Disenfranchised Nuns Strike Back! (with poll)

by: Mik Moore

Fri May 09, 2008 at 11:53:04 AM EDT

An interesting story from Tuesday's primary that recieved less press attention that it deserved: elderly nuns prevented from voting under Indiana's new voter ID law. Just days before the election the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, upheld the law.

Yesterday, the held a press conference with the League of Women Voter in Missouri.

On Thursday, May 8, three Missouri voters who lack government-issued photo IDs as well as Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and community leaders will discuss the potential impacts of legislation currently being pushed through the Missouri General Assembly. The proposed legislation would make Missouri one of the toughest states in the country for eligible citizens who want to vote by requiring voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls. If passed, these changes could be in place by the November general election and could put the voting rights at risk for up to 240,000 registered Missouri voters.

"This may sound like a good idea at first," stated Sister Sandy Schwartz of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary regarding voter ID requirements, "but once you stop to think about who would really be affected, this is going to keep a lot of our loved ones from being able to vote." Yesterday in Indiana twelve nuns in their 80s and 90s
were turned away from the polls because they lacked the needed IDs to vote. Sister Schwartz and others are concerned about the difficulties the policy change would create for elderly Missouri nuns, as well as other senior citizens, the poor, and minorities.

 This is what the national Voter ID map looks like:

The Best and the Worst: K'doshim

by: Rabbi Toba Spitzer

Thu May 08, 2008 at 21:00:38 PM EDT

Breaking: Crandall Canyon was foreseeable and criminal

by: Jeremy Burton

Thu May 08, 2008 at 13:58:44 PM EDT

NYTimes is carrying the news breaking out of DC that a Congressional investigation has found that:

The general manager and possibly other senior staff at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah, where 9 miners died in August 2007, hid information from federal mining officials that could have prevented the disaster and should face criminal charges.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration also comes under criticism, noting that:

the mining company should never have submitted a request to remove coal from the section of mine where the collapse occurred, and that federal mining officials should not have approved the proposal, because of foreseeable dangers.

Last summer we, and the media, followed this disaster closely.  Props to one of my favorite House members, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who hasn't dropped the ball and is keeping the pressure on the mining industry. I'll be interested to see how the media covers this story in the next 24 hours.

You can read the full report on the House Education and Labor Committee website here.

Faith Groups Less Popular This Year

by: Hannah Farber

Wed May 07, 2008 at 11:23:51 AM EDT

I'm on a little bit of a religion poll kick lately, bear with me. This one says that Methodists and Jews are the religious groups with the highest approval ratings and lowest disapproval ratings in the US (if you're keeping score, the Methodists are a bit ahead).

Though these numbers seem impressive, Catholics, Methodists, Jews, Muslims and Baptists have all lost popularity since a similar poll in 2006.  What's going on with everybody?

Assuming it isn't a discrepancy related to the polling, one theory might be the intensifying political coverage of the past year and a half. People are spending a lot of time thinking about civil religion, and religious groups on the whole aren't seen as relating positively to American civil religion and the electoral process. (Righteous Indignation-niks, I'm looking at you to make some changes here...)

By the way, the ever-unpopular atheists aren't exactly a religious group. Lots of Jews, in fact, are atheists. But nobody tell Gallup, OK?

(h/t Yenta) 

Hospital World (And the Jews)

by: Hannah Farber

Tue May 06, 2008 at 10:53:11 AM EDT

Very interesting review today in Salon of a new book about life in a big American hospital.  Brooklyn's Maimonides Medical Center is a world in itself:

At Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., some 67 different languages are spoken. A private institution, it's among the largest 5 percent of the nation's hospitals, treating (in 2003) 38,667 inpatients as well as 127,319 more people in its outpatient clinics. Each year it trains nearly 500 new doctors from all over the world.

Unbelievable. Though there's plenty of personality drama, it sounds like the book also focuses on some key systemic issues: insured vs. uninsured patients, the plight of immigrants, tensions between (highly-paid, high-status) doctors and (low-paid, low-status) nurses, and too often a prioritization of technology over humans:

Mildred Loving, RIP

by: Jeremy Burton

Tue May 06, 2008 at 10:40:13 AM EDT

Its being reported pretty widely today that Mildred Loving passed away this past weekend.  Mrs. Loving, of Loving v. Virginia fame, was the woman, along with her husband Richard, who challenged the miscegenation laws, leading to a Supreme Court ruling allowing inter-racial marriage in America in 1967. 

As the NYTimes notes:

...under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.

Virginia’s law had been on the books since 1662, adopted a year after Maryland enacted the first such statute. At one time or another, 38 states had miscegenation laws. State and federal courts consistently upheld the prohibitions, until 1948, when the California Supreme Court overturned California’s law.

