those changes firsthand can help convince teenagers that putting off parenthood is a good idea,” one woman explains in a laudatory video about the program.
But a new report found that caring for a fake infant actually makes it more likely that teens will get pregnant, not less. Read more…
Deborah Fikes with Bishop Elias Taban and South Sudanese government officials and soldiers in Yei, South Sudan.Credit Stan Fikes
Many well-intentioned evangelicals have been drawn to the Republican Party platform with the hope of making an impact on culture and voting their values. But instead of actually helping fill in “the hole in our gospel,” as Richard Stearns describes in his book of the same title, this focus has had the opposite effect, helping to create the imploding black hole of evangelical politics we are seeing now in the Republican party. As painful as this has been to watch, this may be the best thing that has happened to American evangelism in a long time.
For the first time in my life, I feel compelled to reject my community’s unquestioned political alignment with the G.O.P. and challenge my fellow evangelicals to reconsider. Read more…
A demonstrator outside the Berks County Residential Center, where a group of mothers began a hunger strike earlier this week to protest their confinement.Credit Doug Kapustin
Dear Jeh Johnson,
As the Secretary of Homeland Security, you said last week that you have helped ensure that “the average length of stay at [family detention] facilities is 20 days or less.” We are 22 mothers who have been imprisoned at the Berks County Residential Center, in Leesport, Pa., for 270 to 365 days. We have relatives and friends who would be responsible for us and who wait for us with open arms, but your Department of Homeland Security has denied our release.
The reason for this letter is to inform you that on Monday, August 8, we began a hunger strike to protest our indefinite detention, and to request that you end this practice of detaining mothers and children and allow our immediate release. Read more…
Simone Biles with the gymnastics team at the Rio 2016 Olympics.Credit Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
RIO DE JANEIRO – When Simone Biles joyfully bounded onto the floor Sunday in the preliminary round for women’s gymnastics, she did so as the overwhelming favorite to win the Olympic all-around gold medal and to lead the U.S. women’s team to victory. So far, she has lived up to the hype, placing more than 1.5 points ahead of her closest competitor, American Aly Raisman, in the qualifying round, and leading the U.S. team to gold on Tuesday in the team competition.
“She is, in my mind, the best gymnast that has ever lived,” says Nastia Liukin, the overachieving all-around winner in Beijing.
There’s no disputing that at age 19, competing in the first Olympics in which she is eligible, Biles has set scores of new gymnastics records, including being the first woman to win four consecutive U.S. national championships and holding the most world championship medals (14) won by a woman for the United States – 10 of them gold.
But there are some milestones for which she won’t be eligible. Read more…
A man smelts lead in Vietnam. Each year there are over 850,000 deaths associated with lead exposure.Credit Pure Earth
Since the disaster in Flint, Mich., it seems each day there is a new report of lead exposure being rediscovered in American cities, towns and schools. Blood lead levels are tripling in some places and children with growing brains are at risk of reduced intelligence and developmental disabilities. These events have put the lead threat back on the front burner of U.S. public health priorities.
But look beyond the United States, and our well-established environmental and public health infrastructure, and you see an even grimmer picture. Severe, persistent lead poisoning is occurring throughout low- and middle-income countries on a massive scale. Our researchers estimate that approximately 26 million people are at risk for exposure to lead globally. Some of the adverse health impacts from lead include neurological damage, a decrease in IQ, anemia, increased blood pressure, chronic headaches and infertility. Read more…
“You are too smart to be Mexican” and “Congratulations! You probably got the award because you are Latino” are two of many remarks we, as scholars and professionals, heard at some of the top academic centers in the country.
In the very same places we learned the skills of our professions, we were also frequently reminded that we were minorities in biomedical research. While being a minority is a constant and inescapable identity, it is not our only identity. We would rather be known for our hard-earned contributions to research and biomedicine.
One of us is a professor and neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University (soon to be the Chair of Neurologic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic), the other is a professor and a basic research scientist at Yale University. We both study the brain —that mysterious organ that enables us to create new ideas, to hold tight to old prejudices and to judge between right and wrong.
Jonathan L. Walton is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University.Credit Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard
Another week, another group of families experiencing the grief associated with gun violence. Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and five Dallas police offers were each shot down in a heinous and vicious manner. To be sure, the circumstances were quite different. Sterling and Castile were murdered by those sworn to protect and serve. The police officers were assassinated while actually protecting and serving nonviolent protestors. Yet each life was precious, and each death was senseless.
Of course there are those who will exploit these tragedies for a narrow ideological agenda. Former Congressman Joe Walsh immediately took to Twitter on behalf of “real America” to declare war on anyone daring to profess “Black Lives Matter.” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick referred to protestors as “hypocrites” for expecting protection from police officers when shots rang out. In the mind of people like Walsh and Patrick, we are either for the police or against them. Read more…
