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An unlucky cohort of undergraduates has been plagued by Covid restrictions, education strikes and finally a marking boycott
Emily Smith, a final-year geography student at Durham University, never imagined her already heavily disrupted university experience could end like this. She won’t be graduating this summer because half her work remains unmarked owing to a national marking boycott by lecturers.
She refuses to attend the “completion ceremony” Durham has offered her instead. Without an actual degree classification it seems like a “farce”. Like so many in this deeply unlucky cohort of students, she feels this is the last straw.
Continue reading...Donald Trump should not be allowed on the ballot.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who has held public office and taken an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office again if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States.
This key provision was enacted after the Civil War to prevent those who rose up against our democracy from ever being allowed to hold office again.
This applies to Donald Trump. He cannot again be entrusted with public office. He led an insurrection!
He refused to concede the results of the 2020 election, claiming it was stolen, even when many in his inner circle, including his own attorney general, told him it was not.
Trump then pushed state officials to change vote counts, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to pressure his vice president into refusing to certify the Electoral College votes, had his allies seek access to voting-machine data, and summoned his supporters to attack the capitol on January 6th to disrupt the formal recognition of the presidential election results.
And then he waited HOURS, reportedly watching the violence on TV, before telling his supporters to go home — despite pleas from his staff, Republican lawmakers, and even Fox News.
If this isn’t the behavior of an insurrectionist, I don’t know what is.
Can there be any doubt that Trump will again try to do whatever it takes to regain power, even if it’s illegal and unconstitutional?
If anything, given all the MAGA election deniers in Congress and in the states, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020. And more power hungry.
Trump could face criminal charges for inciting an insurrection, but that’s not necessary to bar him from the ballot.
Secretaries of State and other chief election officers across the country have the power to determine whether candidates meet the qualifications for office. They have a constitutional duty to keep Trump off the ballot — based on the clear text of the U.S. Constitution.
Some might argue that voters should be able to decide whether candidates are fit for office, even if they’re dangerous. But the Constitution sets the bar for what disqualifies someone from being president. Candidates must be at least 35 years old and a natural-born U.S. citizen. And they must also not have engaged in insurrection after they previously took an oath of office to defend the Constitution.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has already been used to disqualify an insurrectionist from continuing to hold public office in New Mexico, with the state’s Supreme Court upholding the ruling.
This is not about partisanship. If a Democrat attempts to overthrow the government, they should not be allowed on ballots either.
Election officials must keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024.
Democracy cannot survive if insurrectionists hold power in our government.
An interview with Prof Antonio Diéguez Lucena, professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Málaga, Spain. Here he speaks of his research into the philosophy of biology and technology.
Oi. My clever blog post title generator is not really jelling this morning (the unArtificial quasiIntelligence needs more coffee).
The VHS tape for #ReclaimOpen 2023 has reached the end spool, and people are dusting their blogs off to reflect on the tri-part questions of the Open Web: How We Got There, Where We Are, and We Could Go. I was not on the ground there and only caught bits on reruns (apparently my generated spawn crashed the scene).
From Jon Udell’s post in Mastodon, I was invigorated by Mo Pelzel’s thoughts on Whence and Whither the Web: Some Thoughts on Reclaim Open, e.g.
…when it comes to appreciating the sheer magic of the hyperlink. To this day I have not lost the sense of wonder about this marvelous invention.
https://morrispelzel.com/uncategorized/whence-and-whither-the-web-some-thoughts-on-reclaim-open/
and teaching me the wonderful concept of anamnesis, — “refers to ‘making present again,’ or experiencing the meaning of past events as being fully present.”
This circles back to something that has been floating as a write worthy topic, and how delightful it is to upend and bend around what you thinks is right. Let a new tape roll.
Ages ago (months) amongst noticing the drying up of colleagues blog posts in my reader and noticing how many were sharing their content in the various social spaces, I was bit taken back. Many resources I saw being created, activities, collections of things, that I typically would have thought people would publish as good ole durable web pages or something in a blog powered platform– were, arggh, shared as Google Docs.
Docs.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me the use of the shared document. But really, it is the marginal evolution of the Word Processor. I know why people reach for them – it’s easy to use (who wants to WRITE HTML??) (me), it publishes to the web, and its the environment their work places them for large chunks of the day.
Yet, the creation of doc hosted web pages rings of “being on the web but not of the web” (Have you ever done view source on a Google doc?, can you really grasp the content and meaning it’s un-HTML a melange of JavaScript?). Here’s some beef:
FreshRSS https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pGhX4uWZLJYsyo78nAydlZQ10Z8rBT-QutlYZXugly4U/edit?usp=sharing You cannot even foresee what the link leads to from its URL, not its source (e.g. a domain name) nor any kind of file name that suggests its relevant. I thought I had more. But when I think of the Open Web as the place of where we “got there”, is a Web of Documents really going to be anything more than a google sized pile of free floating papers, only findable by… its search? Is this just on the web but not very web like in spirit?
Yeah, I did not really have well developed case there, just some disgruntlement and seeing an increasing abandonment of creating web content as the kind of web content I know and love, the kind you can inspect as source and learn something or understand how it is constructed.
Hence the blog post never congealed.
I did a complete turn around on my chewing of sour web games when I stumbled across this piece on The Doc Web, published in some thing called “Lens” (c.f. the web as an infinite space that seems to be boundless), even filed in a section called Escape the Algorithm “Remote corners of the internet—through the eyes of its finest explorers” That speaks to me as a rabbit holer.
This article completely undermined my so called “beef”
?No one would mistake a word processor for the front page of the internet, not unless their computer is nothing more than a typewriter. A hammer is not a portal, and Google Docs, the word processor of our time, is nothing more than a hammer to the nail of language. Right?
https://lensmag.xyz/story/the-doc-web
Slow down. Google Docs may wear the clothing of a tool, but their affordances teem over, making them so much more. After all, you’re reading this doc right now, and as far as I know I’m not using a typewriter, and you’re not looking over my shoulder. This doc is public, and so are countless others. These public docs are web pages, but only barely — difficult to find, not optimized for shareability, lacking prestige. But they form an impossibly large dark web, a web that is dark not as a result of overt obfuscation but because of a softer approach to publishing. I call this space the “doc web,” and these are its axioms.
It’s Axioms knock down my disdain bit by bit. What I saw as a negative in the obfuscation of the web address at foretelling its content, hits on the magic of storytelling, with the element of surprise. An invitation to explore without knowing what’s ahead. And it really range true with the fantastic linked list of examples in Axiom 5, where it shows you the fantastic ways some utterly creative souls have subverted the usual “documentness” of the way 99.9% of use use Google Docs (like ye olde Word Processor) and have created some insanely enjoyable web corners.
Just glance:
I leave it for you to discover, but these are mind blowing examples of web ingenuity subverting the document concept:
I love this kind of stuff. This shows that despite the age of our algorithmic AI wielding web T-Rex’s, there are all kinds of creative mammal scurrying around in the web underbrush.
I can dig this Web of Docs.
Speaking of the web that was- we always talked about the web as “pages” (skeuomorphing as much as “dialing” a phone) — the construct of them with formatting “tags” is very much taken from the old document producing methods that pre-date the web.
And smack my own head in memories- it very much was the need for “publishing” documents in a shared format got me on the web in 1993. In my work then at the central faculty development office at the Maricopa Community Colleges, I was eager to provide across our large system means for people to yes, share resources, but also, our published journal which had been going out in campus mail on paper.
I was driven then to find digital ways to share so much information I saw in paper. And while we had a system wide shared AppleTalk network for mac users, half of the system was on Windows PCs. Until late 1993, I had been making a lot of effort to make resources available on a Gopher server (a Mac II plugged into the network).
I went through some extraordinary (and laborious) efforts once to publish our journal as a HypeCard stack and convert it with some app to Toolbook (which ran on windows). It worked… but was really ugly to do.
In that time I had come across the early text based World Wide Web (as it had to be said them) browsers, you’d have to enter a number on a command line to follow a hyperlink, and most of what I saw was papers of some physics lab in Switzerland. It was not “clicking” yet.
Then, like many lightning bolts I had, a wise figure intervened. In October 1993 I was visiting Phoenix College for a tech showcase event, and a great colleague named Jim Walters, very wizard like, handing me a floppy disc upon which he had written “MOSAIC”. All he said was, “Hey Alan, you like the internet, try this.”
This was always a powerful lesson- Jim was not trying to techsplain to me or show off his vast experience, he handed me an invitation to explore. He made a judgement call that this might be of interest.
That of course changed everything. That the web was navigable in this first visual web browser my clicking links, and it included images, even crude audio/video, was a mind opener. And then when I came across the NCSA Guide to HTML. I saw that with a simple text editor, I could create rich media content, that could be connected to other places with this magic href tags– and best of all, it was in a format that both Mac and PC computers could navigate the same content.
In about two weeks of getting that floppy disc, I came across software that would let me run a public web server from a Mac SE/30 plugged into an ethernet port on my office, and I was off on this journey.
And the bigger light was, yes, I had some know how to set up a web server, but the fact that web pages crafted in HTML could actually be shared on floppy discs or local media, meant that I could help faculty learn to create their own web media documents, etc, becoming maybe my first somewhat successful web project beyond my institution, Writing HTML.
And that still rings to me, here 30 years after my first web server, that the act of writing the web, not just clicking buttons in an interface, or at least conceptually understanding how the href tag works, is the magic light in all the mix.
The very fact, that through mostly a tactile act of writing a tag, I can create a linked connection from my blog here, to say Mo’s post is completely what the open web was and still is about.
The link. And Writing Links is an act of generosity for both the linkee and the reader.
A web of Documents or the Doc Web? It does not matter, it’s all webbed.
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Republicans don’t seem to care that Ronald Reagan once starred in a film that featured a prominent drag scene or that Rudy Giuliani did a skit in drag with Donald Trump.
Suddenly, they’re trying to ban or restrict drag performances in at least 15 states, with bills so broadly worded that advocates warn they could be used not only to prosecute drag performers, but also transgender people who dare to simply exist in public.
These bans are part of a cynical campaign to demonize the LGBTQ+ community. MAGA politicians are stoking fear over imaginary dangers to distract from how their policies only help themselves and their wealthy donors.
In the first half of 2023 alone, Republicans across the nation introduced a record number of bills to strip away freedoms and civil rights from LGBTQ+ Americans, largely targeting transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
By banning gender affirming care for minors, GOP lawmakers are effectively practicing medicine without a license — overruling the guidance of doctors, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. And they’re lying about what gender affirming care even is.
Genital surgery, for instance, is rarely, if ever, done under the age of 18. It’s not even all that common for adults. Politicians like Ron DeSantis are lying about it to scare people.
And the Republican presidential frontrunner has made it clear that trans people have no place in his vision of America.
MAGA lawmakers and pundits falsely claim trans people and drag performers are a danger to children and the public at large, when there is no evidence at all to support that. None. Trans people are in fact four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime.
These scare tactics are dangerous. Recent analysis found a 70% increase in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ Americans between 2020 and 2021, as the surge of these bills began. And that’s only counting hate crimes that get reported. 2020 and 2021 each set a new record for the number of trans people murdered in America.
The cruelest irony is that these Republican bills pretending to protect children actually put some of the most vulnerable children at greater risk. LGBTQ+ kids are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide, especially transgender children. Gender-affirming care reduces that risk. That is why it is life-saving.
Don’t Say Gay laws strip away potentially life-saving support. A teacher discussing sexual orientation and gender identity won’t turn a straight kid gay. But it will make an LGBTQ+ student 23% less likely to attempt suicide.
The tragic truth is that Don’t Say Gay Laws and health care bans will cause more young lives to be needlessly lost.
If Republicans really cared about protecting kids, they’d focus on gun violence, now the leading cause of death for American children. If they were really worried about children undergoing life-altering medical procedures, they wouldn’t pass abortion bans that force teens to give birth or risk back-alley procedures.
What the GOP’s vendetta against the LGBTQ+ community really is, is a classic authoritarian tactic to vilify already marginalized people. They’re trying to stoke so much paranoia and hatred that we don’t notice how they are consolidating power and wealth into the hands of a ruling few.
We need to see this attack on LGBTQ+ Americans for what it is: a threat to all of our human rights.
You’ve probably heard that everyone is “paid what they’re worth.” Don’t buy it.
According to this mythology, workers at the bottom are “unskilled” and don’t deserve more than what they currently earn.
Minimum wage workers at McDonald’s are paid what they are worth in the so-called “free market.” If they were worth more, they’d earn more.
By the same logic, the CEO of McDonald’s is worth his multi-million dollar compensation package.
The notion that people are paid what they’re “worth” is by now so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that many who earn very little assume it’s their own fault that they don’t earn more. That they simply lack the skills they need to be paid more.
But there’s no such thing as unskilled workers. Only underpaid workers. Their productivity — that is the value of what they produce — has been growing for decades. The problem is that their wages haven’t kept pace with their productivity.
The “paid what you’re worth” mythology also lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing can be done to change what people are paid. It’s simply the way the market works.
Meanwhile, according to this same view, CEOs who rake in tens of millions and Wall Street traders who rake in hundreds of millions, are simply being paid what they’re “worth” because that’s what the market has dictated.
Rubbish. The “paid what you’re worth” fairytale ignores power and disregards policies that have made inequality skyrocket. Like the demise of antitrust enforcement, which has given big corporations the power to set prices, make record profits, and reward their CEOs unprecedented compensation. This fairytale ignores the attacks on labor unions that have reduced union membership from over a third of all private-sector workers in the 1950s to just 6 percent today. All of this resulting in a massive shift in power and wealth from workers to owners.
Those at the top justify their staggering wealth, and they’re “worth,” three ways:
The first is trickle-down economics. They claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs. Just wait for it… But as we know, wealth at the top has soared for decades and nothing has trickled down.
The second is the “free market.” They talk about market forces beyond their control. But remember, markets are created by rules. These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. The political power of the wealthy has let them change the rules for their own benefit — busting unions, monopolizing industries, and reaping big tax cuts.
The third is the idea that they’re superior human beings. Sure, they may be talented but this doesn’t justify the staggering amount of wealth they are now taking home. Nor does it justify the amount of wealth they will pass down to heirs. The biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history will occur over the next 25 years as the richest 1.5% of Americans hand down roughly some $36 trillion dollars to their children and grandchildren. That doesn’t make those heirs superior. It makes them lucky.
The reality is there’s no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. Or for how little people are paid at the bottom.
The “paid what you’re worth” myth has proven to be a cruelly effective way to put the blame on workers for not getting ahead — while giving the rich and powerful cover to rig the game for their own benefit.
It is distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people while millions of Americans struggle to get by.
Don’t fall for it.
Matt and Sam explore the “crisis of masculinity” in America through books on the subject by Senator Josh Hawley and Harvard political theorist Harvey Mansfield.
“Bresee helps the youth and those who are most disadvantaged. Serving Koreatown, a primarily Hispanic community, and advocate for the need of bringing peace to our community. By focusing on the youth, Bresee is able to build a better future where everyone is given equal opportunities and leads them to a successful future.” – Youth... Read more »
The post A Holistic College and Career Readiness Practice appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
Missing from most history books is a key moment leading to the culture wars now ripping through American politics.
In 1970, hundreds of construction workers pummeled around 1,000 student demonstrators in New York City — including two of my friends. The “Hard Hat Riot,” as it came to be known, ushered in an era of cynical fear-mongering aimed at dividing the nation.
The student demonstrators were protesting the Vietnam War and the deadly shooting of four student activists at Kent State University that occurred just days before.
The workers who attacked them carried American flags and chanted, “USA, All the way,” and “America, love it or leave it.” They chased the students through the streets — attacking those who looked like hippies with their hard hats and steel-toed boots.
When my friends in the anti-war movement called to tell me about the riot later that day, I was stunned. Student activists and union workers duking it out in the streets over the war? I mean for goodness’ sake, weren’t we on the same side?
According to reports, the police did little to stop the mayhem. Some even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hardhats moved menacingly toward the action, a patrolman apparently shouted: “Give ’em hell, boys. Give ’em one for me!”
The construction workers then marched toward a barely-protected City Hall. Why? Because the mayor’s staff had lowered the American flag in honor of the Kent State dead. In a scene eerily foreshadowing the January 6th Capitol Riots, they pushed their way towards the building.
Fearing the mob would break in, city officials raised the flag.
The hard hats also ripped down the Red Cross banner that was hanging at nearby Trinity Church. They stormed a Pace University building, smashing lobby windows with their tools and beating students and professors.
Around 100 people were wounded that day, many of whom were college students. Several police officers were also hurt. Six people were reportedly arrested, but only one construction worker.
My friends escaped injury but they were traumatized.
The Hard Hat Riot had immediate political consequences. It was, in my opinion, a seminal moment in America’s culture wars.
Then President Richard Nixon exploited the riot for political advantage. His administration had been working on a “blue collar strategy” to shift white working-class voters to the Republican Party.
“Thank God for the hard hats,” Nixon exclaimed when he heard about the riot.
But rather than passing pro-labor policies to court workers, which would go against the values of the pro-business Republican Party, Nixon sought to use cultural issues like patriotism and support for the troops to drive a wedge between factions of the Democratic Party.
Nixon invited union leaders, some of whom were involved in the riot, to the White House. They presented Nixon with a hard hat inscribed with “Commander in Chief”and an American flag pin. Nixon praised the union workers as, “people from Middle America who still have character, and guts, and a bit of patriotism.”
Nixon’s strategy to use the Hard Hat Riot to appeal to blue collar voters paid off. In his 1972 re-election campaign against the anti-war Democrat George McGovern, he secured a victory with ease and gained the majority of votes from organized labor – the only time in modern history a Republican presidential candidate accomplished such a feat.
The Hard Hat Riot revealed a deep fracture in the coalition of workers and progressives that FDR had knitted together in the 1930s, and the later alliance of Black Americans, liberals, and blue-collar whites that led to Lyndon Johnson’s landslide re-election in 1964.
The mostly white construction workers who attacked the demonstrators had felt abandoned — and forgotten – as the Civil Rights movement rightfully took hold. They felt stiffed by the clever college kids with draft deferments, and burdened by an economy no longer guaranteeing upward mobility.
The class and race based tensions that Nixon exploited would worsen over the next half century.
I witnessed this when I was secretary of labor during the Clinton Administration. I spent much of my time in the Midwest and other parts of the country where blue-collar workers felt abandoned in an economy dominated by Wall Street. I saw their anger and resentment. I heard their frustrations.
Many Democrats, whether they will admit it or not, have not done enough to respond as Republicans have destroyed unions, exacerbated economic inequality through trickle-down nonsense, tried to gut just about every social safety net we have – and stood in the way of practically every effort to use the power of government to help working people.
Today, the right is trying to channel that same anger and violence against the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ community, particularly drag queens and transgender people, and whatever they consider “woke.”
It is the same cynical ploy to instill a fear of “the other” as a means to distract from the oppression and looting being done by the oligarchs who dominate so much of our economy and our politics.
As such, today we face the same questions we faced in 1970:
Will we finally recognize that we have more in common with each other than those who seek to divide us for political and economic gain?
Can we unite in solidarity, and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared by all?
I truly believe that we still can.
Your department or college may be able to pay for your participation in ANY Professor Is In work, including our formal programs, as well as editing of your professionalization/job search/tenure documents. What follows is context and scripts for asking your department to fund your participation in Unstuck: The Art of Productivity and The Art of the Academic Article, and/or The Professor Is In Pre-Tenure Coaching Group, but you can use it to ask for any kind of professional development or program improvement support. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected] for more help!
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Your department might pay for your enrollment in this course, and the only you will find out is to ask. Don’t be afraid. Department heads get requests for funding all of the time. There is nothing shameful about it. In fact, learning how to ask is great practice for the rest of your career.
The best way to loosen the departmental purse strings is to show the money is going to solve a problem the department head considers worth solving.
So what problem does the course solve?
You also have to show the stakes of not solving the problem.
Stating the problem and stakes is not enough. You also have to show why this particular thing you are asking to be funded will solve the problem.
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Here is an example email that you can use to approach your dean, department head or PI to make the request that the course be funded. NOTE: IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU DO NOT USE THESE EXAMPLES VERBATIM, AS WE HAVE THOUSANDS OF READERS AND CLIENTS, MANY IN THE SAME DEPARTMENTS. WE SUGGEST YOU SLIGHTLY REPHRASE THE MODELS BELOW IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
>Dear <administrator>
I have an opportunity to enroll in a coaching program designed for academics to
//produce a full draft of journal article in 10 weeks
//support my success on the tenure track
//help me complete my research and writing for tenure
>and I am requesting departmental support to cover the costs. The course is being offered by The Professor is In, a career services organizations with well-documented and unparalleled success since 2011 in assisting academics in all phases of their careers.
>The benefit of
// The Art of the Academic Article, over other programs, is not only the extensive experience of the two coaches offering guidance but also the ongoing access to the online material. I will be able to use the course material for not just this article, but all future ones as well.
//The Professor Is In Pre-Tenure Coaching Group is that it provides individualized, confidential small group coaching as I confront the challenges of mapping out a publication trajectory, establishing an effective writing schedule, managing a sustainable balance of research, teaching, and service, managing the demands of conferencing and networking, and grasping the elements of a successful tenure case (including the role of external reviewers) to support my success in that arduous process.
>As we have discussed,
//I have XX articles in progress that are necessary/would improve my third year review/tenure review/post doc production/chances of success on the job market. This course would assure that I produce xx articles in the next year. It also increases my chances of publication in the mostly highly ranked journals because it includes instruction on positioning both in terms of discipline and journal rank.
//I have an active research program underway, while also being dedicated to effective teaching and productive service to the department. This coaching program will give me the support of Dr. Karen Kelsky- who has not only been a dedicated academic development coach since 2011, but is also a former R1 department head who in that role mentored 5 junior faculty to tenure – and a small group of peers who can together serve as a sounding board for decisions I need to make about publishing strategies, writing timelines, teaching dilemmas, and work-life balance – to name just a few topics the group covers. The program will assure that I avoid common pitfalls and focus my time and effort most effectively toward eventual tenure success in a way that is *individualized* for our specific field, department and campus expectations.
>The next session of the course starts on XXXX. Please let me know if you are willing to support this effort and I will purchase and submit the receipt for reimbursement/contact accounting to arrange payment.
OR [another style of approach- adapt as you see fit!]
As we have discussed, one of the critical components of raising the profile of our department is to increase faculty publications and the quality of those publications. This course would assure that I produce xx articles in the next year. It also increases my chances of publication in the mostly highly ranked journals because it includes instruction on positioning both in terms of discipline and journal rank.
It is no secret that balancing research, service and teaching is a challenge for all junior faculty here at xx. With this course, I will have the resources to achieve the balance required for success. With your support, I will be able to avoid common problems like false starts, writer’s block, and perfectionism, while assuring I choose the best journals to target, and submit a draft to a strong journal in an efficient time frame.
The next session of the course starts on XXXX. Please let me know if you are willing to support this effort and I will purchase and submit the receipt for reimbursement/contact accounting to complete the registration/ xxx
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The positive benefits of youth interacting with technology are often ignored while the negatives are emphasized. It’s time for that to change. In a commitment to this effort, the Connected Learning Alliance, along with the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine, are excited to share the new Connected Wellbeing Initiative with the... Read more »
The post The Connected Wellbeing Initiative: Building Understanding and Action Regarding Teens’ Technology Use and Their Mental Health appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
Corporations are bringing back child labor in America.
And some Republicans want to make it easier for them to get away with it.
Since 2015, child labor violations have risen nearly 300%. And those are just the violations government investigators have managed to uncover and document.
The Department of Labor says it’s currently investigating over 600 cases of illegal child labor in America. Major American companies like General Mills, Walmart, and Ford have all been implicated.
Why on Earth is this happening? The answer is frighteningly simple: greed.
Employers have been having difficulty finding the workers they need at the wages they are willing to pay. Rather than reduce their profits by paying adult workers more, employers are exploiting children.
The sad fact of the matter is that many of the children who are being exploited are considered to be “them” rather than “us” because they’re disproportionately poor and immigrant. So the moral shame of subjecting “our” children to inhumane working conditions when they ought to be in school is quietly avoided.
And since some of these children (or their parents) are undocumented, they dare not speak out or risk detention and deportation. They need the money. This makes them easily exploitable.
It’s a perfect storm that’s resulting in vulnerable children taking on some of the most brutal jobs.
Folks, we’ve seen this before.
Reformers fought to establish the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 for a reason — to curb the grotesque child labor seen during America’s first Gilded Age.
The U.S. banned most child labor.
But now, pro-business trade groups and their Republican lackeys are trying to reverse nearly a century of progress, and they’re using the so-called “labor shortage” as their excuse.
Arkansas will no longer require 14 and 15 year olds to get a work permit before taking a job — a process that verified their age and required permission from a parent or guardian.
A bill in Ohio would let children work later on school nights.
Minnesota Republicans are pushing to let 16 year-olds work in construction.
And 14-year-olds in Iowa may soon be allowed to take certain jobs in meatpacking plants and operate dangerous machinery.
It’s all a coordinated campaign to erode national standards, making it even easier for companies to profit off children.
Across America, we’re witnessing a resurgence of cruel capitalism in which business lobbyists and lawmakers justify their actions by arguing that they are not exploiting the weak and vulnerable, but rather providing jobs for those who need them and would otherwise go hungry or homeless.
Conveniently, these same business lobbyists and lawmakers are often among the first to claim we “can’t afford” stronger safety nets that would provide these children with safe housing and adequate nutrition.
So what can stop this madness?
First: Fund the Department of Labor so it can crack down on child labor violations. When I was Secretary of Labor, the department was chronically underfunded and understaffed. It still is, because lawmakers and their corporate backers want it that way.
Second: Increase fines on companies that break child labor laws. Current fines are too low, and are treated as costs of doing business by hugely profitable companies that violate the law.
Third: Hold major corporations accountable. Many big corporations contract with smaller companies that employ children, which allows the big corporations to play dumb and often avoid liability. It’s time to demand that large corporations take responsibility for their supply chains.
Fourth: Reform immigration laws so undocumented children aren’t exploited.
And lastly: Organize. Fight against state laws that are attempting to bring back child labor.
Are corporate profits really more important than the safety of children?
The post Trans on the Job Market: a Crowdsource Post appeared first on The Professor Is In.
“As a child that’s one thing that my parents really instilled in us as children is to know who you are and identify with what is most connected to you…We are Black people. We are of African descent. That is the culture. That’s how I was raised. That’s what I know. That’s who I am.... Read more »
The post Timbuk2 – Anchored in a Historical Legacy of Care and Spirituality appeared first on Connected Learning Alliance.
Should someone else’s vote count more than yours?
For 80% of Americans, that’s exactly what’s happening. Their vote for president isn’t nearly as valuable as the vote of someone in a so-called “swing state.” Why?
Most of us live in states that have become so predictably Democratic or Republican that we’re taken for granted by candidates. Presidential elections now turn on the dwindling number of swing states that could go either way, which gives voters in those states huge leverage.
The 2020 election came down to just over 40,000 votes spread across just three swing states.
2016 came down to fewer than 80,000 votes also across three states.
In those elections, the national popular vote wasn’t that close. In fact, in the last five elections, the winners of the popular vote beat their opponents by an average of 5 million votes.
The current state-by-state, electoral college system of electing presidents is creating ever-closer contests in an ever-smaller number of closely divided states for elections that aren’t really that close.
Not only that, but these razor-thin swing state margins can invite post-election recounts, audits, and lawsuits — even attempted coups. A losing candidate might be able to overturn 40,000 votes with these techniques. Overturning 5 million votes would be nearly impossible.
The current system presents a growing threat to the peaceful transition of power.
It also strips us of our individual power. If you’re a New York Republican or an Alabama Democrat, presidential candidates have little incentive to try and win your vote under the current system. They don’t need broad popular support as much as a mobilized base in a handful of swing states. Campaigning to a smaller and more radical base is also leading to uglier, more divisive campaigns.
And it’s become more and more likely that candidates are elected president without winning the most votes nationwide. It’s already happened twice this century.
Now, fixing the Electoral College should be the ultimate goal. But this requires a constitutional amendment — which is almost impossible to pull off because it would need a two-thirds vote by Congress plus approval by three-quarters of all state legislatures.
But, in the meantime, there’s an alternative — and it starts with getting our states to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Don’t let that mouthful put you off. It could save our democracy.
This compact would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes nationwide WITHOUT a constitutional amendment.
How does it work?
The Constitution assigns each state a number of electors equal to its number of representatives and senators. As of now, the total number of electors is 538. So anyone who gets 270 or more of those Electoral College votes becomes president.
Article 2 of the Constitution allows state legislatures to award their electors any way they want.
So all that’s needed is for states with a total of at least 270 electoral votes to agree to award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.
The movement to do this is already underway. 15 states and the District of Columbia have joined the compact, agreeing that once enough states join, all their electoral votes will go to the popular vote winner.
Together, states in the compact have 195 electoral votes. So we just need a few more states with at least 75 electors to join the compact and it’s done.
Popular vote laws have recently been introduced in Michigan [15 electors] and Minnesota [10 electors], which if passed, would bring the total to 220.
Naturally, this plan will face legal challenges. There are a lot of powerful interests who stand to benefit by maintaining the current system.
But if we keep up the fight and get enough states on board, America will never again elect a president who loses the national popular vote. No longer would 80 percent of us be effectively disenfranchised from presidential campaigns. And a handful of votes in swing states would no longer determine the winner — inviting recounts, audits, litigation, and attempted coups that threaten our democracy.
If you want to know more or get involved, click this link to read about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
If your state is not already a member, I urge you to contact your state’s senators and reps to get your state on board.
For my second marathon, I ran Boston. I had planned to run the Chicago Marathon in October, but I ran too long through a hamstring injury and ended up having to take off for about eight to ten weeks. I remember being thrilled to come just a little bit close to my marathon pace at the Thanksgiving Drumstick Dash in Indianapolis. My first ten miler was January 1 and I was slow. I ended up with a training block I could be proud of, but I only had time (in terms of weeks to build up and before the race) to get in two 20- or 22-mile long runs. This season I added heavy lifting twice a week, which helped with rehab and with those Boston hills. Because of the injury, I was slow in my recovery and long runs through the whole block. I saw myself running paces I had never seen before, dipping at times to about three minutes or more off my MGP. I was delighted to hear Nell Rojas say on the Running Rogue podcast that she often does long runs and recovery runs at 3+ her MGP. But it did kind of get in my head. I was still generally hitting paces in workouts, but I don’t think they were quite at the same intensity and it often took more reps to get to the target pace. All this to say, it was a return-from-injury training cycle. I knew that. But also, at the same time, last July, I couldn’t quite see myself in Chicago. Even before the injury took a bad turn, I didn’t see it. But I did see myself in Boston. My teammate from Rogue’s She Squad, Colleen Reutebuch gave me a book, 26.2 to Boston: A Journey into the Heart of the Boston Marathon, when I qualified at CIM. Each chapter is the history and the terrain of each mile. When I read it, I could see myself there. I read it again this winter as well as every other podcast I could get my hand on that described the feel of the race and I could continue to see myself running those streets from Hopkinton to Boyleston.
I had a race plan that I thought was doable, but aggressive. I didn’t quite nail it, but I did BQ at Boston. And now I’m processing what I experienced and what I learned.
One lesson I learned is, for the love of all that is good and true, Adriel, pay for the race hotel and stop being so darn cheap. You may recall that my Airbnb canceled on me 28 hours before I was supposed to leave for Sacramento ahead of my first marathon. This time the problems with the place I reserved on Expedia, but which turned out to be run by an independent group off of VRBO. Everything that could have been a problem with it was. First of all, Expedia told me I could check in relatively early, and I still have the screenshot that says that, but the place said it was non-negotiable that check-in was at 3. Since I was coming in on Saturday I was concerned that I wouldn’t really have the time to relax that I wanted. I did eventually get them to agree to honor the 1 pm time. But when I got there — or, I should say, when I got to the shady sitch that was a series of boxes with keys about 3/4 of a mile from the place — I did not have access to the key until 3. Then I had to walk over to the place, which was near Boston Commons. I mean, was it cheap? Yes, for the location. Was it a good deal? No. The first night, which would have been two nights before the marathon and so maybe the most important night of sleep, the bar two doors down was loud until 2 and I could not sleep. And then someone who lives in the apartment complex sat on the steps outside my little apartment until 1 talking to his family — they were all on Facetime so it wasn’t even just like one half of a conversation — until 1 AM. Anyway, I didn’t sleep. Also, the shower dripped the whole night and the A/C was broken so it was not comfortable and maybe bordering on torturous.
I flew out on Saturday morning. A lot of people on my flight from Indianapolis to Boston were wearing running gear and many of them were wearing their previous years’ Boston Marathon jackets. I asked a woman sitting across from me in the waiting area if she was running the race and she turned out to live in my neighborhood and run with Indy Runners. She also ended up being on my flight back. I gave her my number and I hope we can run together. I went straight to the race expo with my suitcase, which they had dogs sniff out. The race expo was very crowded. The line to just get into the Adidas shop snaked through the huge room. I did wait in line for the recovery legs, which they let people sit in for 15 minutes and that was well worth it. I would buy them if they weren’t $800. I walked over to Newberry where the pop-up shops were and caught a Lyft to the key pick-up place and then went to my apartment. I don’t want to talk about the apartment anymore. I tried to put aside the negative vibes and not complain. I went and had some gluten-free pasta at a nearby restaurant. Then I walked back and watched some tv and tried to sleep and may or may not have slept.
Sunday I went to meet up with the Rogue Running folks for a shake-out run along the Charles and then to go take a photo at the Finish Line. I finally met Chris McClung in person, after listening to every single one of the Running Rogue episodes. I appreciated how welcoming the Rogue folks are. I felt like Chris thought of all the athletes there as important to the Rogue family, and I appreciated that. (I was training with a virtual group, but now I’m training one-on-one with a Rogue coach, which maybe feels sometimes less like being on a team, which I miss.)
I went back and showered and then met up with a philosophy friend who I also talked into coming out to cheer for me since she has lived in Boston for eight years or something and is about to leave and never went to watch the Marathon and now she knew someone running it. I’m glad she went because she ended up being the only one of the three people I knew who were cheering for me who saw me.
We had a nice long leisurely brunch and then I went to the Fairfield Copley for a pep talk with the Rogue team. Chris talked about the stories of people who had run the Boston marathon for someone or something bigger than themselves from Bobbi Gibb to Meb Keflezighi. He gave some advice, not all of which I can remember now. One thing stuck with me and kept coming back to me during the race: connect to the course. He meant that in all its valences: the fans, the history, but also, and what I kept thinking about as I was running it, the feel of the roads and the hills. Chris also told me to avoid walking around too much and to jog if I needed to get places, which is why I decided to take the T even for short distances.
I went back to where I was staying and then had an early dinner at a place around the corner — steak frittes with some vegetables. That’s become my pre-marathon meal. Turns out carb loading the night before a race doesn’t really work — to really carb load you have to do it with significant amounts the week before and really you should be getting significant carbohydrates through the training cycle. So I went back to where I was and talked to my coach who was very encouraging. She reminded me of successes in my training and shared her confidence in my ability to follow the race plan. My race plan had me about thirty seconds off my goal pace for the early miles that are mostly downhill, but also not fighting back on the downhills, and then steady cruising at marathon pace through miles 5 to 16, backing off the pace through the Newton hills and then trying to crush getting closer to half marathon goal pace in the final miles. The weather report said no rain through the race so we talked about whether to wear the hat I had just bought and decided against it. I’d regret that when it rained hard for forty-five minutes in the middle of the race, but at the time, I believed the weather report, and I don’t love to have extra pressure around my head.
So I went to bed hopeful, picturing myself feeling good and relaxed and ready. I didn’t really get to sleep for awhile because the place was warm. I eventually got out of bed at around 5:45 AM, got dressed, including in my thrift store sweatpants and the sweatshirt I got from that St. Patty’s Day run that read: Beer and Running, my favorite things. Then I made my oatmeal and walked over to the T which I took to the buses that held the gear check. I checked my post-race sweatshirt and sweatpants and walked over a block to Commonwealth to take a Lyft to the busses. Rogue teams up with someone who charters buses with toilets that you can sit on after you get to Hopkinton. So I went to the buses, which leave from the Cambridge side of the Charles. I was a bit early so I walked over to the Hyatt to get a cup of coffee, which I was very glad to find. I had forgotten to bring my caffeinated nuun so I only had regular sports nuun. I brought some bottles of water and I ate one of the Ucan bars on the bus about an hour before I had to move toward the Athlete’s Village. I met a woman from DC who was a delightful seat partner on the way to Hopkinton. She had the opposite trajectory that I had: she was in a Ph.D. program in Italian literature before switching to work in politics. We both brought the same issue of the New Yorker to read on the bus, but spent most of the time talking about running. I love how running connects people who are strangers around an activity that is somewhat absurd and hard, that challenges us and thereby produces a common bond. The best runners keep themselves open to that bond. I’m learning about myself that I can be shy and uncomfortable in social situations in a way that can make me distant and unconnected, but a little bit of openness can turn into real connection.
Long hard races require you to have a clear sense of purpose. What’s your why? people ask. During the pandemic running was an outlet, a project, something to focus on, and eventually, a way of pushing my edge, of learning what I was capable of. That’s a huge part of what it continues to be for me, but over the course of the last eighteen months it has become about experiencing myself as a whole person. In the Fall of 2021 my mother had some serious health issues that made her mortality and my own real to me. She’s ok now, but during that time I would go for runs and cry through the run. I’d come home and my husband would ask me how I was doing and I would say, I’m fine. I didn’t think I was trying to hide my feelings, I just didn’t know how to share them. Soon after I began seeing an EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapist to work on being more connected to my emotions and more capable of sharing them. I didn’t go to the therapist for the EMDR, she just happened to be a specialist in EMDR. EMDR is typically used for people suffering from PTSD. When the therapist told me that, I told her that I didn’t really have any trauma. Apparently, this is a common conversation I have with therapists because my last therapist told me I had high anxiety and I told her I didn’t think I was anxious. There must be a special class in which they train therapists not to laugh. She suggested that lowkey trauma from childhood is the source of the coping mechanisms people develop. We spent some time talking about the moments from my youth that I thought significant especially around my view of what it means to feel and to have feelings. Then we worked with the EMDR strategies to revisit those moments and reprogram them in my mind. If this sounds goofy, trust, I was a little uncomfortable about it at first, but whoa, it really did work. It shifted something in me and made me more comfortable having tears and feelings and sitting with them instead of running from them.
What’s running have to do with this? Running was a place for me to work on feeling. I listened to a podcast episode about the Boston Marathon where the podcasters talked about getting motivation from the spectators and it made me cry as I was driving to campus one day. And when after the race I went to the Rogue happy hour and Chris asked me how I felt about it, I let myself get choked up at my disappointment. Rogue Running describes its missions as, Connecting, challenging and inspiring each other to become better humans through running and yeah, I think they’re on to something. So I was open to the person who sat down next to me and was rewarded by conversation and fellow feeling.
I got off the bus by myself at about 10. My start time was 10:50. By the time I got over to the Athlete’s Village, I had time to go to the bathroom and they were already beginning to move people to the start line – 10:20 was the opening window for the 10:50 starters to move. So I started walking over as it began to drizzle and then at the start line I went to the bathroom again and peeled off my thrift store sweats and accidentally also peeled off my headband and gave that to the donations too. I didn’t realize until I started the race that I didn’t have it! It turned out to be fine because the rain just matted my hair down. I was a little behind my corral and maybe that is why the first mile was even slower than I had planned. I ate a salted peanut Ucan bar just before starting.
The start was a little anti-climactic. There isn’t a separate gun for each group. All of sudden, you are at the start line and then you are crossing and then you are running THE BOSTON MARATHON. It was a little unreal. People talk about the Boston Marathon as this lifetime goal, as an ideal, as something that exceeds mundane existence. But you know what? The Boston Marathon is a set of roads through eight towns in Massachusetts. The roads themselves are not magical or ideal. They are just roads. Realizing this made me have more belief that I could do it. For the first miles, I didn’t hold back too much but I also didn’t push. I started with nuun in two small water bottles and so I skipped the first water stations which were a little hectic. I was right where I wanted to be by mile 7. The crowds were amazing all the way along. I knew the family of a friend was looking out for me in the first several miles so I was looking out for them, but then at one point a woman yelled my name, which I had spelled in medical tape on my singlet, and I was like, hey, that’s me, and she looked at me very strangely and I realized we were miscommunicating. She thought she was just saying my name and I thought she was looking for me. I was a little embarassed imagining her recounting the story to other people.
I thought I could get faster between 7 and 16 then I could. On some miles I was under 10 seconds off (6 miles) and then others were under 15 seconds off (3 miles) and a couple were under 20 seconds off (2). That’s not that bad, but I worried about what it meant for my fitness. I thought those middle miles were mostly flat, but they weren’t really at all. The hills weren’t too severe but they were pretty constant rolling hills and that turned out to be harder terrain at which to maintain my HGP than I had thought it would be. I took my second Ucan salted peanut bar at mile 11.
I started looking for my sister and my mom around Wellesley. They thought they were going to be on the left, but most of the crowds were on the right, so I wasn’t sure if they were wrong or if they knew what they were saying to me when they told me left because they wanted to be away from the crowds. For the second marathon my Aftershokz gave out on me about an hour in to the race and the text that I thought would be read to me from them saying they were on the right never came through. I heard the Wellesley scream tunnel about a quarter mile out (people have said you can hear it a mile away, but I don’t think that is true). That’s when I started looking for them and I looked for them through Wellesley into the town but didn’t see them. I was kind of bummed because I had been looking forward to the energy from seeing people cheer from me, and I felt bad that they made the effort and we didn’t connect. It did start to rain pretty hard through Wellesley for — I mean I don’t know it’s hard for me to gauge time in a marathon — I think it was about 45 minutes, which maybe also explains my slowing through those miles. I was pretty soaked and my singlet was sticking to me, which was not particularly comfortable.
I took my first SIS isotonic gel at mile 16. Through the four Newton hills from 16 to 21, I focused on not pushing the hills and then not overdoing the downhill but relaxing into it. I was about 30 seconds off what I thought my slow down pace would be in miles 17 and 18 but only ten seconds off at 19, and then 20 seconds off at 20 and then 50 seconds off at 21 which is Heartbreak Hill. My plan had been to come back down to MGP and then even 20 seconds below MGP at the end, but again it wasn’t really flat as I had hoped, but still rolling. Only one of those miles was under my MGP. I felt pretty strong, though. Then at mile 23, my right quad started to hurt. Those downhills really do a number on you. I was nervous, but I ran through it and the pain dissipated. Turns out that they are right that just because this mile hurts doesn’t mean the rest of the race will. I had other friends around miles 18-19 that didn’t see me. My friend at mile 23 did see me, even though I didn’t see her, but hearing afterward that she saw me felt validating.
The last mile was the fastest. The last half mile was the fastest. I did have a kick. The last half mile was approaching my 10k pace. I was proud of that.
I was under nine minutes off my goal and a little under 6 minutes off my PR. I was disappointed. (In the clip above, if you look over the shoulder of the reporter on the right, you can see me hobbling past talking on a red phone on MSNBC.) I appreciated the well-wishes from family, friends, and colleagues who had been following me on the BAA app. But I was disappointed. I don’t think I realized how much until Chris asked me at the happy hour how I felt and I choked up. When he told me to feel all the feels, it seemed like the lesson of this training cycle. I did feel them. I am proud of myself for another Boston qualifying time, and this time at Boston. But it did not come as easily as CIM did. I wondered if I had pushed my edge through those middle miles. My hamstring never bothered me at all through the whole race, and I was so pleased that it had come through for me. And yet, I thought I had more. I did have some doubts about myself: Did I back off because of fear surrounding my injury? Was I too worried about wanting to finish my first Boston Marathon that I didn’t push myself to the edge of what was possible? I’m not beating myself up here, I’m trying to be honest. I’m trying to think about why the race didn’t go as planned.
I think the heavy lifting helped. The recovery this time was much less painful than after CIM, which might have also been supported by the carbon-plated shoes (New Balance FuelCell Elite v2). I think the fewer ≥20-mile long runs affected my performance. And also, I live in a pretty flat city. I spent some time in hilly neighborhoods, but if I were to run Boston again, I’d run every medium and long run in the hilly neighborhoods.
I appreciate all the people who have told me I should still be proud of this performance. I did keep a pretty steady pace. I was smart about the hills. I finished fast. I think I still have a 3:35 marathon in me. My coach thinks I have a 3:30. I don’t currently want to return to Boston. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it pulled me back eventually.
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atrott01
Republicans are threatening to destroy the economy if President Biden doesn’t give into their demands. But the Fourteenth Amendment gives him the power to stop them.
Republicans are taking advantage of the “debt ceiling” to try to force deep, painful cuts to programs Americans rely on. If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, America might have to default on its bills, destroying the credit of the United States and wiping out millions of jobs.
Remember, raising the debt ceiling isn’t about taking on new debt. It’s about whether America will pay its current debts.
This is a key reason why raising the debt ceiling should not be negotiable.
Ironically, Republicans had no problem raising it three times under Trump, even as they enacted major tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that caused the nation’s debt to soar.
But now, Kevin McCarthy and his band of MAGA radicals say they’ll only raise it in exchange for drastic cuts to health care, education, veterans’ benefits, and more.
My advice to President Biden: Ignore them. Mr. President, your oath to uphold the Constitution takes precedence. And as the supreme law of the land, the Constitution has greater weight than the law on the debt ceiling.
Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment states that, “The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.”
A debt ceiling that prevents the government from honoring its existing financial commitments clearly violates the Constitution.
So, if Republicans threaten the full faith and credit of the United States, you are constitutionally obligated to ignore the debt ceiling, and must continue to pay the nation’s bills.
Should they wish, let the radical Republicans take you to court.
Even the conservatives on the Supreme Court will likely support you. No “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution could read that document differently,
The Constitution makes it clear that Congress’s power to borrow money does not include the power to default on such borrowings.
If Republicans are going to play this game, Mr. President, you need to play hard ball.
On behalf of the Connected Learning Summit Conference Committee, we are pleased to announce the publication of the Proceedings of the 2022 Connected Learning Summit. It is our honor to share with you a proceedings that celebrates participatory, playful, and transformative learning. In 2021, the Connected Learning Summit became a fully online event, supporting inclusive,... Read more »
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We need to make the House of Representatives bigger!
Now I know what some might be thinking: “Make the government bigger?” Well, technically yes. But that’s missing the point. We need to expand the House to make the government work better, and be more responsive to our needs.
Put simply: The House of Representatives does not have enough members to adequately represent all 334 million of us.
Now, the House hasn’t always had 435 members and it was never intended to stay the same size forever. For the first 140 years of America’s existence, a growing House of Reps was actually the norm.
It wasn’t until 1929 that Congress arbitrarily decided to cap the size of the House at 435 members. Back then, each House member represented roughly 200,000 people.
But since then, the population of the United States has more than tripled, bringing the average number of constituents up to roughly 760,000.
Compared to other democracies, we are one of the worst in terms of how many constituents a single legislator is supposed to represent. Only in India does the average representative have more constituents.
And as America continues to grow it’s only going to get worse.
Think your representative doesn’t listen to you now? Just wait.
Not surprisingly, research shows that representatives from more populous House districts tend to be less accessible to their constituents, and less popular.
Thankfully, the solution is simple: allow the House to grow.
Increasing the number of representatives should be a no brainer for at least four reasons:
First, logically, more representatives would mean fewer people in each congressional district — improving the quality of representation.
Second, a larger House would be more diverse. Despite recent progress, today’s House is still overwhelmingly male, white, and middle-aged. More representatives means more opportunities for young people, people of color, and women to run for office — and win.
Third, this reduces the power of Big Money. Running an election in a smaller district would be less expensive, increasing the likelihood that people elect representatives that respond to their interests rather than big corporations and the wealthy.
Fourth, this would help reduce the Electoral College’s bias toward small states in presidential elections. As more heavily populated states gain more representatives in Congress — they also gain more electoral votes.
Now, some might say that a larger House of Representatives would be unwieldy and unmanageable.
Well, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK — countries with smaller populations than us — all have larger legislatures — and they manage just fine.
Others might say that it would be too difficult — or expensive — to accommodate more representatives in the Capitol. “Are there even enough chairs???”
Seriously?
Look, we’ve done it before. The current Capitol has been expanded to accommodate more members several times — and it can be again. A building should not be an obstacle to a more representative democracy.
Increasing the size of the House is an achievable goal.
We don’t even need a constitutional amendment. Congress only needs to pass a law to expand the number of representatives, which it’s done numerous times.
And as it happens, there is a bill — two in fact!
Each would add more than 130 seats to the House and lower the number of constituents a typical representative serves from 761,000 to a little over 570,000. Plus, there is a mechanism for adding new members down the line.
These bills are our best chance to restore the tradition of a House that grows in representation as America grows.
It’s time for us to think big — and make the People’s House live up to its name.
