March 2018

Sen. Marco Rubio sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week wrongly blaming the Parkland shooting on the Department of Education’s School Discipline Guidance package. This guidance, released in 2014, reminded schools of their responsibility to address racial discrimination in school discipline, which affects students in every state. The guidance includes a series of recommendations to help close the school-to-prison pipeline, including...

My youngest will be going off to college next fall, meaning I’ll soon be an empty nester. After having raised my kids for the last 22 years or so, a large part of my purpose in life will leave along with my son. I know I’m not alone in feeling both sad and panicky about this big shift—a lot of other people face similar feelings. We wonder what life will be like and what we will do with ourselves once our kids have flown the coop. One possibility is to renew our sense of purpose. [For more on...

Have you ever considered the journey endured by historical freedom fighters, those in the abolitionist movement who led thousands of enslaved Africans to freedom mile by mile on foot? One group of women has. And this week they are walking 100 miles, from sunup to sundown, in the footsteps of Harriet Tubman on the Underground Railroad from the eastern shore of Maryland crossing the Mason–Dixon Line into Delaware and ending at the Tubman Garrett Riverfront Park. In honor of Tubman, the 10...

One unseasonably warm day in February, photographer Stefan Ruiz and I wander over to the Brooklyn Detention Complex, a towering monolith of a jail that I’ve walked by a thousand times and never really noticed before. Ruiz is there to shoot a photo of the window where defendants—or more likely, members of their families—go to hand over bail money. I’m tagging along. It’s only a minute before a young man—gray sweatpants, white undershirt—emerges through the main doors. He’s grinning and wants...

It’s Women’s History Month! From racial injustice and economic inequality to reproductive health, women have always been at the forefront of social change around the world. In honor of International Women’s Day, we’re highlighting eight fearless women leading today’s biggest and most impactful social movements. [For more on this story by Jessicah Pierre, go to https://inequality.org/great-divide/8-trailblazing-women-leading-fight-inequality/ ]

Living in poverty or involvement in the juvenile or criminal justice system were the social complexity risk factors that made children more likely to use EDs, according to findings published in Annals in Family Medicine. “Screening for social determinants of health is challenging but critically important for optimizing child health outcomes,” Kimberly C. Arthur, MPH, of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and colleagues wrote. “We aimed to test the feasibility of using an integrated...

Earlier this year I shared one piece of my trauma history with my family doctor... it’s finally out in the open, but I really wish I didn’t have to be the one to start that conversation every time.

It takes more than a stitch to heal a bullet wound. With the creation and launch this summer of the St. Louis Area Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program (STL-HVIP), a citywide network of hospital-based intervention and ongoing support, the St. Louis medical community is taking a significant step to help patients heal from acts of violence. With 205 murders in 2017 — about 20 more than those tallied in recent years, and 94 percent attributable to firearms — St. Louis is experiencing an...

Commentary: Yesterday, I received an open letter from some of our state legislators related to the support the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops continues to give to the NM HJR1 2018 (Land Grant Fund Distributions). Since the letter is directed to the Conference, we three undersigned Catholic bishops of New Mexico are responding today. “ ‘Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth’ (1 Jn 3:18). These words of the Apostle John voice an imperative that...

SALT LAKE CITY — Nearly half of America's children live through adverse childhood experiences that can leave them vulnerable to ongoing and future challenges, sometimes severe, according to a new report that documents not just potential harm, but uneven impact based on race and state. “ The Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Nationally, by State, and by Race or Ethnicity ,” was released by researchers from Child Trends, a Bethesda-based organization that studies American children's...

Going through the hard part of healing, the messy middle, is demonstrated in what we see in nature as the winter turning to spring. At first, it looks muddy, gray, or lifeless. The frost, the layers of snow, the piles of dead leafs, the smell of decay and dirt is not always pleasant. You may even find yourself wading through the puddles of muddy water, muddy paths on your favorite hike, and slippery river banks as the water is running into the rivers and the river water is all cloudy and...

Sue Jones, founder of yogaHOPE, shares insights into the ways in which we can address the consequences of trauma and ACES in folks, even those who may never come forward seeking help for a specific kind of trauma.