When Neighborhoods Make It Easier To Get Pregnant Than Go To College

The Article: My Neighborhood Makes It Easier to Get Pregnant Than To Go To College by Shanice Joseph in Time.

The Text: ‘You should get pregnant,’ a friend told me. ‘Girl, the government will take care of you, trust me.’

If I were to get pregnant, I would know just where to go for help: the local offices of Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the federally funded food and nutrition program; Planned Parenthood; and the Family Resource Center. All three are places where I stood in line for hours with my siblings as a child growing up in Watts. But finding local resources to pursue higher education is harder. As one of the few community college students living in Watts, I can’t find a place to print out an essay or get college-related advice.

When I ran into a friend who grew up in the same low-income housing development as I did, she said there was an easier way than to struggle through college. “You should get pregnant,” she told me. “Girl, the government will take care of you, trust me.”

I didn’t think much of her idea. But she was right about one thing: In my community, there are many resources for young parents, and barely any for college students. Just on my own block, I recently counted a total of five programs for mothers my age or younger.

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How White Millennials Can Save The GOP

The Article: How white millennials will (temporarily) rescue the GOP by Alex Pareene in Salon.

The Text: The Pew Research Institute last week released a report on the views and lives of American millennials — defined by Pew as adults born after 1980 — based on a new poll, and polling of all American generational groups dating back decades. Basically, here is your emerging Democratic majority, mostly emerged. The youth are to the left of older generations on almost every major issue. They are more likely than older voters to identify as liberals. Many still identify as independents, but the Republican Party has almost no appeal to them.

America, in other words, is getting more diverse, and more liberal. That’s not great news for the Republicans, who these days win elections mainly in places and times when older, whiter people aren’t outnumbered by younger, more racially diverse people. Liberals, meanwhile, are getting almost gleeful about the near future, as these liberal younger voters are a rapidly growing portion of the electorate.

As Jonathan Chait argues, “The overall picture is an electorate that is growing steadily more liberal on both social and economic policy, and whose views Republicans will eventually have to accommodate.” By accommodate, he means “be less conservative.” The Republican Party will need to do that to survive. Most of the serious members of the party know that. But they are also asking themselves exactly how long they can hold out. It might be a bit longer than this report suggests.

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The Christian Right, Putting Religious Rights Over Human Rights

The Article: Beware: The Christian Right’s ‘Religious Freedom’ Wants to Elevate Religious Beliefs Above Human Rights—And It’s Working by Valerie Tarico in AlterNet.

The Text: Secular Americans and many liberal people of faith have been horrified by the Right’s most recent ploy: “religious freedom” claims that would give conservative business owners license to discriminate. Until Arizona made the national spotlight, the need for lunch counter sit-ins had seemed like a thing of the past. But in reality, advocates for religious privilege have been circling toward this point for some time.

As a legal and political tactic, Tea Party politicians and conservative church leaders have high hopes for their “religious freedom” push. What they want broadly is a set of cultural and legal agreements that elevate religious beliefs above human rights laws and civic obligations. They hope that securing sacrosanct religious rights for individuals and institutions will let them roll back rights for queers and women. They further hope that playing the religious freedom card will guarantee them access to government contracts and let them proselytize on the public dime.

Here’s the thing: for decades now, this strategy has been working.

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Study Shows That Millennials Are Confused About, Well, Everything

The Article: Study: Millennials Deeply Confused About Their Politics, Finances, and Culture by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic.

The Text: Millennials—or Generation Y, which, by varying definitions, includes you if you’re somewhere between 14-34—are the subject of constant obsession and worrying from the managers trying to hire them, the marketers trying to sell to them, and the parents and grandparents trying desperately to get them to call once in a while using the “phone” feature on their smartphones.

So what can we possibly learn that’s new from Pew’s massive survey released this morning? Many things, actually—and mostly contradictions. Which is about right when you’re trying to sum up 85+ million people in a handful of adjectives.

This generation is getting totally screwed by the economy … but we’re the most optimistic generation in the country.

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Obama Is Complicit In Suppressing The Truth About Torture

The Article: Obama Is Complicit in Suppressing the Truth About Torture by Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic.

The Text: President Obama is complicit in suppressing the truth about CIA torture of prisoners. That’s clear from the fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s $40 million, 6,000-page torture report is still being suppressed 15 months after being adopted. It is made clearer still by a scathing letter that one member of the committee, Senator Mark Udall, sent the White House on Tuesday. Its claims are jaw-dropping.

Udall wants the torture report released to the public as fully and quickly as possible. He is also interested in a separate CIA report about torture of prisoners. His letter makes all of the following charges:

Lots of information already given to the public about the CIA’s torture program, its management, and its effectiveness “is misleading and inaccurate.”

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