In juvenile detention centers across the United States, one in eight detained children experience abuse in any given year—12 percent of all kids in juvenile detention. Eighty percent of them are victimized by a member of the facility’s staff. “In detention facilities, there are extreme power differentials between staff and detainees, and very little oversight,” Stannow says. “When people have unchecked power, bad things happen. When predators have unchecked power, horrendous things happen.
The organized right justifies its draconian policies toward the poor with moral arguments. Right-wing think tanks and blogs, for instance, ponder the damaging effect on disabled poor children of becoming “dependent” on government assistance, or they scrutinize government nutritional assistance for poor pregnant women and children in an effort to explain away positive outcomes for infants.
The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping—and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.
There is a simple solution that would contribute to alleviating our children’s suffering: REHABILITATE AND EDUCATE THEIR INCARCERATED PARENTS. Instead of doling out lengthy sentences to felons, which simply serve to “warehouse” prisoners, while costing taxpayers millions of dollars, it would be more effective to teach prisoners different behaviors while in prison than the destructive lifestyle and behaviors with which they are familiar, and which led them to commit the crimes that led to their imprisonment.
It is expensive to send a person to prison, who, without rehabilitation, is 85 percent likely to return to prison. Money that is spent on “warehousing” a person could be better spent towards rehabilitation and education. IT IS A FACT THAT IT COST THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY TO HOUSE AN INMATE ANNUALLY AS IT DOES TO SEND HER TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY FOR ONE YEAR.
Fifty-three percent of the 1.5 million people held in U.S. prisons by 2007 were the parents of one or more minor children. This percentage translates into more than 1.7 million minor children with an incarcerated parent.
African American children are seven and Latino children two and half times more likely to have a parent in prison than white children. The estimated risk of parental imprisonment for white children by the age of 14 is one in 25, while for black children it is one in four by the same age.
“Beyondmedia Education’s mission is to collaborate with under-served and under-represented women, youth and communities to tell their stories, connect their stories to the world around us, and organize for social justice through the creation and distribution of media arts.
Our Vision Beyondmedia Education envisions a compassionate and just society where universal access to media tools and information equip women and youth to document and communicate their stories, serve as educators and role models for others, influence public policy, and generate social transformation.”
For an example of something from AJE that isn’t about Egypt, check out this three minute clip about Tucson Unified School District and the Arizona state ban on ethnic studies.
You had unprotected sex with a girl when you were a child. It ended in pregnancy.
You are attacking the morality of a 14 year old girl who terminated a pregnancy that would have resulted in a child that neither you or her had the capacity to care for. A girl that preserved your and her own youth, and stopped a child being raised in circumstances that are not fit for any child.
You really should be assessing your own morality.
What kind of 14 year old boy fucks a 14 year old girl, without protection, gets her pregnant then runs an online smear campaign against her for doing what was best for her, her family, and you?
What? You think you had the capacity to raise a child at age 14/15? How would you feed it or look after it? You wouldn’t. You were going to dump it on her or your own parents, live like the carefree little shit you are and occasionally play with the child when you could be bothered and think “Wow, what a good, brave young father I am.”
Man up. You made the mistake, she went through the trauma of saving your youth for you. You owe her so much better than this. You absolutely disgust me.
Less than forward-slash three, you’re real fucking remorseful. That’s poetry that is.
You’re breaking my heart kid.
“</3”
Pro-Choice.
Fucking this
^
EXACTLY.
thankyou. ^
THISTHISTHISTHIS ^
^^^^^^^^^^
THIS.
The eternity of my children is my accountability while they are children and I would be sending them to hell if I raised them to think according to the standards of this world.
From a tract given to Andrea Yates by her family’s spiritual adviser shortly before she killed her 5 children, and after she’d attempted to kill herself several times. Notice please, again, in this selection and others in the article, the idea that decisions are not decisions made by human beings capable of acting on their own, but sympathetic vibrations to the movements of supernatural forces.
I study history and poverty, and write case reports about pediatric radiology, in Chicago.
I mostly think about art, poverty, race, and feminism.
I try to put things here that I think are individually fun or compelling, and that are worth serious thought in combination.
