#Bill McKibben, "Junk," The Nation, 5.31 - 6.7.2021. - "The epoch of hunting and gathering produced 'a period of greater longevity and general health than in almost any other time before or since.' " "Jared Diamond memorably called farming the biggest mistake in human history." "Through its dependence on an agriculture that 'concentrates on maximizing the yield of the most profitable crops,' it has done 'more damage to the earth than strip mining, urbanization, even fossil fuel extraction.' " "Chicken production has increased by more than 1,400 percent -- while the number of farms producing those birds has fallen by 98 percent."
Matt Bitten has written that: "Global sugar production has nearly tripled in the past half-century, and so has obesity; the number of people worldwide, living with diabetes, has quadrupled since 1980." "Now the United States supplies Mexico with 42 percent of it food." "Chilean children went from seeing 8,500 junk food advertisements a year to seeing next to none."
"Instituting fairness in race and gender means, in part, undoing land theft, racial and gender-based violence, and centuries of wealth accumulation by most European and European-Americans, means that it is still being compounded. This means land reform; this means affordable nutritious food regardless of the ability to pay..."
#Robert Greene II, "Crucible City," The Nation, 5.31 - 6.7.2021. - "The labor strife underscored the need for solidarity among white and Black workers as American capital consolidated, and liberal Republicans began to retreat from the egalitarian promise of Reconstruction during the Gilded Age." Walter Johnson, author of 'St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States' (Basic Books), documents the divisions among Missouri Germans over the course of Reconstruction... mirrored the divides within the Republican Party and the United States itself."
"The fear of interracial solidarity and social democracy was a major presence in the minds of America's elite during the Gilded Age, and the early Jim Crow years."
"The city [St. Louis] continues to be riven by racial and class injustice, and Johnson traces these divisions, in part, to all the missed opportunities."
#Bryce Covert, "Power in the Union," The Nation, 5.31 - 6.7.2021. - "Expanding on waves of activism, teachers were able to band together and compel school districts to adopt protocols for masks, ventilation, testing and even vaccination. But if teachers hadn't flexed their collective muscle, it's likely they would have been forced back into school buildings without any say at all."
'The reluctance of teachers to return to school buildings stems, in large part, from having worked in substandard conditions for so long. About half of the country's school districts need to update or replace systems or features in their buildings. In 41 percent of districts at least half of the school buildings need to upgrade their ventilation or HVAC systems."
#Mustafa Bayoumi, "A Counsel for the People," The Nation, 5.31 - 6.7.2021. - During his tenure, Cyrus Vance Jr., Manhattan D.A., has also been criticized for being weak on prosecuting crimes committed by the elite. "Unsurprisingly, the people who get caught up in this legal maw are mostly poor and people of color. And Vance's office has often been considerably more punitive than the D.A.s in other boroughs of the city, something that most of the lawyers vying for his seat have vowed to change."
"In New York City, most of these cases are small crimes of desperation, according to experts, often involving stealing a sandwich or shoplifting hygiene products. New York City County Defender Services (NYCDS), which serves Manhattan, told 'The City' that well over a quarter of the people it represented in 2018 were cases in which petit larceny was the top charge -- 308 of 1,092 people were homeless." "
#Joanne Lipman, "The great reopening," TIME, June 17/June 24, 2021. - "A Pew survey in January found that 66% of unemployed people have seriously considered changing occupations -- and significantly, that phenomenon is common to those at every income level, not just the privileged higher earners." "During the pandemic, nearly half of all employees with advanced degrees were working remotely, while more than 90% of those with a high school diploma or less had to show up in person, 'Co-Star ' found."
"Faced with the impossible task of handling the majority of children and homeschooling, 4.2 million women dropped out of the labor force from February 2020 to April 2020."
#Dorothy A. Brown, [author of 'The Whiteness of Wealth'] "Reform taxation to narrow the wealth gap," TIME, May 24/May 31, 2921. - "In 2018, the top 1% of taxpayers, by income, received 75% of the benefits from stock ownership. (as opposed through a retirement account), and in 2019, only 15% of families owned stock that way."
"One estimate places stock ownership as contributing 23% toward the racial wealth gap for Black and Hispanic households."
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