Though the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in the Loving case struck down miscegenation laws, Southern states were sometimes slow to change their constitutions; Alabama became the last state to do so, in 2000.

This case has been of great interest to me for many years, not least because I was born in 1968 to parents who, in many southern states, would have been considered in violation of these race-mixing laws (I have a photo prominently displayed in my office of my grandfather in his segregated 3rd system schoolroom in Texas in the 1920's - White, Negro & Chicano).

In recent years I've had many opportunities to work on Jews of Color issues (for a fantastic book on this topic, see Melanie Kaye-Kantrowitz's "The Color of Jews," in which I have a bit part).  Its important to remember that a substantial part of the Jews of Color story in this country

Manhattan Together: Working for an Affordable New York City

by: jtrachte2

Mon May 05, 2008 at 18:21:37 PM EDT

On April 22nd I was so proud!

More than 600 people from many faith-based and service organizations joined forces as "Manhattan Together" to take action towards shared issues of affordable housing, immigrants' rights, and quality public education. Hosting this incredibly diverse and yet cohesive group was my synagogue, Congregation B'nai Jeshurun (BJ). BJ is nearly at its one year anniversary as a member of Manhattan Together, a local affiliate of the national Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and regional metro IAF.

As a means of building relationships with NYC power players, we invited a number of potential candidates in the 2009 mayoral election. City Comptroller William Thompson was the only one able to attend, although others sent staff to listen. He responded to our questions with thoughtful dialogue and a pledge to work with us on our agenda.

Where'd the Grocery Store Go?

by: Hannah Farber

Mon May 05, 2008 at 21:07:13 PM EDT

Fewer and fewer supermarkets in New York City. No single bad guy, no easily identifiable group of bad guys taking them away, just fewer places to get fresh food. Of course, this is a health problem:

 “Many people in low-income neighborhoods are spending their food budget at discount stores or pharmacies where there is no fresh produce,” said Amanda Burden, the city’s planning director. “In our study, a significant percentage of them reported that in the day before our survey, they had not eaten fresh fruit or vegetables. Not one. That really is a health crisis in the city.”

It's not just a health problem. The article name checks a few of the related issues: rising rents, the inability for local stores to keep up with national chains, the loss of local unionized jobs... it's all connected.

Also, the food problem is not only a problem of supply at the top level. Even if you have a supermarket, fresh food is still expensive. If the city is going to provide various zoning and tax  breaks to keep the supermarkets within physical reach of the locals, it also needs to find ways to keep the much-applauded fresh food within financial reach of those same locals. If it doesn't, the people visiting the stores are going to keep buying the same lower-cost non-fresh food they would get anywhere else.

Wildcats Really Love Living on Golf Courses

by: Hannah Farber

Mon May 05, 2008 at 19:36:58 PM EDT

I grew up on Carl Hiaasen's novels about South Florida. I always thought they were hilarious. I admired the environmentalism that suffused his books without making them preachy, and I admired the astonishing depth of his cynicism about the human race (I was that kind of kid).

I guess if I had really learned that well from him, I wouldn't have been so surprised to learn that his latest book is a collection of ruminations about his golf game. 

Of course an environmentalist, even a career one, is not forbidden to play golf.  And - even writing a purely personal book about it - okay. But then I was reading along in the article, and I found a quote like this:

“The great irony is that golf courses are becoming the last bit of wildlife refuge we have,” he said. “I saw a bobcat on a golf course once, and I don’t know that there’s anyplace else you could do that now.”

Carl, you've got a lot more experience with the South Florida landscape than I do. So if you really told me that bobcats throng to golf courses to hunt and, um, nest(?), I might believe you. But I actually have a different explanation:

Could it be that the bobcat was on the golf course because the last shreds of its natural habitat were getting eaten up by developments such as golf courses?

Day One at Righteous Indignation

by: Mik Moore

Mon May 05, 2008 at 12:36:32 PM EDT

We are midway through day two of the Righteous Indignation conference at Hebrew College in Newton, MA. The gathering has attracted Jewish activists from across the country (100 or so), most with some affiliation with one of the dozen or more Jewish groups working for social change.

Last night featured a panel discussion about the future of the Jewish social justice movement, moderated by Jane Ramsey (Jewish Council on Urban Affairs) and feating Jaime Rapaport (Progressive Jewish Alliance), Michael Brown (MICAH), Rabbi Sid Schwarz (PANIM) and Alana Alpert (Jews for Racial & Economic Justice). To summarize their main points (from their opening statements) in a nutshell: