In the aftermath of a recent high-profile U.S. murder trial, several new studies have found that the controversial self-defence law at the heart of the case, known as “Stand Your Ground”, is being applied differently depending on defendants’ ethnicity.

The new statistics on this racial disparity have come out as the Stand Your Ground laws, which have been passed in nearly three-dozen U.S. states, have come under review at the state and federal level.“We need to work towards building safe communities where all kids can grow up in prosperous environments and not be worried about being gunned down.” -- Paul Graham of the Centre for Community Change

That includes in Florida, the location of the widely viewed trial of a “neighbourhood watch” volunteer named George Zimmerman, who was accused of the murder of an unarmed black teenager named Trayvon Martin.

Zimmerman’s acquittal last month, explained by some jurors as being based largely on the legality of his actions under Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute, outraged broad sections of the country.

The state-level “self-defence” statute was first introduced in 2005, and allows someone who feels threatened to use deadly force against an attacker without first trying to get away. For this reason, the law is also known as “No Duty to Retreat” and, by critics, “Shoot First”, and has been increasingly criticised for escalating rather than mitigating conflict.

Yet according to a new study by the Urban Institute, the application of this law has varied significantly according to the ethnic make-up of both the attacker and the victim.

The shooting of a black person by a white person, for instance, has been found to be justifiable under Stand Your Ground 17 percent of the time. On the other hand, the shooting of a white person by a black person has been found justifiable just slightly over one percent of the time.

In the states that have no such statute, white-on-black shootings were found to be justified about nine percent of the time.

“Stand Your Ground clearly has racial implication in communities of colour and black neighbourhoods,” Paul Graham, with the Ohio Organising Collaborative at the Centre for Community Change, a Washington-based advocacy group, told IPS.

“When you have this kind of disparity and this kind of inequality, it is a devastating blow for all communities.”

Another recent investigation, carried out by the Tampa Bay Times, a Florida newspaper, looked at some 200 Stand Your Ground cases and found that defendants who had killed a black victim went free 73 percent of the time. Yet defendants who killed a white victim went free just 59 percent of the time.

Since 2005, 31 other states have followed Florida’s lead in passing similar laws, while several others are reportedly considering similar legislation. On average, so-called justifiable homicide rose by about eight percent in states with Stand Your Ground laws, amounting to about 600 additional killings.

“We need to work towards building safe communities where all kids can grow up in prosperous environments and not be worried about being gunned down,” Graham says.

Under fire

The Stand Your Ground laws were strongly pushed for by a few high-profile gun-rights groups here, in particular the National Rifle Association (NRA). In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin verdict, these groups have doubled down their support for these laws, including by suggesting that minorities stand the most to gain from such self-defence legislation.

“We all know why it’s come under fire right now, because of that one case in Florida, but that’s just a ruse for attacking self-defence in general,” Erich Pratt, communications director for Gun Owners of America, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“[Changing Stand Your Ground] would adversely affect minorities, if we say that they are not going to be able to defend themselves when they fear for their lives. That’s really what we are talking about.”

Indeed, the Tampa Bay Times study also found that black gunshot victims were more likely than whites to be carrying a weapon when they were killed and were more likely to be committing a crime, such as burglary, at the time of any altercation.

In addition, while blacks make up just 12 percent of the U.S. population, they constitute some 55 percent of its homicide victims, with the majority of those murders committed by other blacks.

Further, black youths have had a high success rate in arguing for justified homicide under Stand Your Ground law in “black-on-black” crimes.

However, there remains significant disparity in the success rate of justified homicide between white defendants and black defendants in white-on-black crimes.

“The bottom line is that it’s really easy for juries to accept that whites had to defend themselves against persons of colour,” said Darren Hutchinson, a law professor and civil rights law expert at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

This evident racial disparity is now strengthening national calls for investigations into Stand Your Ground laws and their application on the ground.

“[I]f a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario … both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different,” President Barack Obama said last month in unusually personal remarks following the Zimmerman acquittal.

“And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these Stand Your Ground laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?”

He continued: “And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.”

Since then, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, a government body, has started an investigation into these laws, while the Senate Judiciary Committee has also stated it would hold hearings on Stand Your Ground in September.

The Florida State Legislature will also be taking another look at the effect, benefits and consequences of the law this fall, the first such move it has made. Still, supporters are girding for a fight.

“I don’t expect that the legislature’s going to move one damn comma,” Matt Gaetz, chairperson of the Florida Criminal Justice Subcommittee and a supporter of the law, said recently. “If the members of the committee support changes, they will be proposed, but nobody can count on my vote.”

The controversial topic of medical cannabis has been put under a microscope after the internationally known neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta came out in support of its use this week.

An ounce of “Green Crack” bought from a dispensary in California. Credit: Coaster420/public domain

In a lengthy opinion piece on CNN, Gupta outlines the benefits of medical cannabis, claims that U.S. citizens have been misled by the government for years, and apologises for his role in that. This reversal of opinions occurred during the yearlong production of his documentary “Weed”, which premiers this Sunday on CNN.

“Gupta literally made a 12 or 13 year turn on this,” the executive director of the advocacy group NORML, Allen St. Pierre, told IPS. “But as a really genuine doctor who is a scientific minded person, he really did want to see the science and let it led him to a different standing.”

The benefits

Illinois is the most recent state to legalise medicinal marijuana, making a total of 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia that allow its medical use. Approval conditions, regulations and quantity limits can vary from state to state.

The federal law enforcement agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), has classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning it has no medical benefit and has a high potential for abuse, with nine to 10 percent of its adult users becoming addicted.

Cocaine, according to the DEA, is less dangerous than marijuana and is a Schedule II drug even though 20 percent of its users become addicted.

“They didn’t have the science to support that claim [of marijuana as a Schedule I drug], and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true,” wrote Gupta in his CNN piece. “It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications.”

Gupta uses Charlotte Figi, a patient in Colorado, as an example of the benefits. She began having seizures soon after birth, and by age three she was having up to 300 a week despite being on seven different prescription medicines. Medicinal cannabis calmed her brain and limited her seizures to two to three times per month.

According to NORML, cannabis is specifically used to alleviate pain from nerve damage, nausea, spasticity, glaucoma and movement disorders. It is also a powerful appetite stimulant, which is beneficial for patients suffering from dementia, HIV and AIDS.

“The government and some of our opponents will say with a straight face that it [medical marijuana] has no utility,” St. Pierre told IPS. “It is cheaper than most pharmaceuticals and can be used for over a dozen aliments. The utility combined with the price makes it hard for them to make a convincing argument.”

A new survey done at the nonprofit organisation The Partnership at Drugfree.org found that 70 percent of respondents support the medical use of marijuana and 50 percent support decriminalisation. Forty percent of respondents supported the legalisation of marijuana altogether.

“Most frightening to me is that someone dies in the United States every 19 minutes from prescription drug overdose, mostly accidental,” Gupta wrote. “It’s a horrifying statistic. As much as I searched, I could not find a documented case of death from a marijuana overdose.”

The consequences

According to a study done in the United Kingdom, people who smoke marijuana regularly tend to produce less dopamine, a feel good chemical in the brain that plays a large role in reward-driven behaviour and motivation. Regular marijuana use can also lead to inflammation in the brain, according to the study, which can affect coordination and learning.

Gupta also admitted in his CNN piece that regular marijuana use in younger and developing brains can lead to a permanent decrease in IQ. There is also clear evidence that some users can experience withdrawal symptoms including insomnia, anxiety and nausea.

“Much in the same way that I wouldn’t let my own children drink alcohol, I wouldn’t permit marijuana until they are adults,” wrote Gupta. “If they are adamant about trying marijuana, I will urge them to wait until they’re in their mid-20s when their brains are fully developed.”

Project SAM, the nonprofit organisation advocating for the responsible use of medicinal cannabis, is urging Gupta to clarify what he is referring to when he says marijuana. According to the organisation, CBD is a non-intoxicating element found in medically used cannabis whereas street bought marijuana contains THC, which is specifically used to get a high.

“Dr. Gupta is a person Americans looks up to with high esteem. And for good reason – he is thoughtful, thorough and dispassionate about the science. That is why we are troubled by how people might interpret his comments,” Project SAM said in a press release.

Despite the highly documented consequences and concerns, marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in the United States, behind alcohol and tobacco. About 100 million citizens use it, and about 14 million do so regularly.

Some 50,000 people each year die from alcohol poisoning and 400,000 people die from tobacco each year, but marijuana is a non-toxic drug that cannot cause death by overdose.

“The fact that this guy [Gupta] enjoys a really wonderful national reputation, and now he is saying ‘my bad’ in a culture where alpha males don’t usually admit that they are wrong, will…affirm that we are in an era of change,” St. Pierre told IPS.

Child brides in rural Senegal at work. Marriage before the age of 18 is a generally common practice in Senegal. Credit: Issa Sikiti da Silva/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Aug 1 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups are urging for partnerships between governmental organisations and private sector businesses to better prevent child marriage and combat the economic, development and health problems it causes.

A recently released report by Rachel Vogelstein, a fellow at the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the non-partisan think tank Council on Foreign Relations, highlights strategic and moral reasons for U.S. involvement in the issue.

“Child marriages are a form of gender-based violence,” said Vogelstein at a discussion on her study on Wednesday. “It curtails education for young girls, which in turn stifles their economic progress.”

According to the United Nations, in 2011 almost 70 million women—or one in three women between the ages of 20 and 24—had been married under the age of 18. In South Asia, 46 percent of women aged 20 to 24 were married before 18 and 18 percent were married by age 15. India accounts for 40 percent of all child marriages worldwide.

“This is often just seen as the norm in many countries. That’s just how life has been,” Lakshmi Sundaram, global coordinator of a London-based advocacy group, Girls Not Brides, told IPS."Marrying your daughter off means you have one less mouth to feed."
-- Lakshmi Sundaram

He pointed to economic reasons for early marriages, noting, “In most countries there are dowry systems in place, and marrying your daughter off means you have one less mouth to feed.”

The majority of the 25 countries with the highest child marriage rates have fragile governments or face a high risk of natural disaster, such as Syria, Afghanistan and Niger. In Syrian refugee camps, there is evidence that girls are married off at a very young age.

“Marriage is viewed almost as a form of security,” Sundaram told IPS. “In places where there is insecurity or conflict, parents may actually feel the best thing they can do for their daughter is marry her off because they believe she will be safe.”

In actuality, the opposite is true. Girls married as teenagers in India reported three times as many incidences of rape than girls married as adults. Ninety-five percent of those girls did not know their husbands prior to marriage and 81 percent said their first sexual experience was forced, Vogelstein said during Wednesday’s talk.

According to the study, brides aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than brides in their twenties, while the baby of a teenage bride is 60 percent more likely to die in its first year than the child of a mother in her twenties.

“The marriages often have very strong power dynamics, which are controlled usually by the much older husbands,” Sundaram told IPS. “The girls are under huge pressure to prove their fertility, so they often become pregnant very young and very often.”

Tough solutions

All but four countries have a minimum age of legal marriage, ranging from 15 to 18. Several countries have a provision allowing younger children to be married with the consent of the parent.

According to the director of gender, population and development at the International Centre for Research on Women, Suzanne Petroni, such a provision makes preventing child marriage a difficult task.

“In the majority of these countries, you can get the consent of parents. They are the ones making the decision to have the daughter married off,” Petroni told IPS. “In most cases, it is not her decision at all.”

According to the study, in several countries the implementation of child marriage laws are violently resisted, leading several advocacy groups to suggest trying to change the culture of these societies rather than changing laws. Because many countries do not have a birth or marriage registrar set up, proving a girl is too young to be married, or is even married at all, is a challenge.

A strategic move

According to the study, eliminating child marriages offers economic and developmental benefits to both individual countries and the United States.

“The United States spends billions of dollars to reduce maternal child mortality, prevent the transmission of HIV, improve education attainment, stimulate economic growth, and promote the rule of law, and has vital interest in the stability of many countries where child marriage is pervasive,” stated the study.

The United States has typically combatted child marriage through smaller scale developmental efforts. In 2012, the Department of State required reporting on child marriage in its annual country reports on human rights practises. In March, as part of the Violence Against Women Act, Congress mandated that the United States develop a strategy to prevent child marriage globally.

The study called for the U.S. government to acknowledge that child marriage is a barrier to security and to encourage the efforts of other countries to tackle this issue internally.

“The U.S. government had adopted a recognition that reducing gaps that exist between men and women, and empowering women to lead, [are] the central core to effective development,” said Caren Grown, the senior coordinator of gender equality and women’s empowerment at the governmental organisation United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“We can’t achieve our other economic goals, whether it’s food security or a peaceful society, without understanding the harmful inequalities that disadvantage women. Child marriage is one of them.”

Through a Feed the Future project in Kenya, smallholder farmers, particularly women, are introduced to high-value crops such as orange flesh sweet potatoes that can both boost household food security and increase incomes. Credit: Fintrac Inc.

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

In the face of global climate change and currency devaluation, improved strategies are being used to combat high international poverty and malnutrition rates, and to increase global food security. 

The  administrator of  the the U.S. Agency for International Development  (USAID), Dr. Rajiv Shah, this week announced two new innovation labs at Feed the Future, the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative.

“The U.S. has a proud history of providing food and services to the most in need countries,” said Shah at a Feed the Future progress report on Capitol Hill Thursday.  “It will continue to be our goal to modernise and strengthen these programmes, to create a pathway from receiving food when you are hungry to living in a food secure society.”

One of the recently announced labs, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sorghum & Millet is a partnership between the organisation and Kansas State University.

The lab will attempt to find new technologies and techniques for smallholder farmers to use in order to ensure that their productivity of grasses raised for grain, including sorghum and millet, increases in times of climate change.

“The perspective from us is that we think the emphasis that has been given to agriculture is critical, not just for food security but for economic development and growth in developing countries overall,” senior policy advisor on agriculture and food security at the advocacy organisation Oxfam International, Eric Munoz, told IPS.

“We certainly have questions about USAID’s direction, but they are intended to strengthen their direction as opposed to redirect them.”

The second of the two new labs, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security, is a partnership with a number of universities including Michigan State University and the University of Pretoria.  The lab will attempt to improve food security policies and increase private sector investments to support smallholder farmers.

“The food security policy innovation lab is intended to increase the body of knowledge and understanding of the best way to go about influencing policy and what the best ones are to accelerate the impact that we are trying to achieve,” the food policy advisor for USAID’s Food Security Bureau, David Atwood, told IPS.

Both of these labs will focus on Senegal, Niger and Ethiopia.

“If you look at the big food crises, some 17 million people were affected in 2012, including people in those three countries,” Munoz told IPS.  “They have large populations of food insecure and hungry people.  Focusing on those countries makes a lot of sense.”

A gender lens

Launched in 2011, Feed the Future issues annual reports analysing progress during the fiscal year.  The reports outline overall goals for 2015 and yearly targets along the way.

“The programme is still just a couple years in so we are starting to see some nice results, especially on nutrition,” Katie Lee, advocacy and policy coordinator for international development at the alliance of nongovernmental organisations InterAction, told IPS.

“More gendered data were provided in this second progress report, but the data show that work needs to be done to make sure the programme is reaching more women.”

According to the report, Feed the Future has met the majority of the goals it set for fiscal year 2012 in terms of who is receiving aid and how it is benefitting them.  Leaders at the organisation say that they put more of an emphasis on providing food aid to women.

“Women tend to invest more in family and child education and health, so investing in women can really help take the whole development effort a long way,” Atwood told IPS.

According to Feed the Future, women make up 45 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries, and if they were given the same access to land as men, their agricultural output could potentially reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 150 million.

In 2011, Feed the Future supported a group of 65 female farmers in Ghana for five months by training them in record keeping, planning and management.  The group was eventually able to buy new technologies to increase their rice production.

“The progress report is not just about technology, it’s an opportunity to understand where we can do better,” said Shah at the talk on Capitol Hill.  “We’ve gendered out data and learned that we have a great deal further to go to ensure that every dollar is preferentially benefitting women and girls.”

By fiscal year 2013, Feed the Future hopes to see over 15 million rural households directly benefit from U.S. government intervention, over eight million people apply for technologies or management as a result of intervention, and over 13 million children under the age of five have access to U.S.-supported nutrition programmes.

“We want to ensure that when American assistance touches the lives of the hungry, we help them immediately and help them stand on their own two feet in the future,” said Shah.

“When we lead with our values and we partner with our great academic and scientific institutions, our efforts are recognised an appreciated.”

A homeless man looks from his makeshift playground shelter on Third Street in Detroit, Michigan. Credit: Jeffrey Smith/cc by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jul 24 2013 (IPS)

President Barack Obama is vowing to spend his remaining time in office encouraging bipartisan efforts to strengthen the U.S. middle class by ensuring it is open to those from all backgrounds.

“Thanks to the grit and resilience of the American people, we’ve cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and begun to lay a new foundation for a stronger, more durable economic growth,” the president said in a major address Wednesday. “We are not a people who allow chance of birth to decide life’s winners and losers.”“In the civil rights movement, some blacks would refer to whites as allies, but in this fight for America’s soul and dignity and economic fairness, there are no allies. We are all in this thing.” -- Congressman Keith Ellison

Yet a new analysis is suggesting that a half-century after the apex of the U.S. civil rights movement, relatively little progress has been made in education, poverty and wages.

“The outlook of young people today would be so much different if they knew that when they finished high school or college, they could get a job,” Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity and the Economy Programme at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, said at a symposium this week.

“For young people of colour in particular, when they face such high levels of unemployment, it increases their changes of getting tangled in the criminal justice system.”

According to a new EPI study, from the 1960s until today, African American unemployment has been 2.0 to 2.5 times the white unemployment rate. In 2012, the black unemployment rate was 14 percent, 2.1 times what it was for whites and higher than the average national unemployment rate of 13.1 percent during the recession.

“We have to go from protest to action to outcome,” Ernest Green, a former assistant secretary of labour, told IPS. “What the [EPI] is doing is important – it’s obvious that in this atmosphere, no one person or organisation can carry the full load.”

Even when the national unemployment rate has been low, the rate for African Americans has remained high, according to the study. In 2000, for instance, when the national unemployment rate was at four percent and the white unemployment rate was 3.1 percent, the unemployment rate for non-Hispanic blacks was 7.6 percent.

The study’s release was timed to coincide with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a touchstone 1963 event that brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators to Washington to urge equal civil and economic rights for African Americans. At the event, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his famed “I Have a Dream” speech.

“We are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as we should be, and yet we have a racial wealth gap that’s growing,” Clarence Lang, a professor of African and African American studies at the University of Kansas, said at Monday’s symposium.

“We also have an unemployment rate that is catastrophic – if it characterised the majority of the country, we would declare a national disaster.”

Racial profiling

According to the EPI researchers, the lowest black poverty rate on record was 22.5 percent in 2000, meaning that nearly a quarter of the African American population was still living at or below the poverty line. When the economic downturn began in December 2007, that rate rose to 27.6 percent, while the white poverty rate was only 9.8 percent.

Currently, federal policies aren’t doing enough to stem these figures, the report suggests.

In order to lift a family out of poverty, a full-time worker would have to be paid a minimum wage of 13 dollars an hour, experts have said. Yet the current minimum wage, after adjusting for inflation, is 7.25 dollars per hour.

Education has long been highlighted as one of the top ways to combat the high black unemployment and poverty rates, although the EPI study outlines several problems with this approach. During the 1960s, for instance, more than three-quarters of black children attended majority-black schools, while today almost the exact same proportion attends majority non-white schools.

Segregated schools have long been found to lack equal resources as schools with majority white students, which the EPI suggests violates the U.S. belief in equal opportunity.

According to William Spriggs, the chief economist at AFL-CIO, one of the country’s largest labour unions, education is only one of the solutions to this problem.

He cited the recent U.S. court case in which a neighbourhood watch member shot and killed a black teenager in Florida and was acquitted, arguably largely due to a law allowing the use of deadly force if one feels threatened, as an example of the race culture that  still exists.

“What people need to understand about the [Trayvon] Martin case is what that jury was saying about young black men,” Spriggs said. “Do you really have to ask why young black men are having a hard time getting jobs? In the African American community, yes, education is important, but there is a lot more going on.”

According to Lang, one of the key problems being little discussed in the public debate today is the general notion that a black youth walking around at night is “up to no good”.

“If we want to talk about what the key issue is, we have to talk about [racial profiling],” Lang told IPS. “It affects job prospects, it affects families and, indeed, it affects someone’s ability to walk around minding his or her own business and not being harassed.”

Such profiling, critics say, re-introduces a divisiveness that many saw as being weakened during the March on Washington and related awareness-raising of the 1960s.

“We are at a moment when there are no allies, there is just ‘us’,” Keith Ellison, a member of the U.S. Congress, said Monday. “In the civil rights movement, some blacks would refer to whites as allies, but in this fight for America’s soul and dignity and economic fairness, there are no allies. We are all in this thing.”

Walmart has been criticised for years for paying its employees and suppliers notably low rates. Credit: Brent Hellickson/cc by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jul 19 2013 (IPS)

Proponents of a proposed higher “living wage” requirement for workers at large retailers here in Washington are stepping up their campaign, urging the city’s mayor to sign pending legislation into law.

Dozens of other U.S. cities have enacted similar laws, which increase minimum wages at those businesses covered by the legislation by around 50 percent. Yet the legal battle here has garnered national attention because it appears to be aimed at one company in particular – Walmart.“We want him [Mayor Gray] to remember that he was elected by the citizens and not by Walmart." -- Reverend Graylan Hagler of Faith Strategies

“We will give the mayor our support if he has the backbone to sign the bill,” Reverend Graylan Hagler, president of Faith Strategies, a religious group here that has led demonstrations in support of the living wage bill this week, told IPS.

“To cave in to the threat of this corporation is to send a mixed message to the public that somehow corporations can come in and damage our sense of self-respect.”

Walmart, which has been criticised for years for paying its employees and suppliers notably low rates, had previously announced plans to build six stores in the Washington area, its first stores in the city. But it also warned that it would halt those plans on at least three stores (three others are under construction) if the living wage legislation were passed.

“This is a difficult decision for us – and unfortunate now for most D.C. residents – but the council has forced our hand,” Walmart spokesperson Steve Restivo said in a statement.

Last week, the Washington city council passed the so-called Large Retailer Accountability Act, and sent it on to Mayor Vincent Gray. The bill requires all indoor stores of 75,000 square feet or larger, and with a parent company that has a gross revenue of at least one billion dollars, to pay their employees a minimum of 12.50 dollars an hour, minus benefits.

After the vote, Walmart made its threat to pull out of the area. 

“With the passage of the Large Retailer Accountability Act, any future plans for retail expansion in the city must be revisited,” stated a letter from the company.

“Arbitrary conditions that subject our stores to rules that other employers, including countless competitors, are not equally subjected to unfairly distort the marketplace and are cause of grave concern.”

Since the vote, several other large retail stores that may be affected by the law – including Autozone, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Macy’s, Target and Walgreens – joined Walmart in opposition to the act.

In 2012, Walmart was sued by three female workers in Tennessee on behalf of female employees in four other southern states, claiming that the company pays women less than men and blocks promotions for female workers. The case was eventually thrown out by the Supreme Court.

Citizen values

The wage fight in Washington is part of a longstanding, and still building, push-and-pull in the United States.

The city of Chicago approved a similar bill seven years ago, and the city alderman who sponsored the bill, Joe Moore, said Walmart made the same kinds of threats – refusing to open stores while the legislation was even being considered. Then-mayor Richard Daley ultimately vetoed the legislation and Walmart subsequently opened several stores in the city.

New York State, too, raised its minimum wage in March, but only after the state allowed tax subsidies to stores that hire seasonal employees, including Walmart.

Here in Washington, the fight now is to try to ascertain what the residents – and voters – of the city may want.

“We want him (Mayor Gray) to remember that he was elected by the citizens and not by Walmart,” Hagler told IPS. “I think the mayor is smart enough and analytical enough to come around and do the right thing.”

Yet according to a poll carried out by Walmart, some 73 percent of DC residents in areas supposedly getting a store said they were in favour of Walmart.

For his part, Mayor Gray has previously promised his home ward hundreds of new jobs, with a new Walmart store in that area offering an obvious anchor for this pledge. According to many analysts, including Hagler, the mayor is now hesitant to take those jobs away.

“I’ve got to look at the full impact of the (living wage) bill,” Gray told reporters recently. “Everybody has looked at it from the perspective of Walmart, but it’s bigger than Walmart.”

Corporate bullying

According to some analysts, the impacts of a living wage are less dramatic for either side of this equation than is currently being admitted.

A study done by the Labor Center at the University of California at Berkley, for instance, found that if Walmart raised its minimum wage to 12 dollars an hour, and wanted to retain its profit margin, retail prices would only rise by around 1.1 percent.

“The notion that this (living wage law) is going to undermine Walmart’s business is so dramatically absurd,” David Cooper, an economic analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank, told IPS.

Walmart has a history of driving out small regional competitors and undercutting their prices, while paying their workers so little that they can barely survive without public assistance, according to Cooper.

“DC has been a thriving and growing location for business, and Walmart would do great business even if they have to pay their workers more,” he says. “It would be a shame for the mayor to cave to what amounts to corporate bullying.”

The acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, has sparked backlash against Stand Your Ground laws. Above, a 2012 protest against Martin's death. Credit: David Shankbone/CC by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jul 18 2013 (IPS)

In the aftermath of the recent acquittal of 31-year-old Florida native George Zimmerman, the state’s so-called Stand Your Ground law has come under national scrutiny, as have dozens of other states that have enacted similar legislation.

The criticism will perhaps be led by whatever the U.S. Justice Department chooses to do with the case. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder denounced the law Tuesday in a keynote address at an annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), an esteemed advocacy group.

During his speech, Holder also pledged to open a full investigation into the death of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old African-American youth whom Zimmerman, a Latino, fatally shot in February 2012. Over the past two months, Zimmerman’s case has riveted U.S. audiences and sparked a countrywide discussion of the role of race – and racial profiling – in the United States today.

“It is our collective obligation,” Holder said. “We must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent.”"We must..take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent."
-- Eric Holder

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law was passed in 2005 with a unanimous vote in the state senate and a 94-20 vote in the house. Five years later, the rate of so-called justifiable homicide in Florida had tripled. And since 2005, 31 other states have followed Florida’s lead in passing similar “self-defence” laws.

Under the Florida law, a person can use “defensive force” that is intended to cause harm to another person if they feel “reasonably” threatened – say, if someone is breaking into their house or if they are beaten or kidnapped. The law does not apply if the person against whom defensive force is used has a right to be on the property or is a law-enforcement officer.

“A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force is he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so,” according to the Florida law.

The law also states that if a person is being unreasonably attacked, they have no obligation to retreat. This element has led to increasingly strident criticism from those who worry the law results in escalation, rather than de-escalation, of potentially violent situations.

Such a dynamic appears to have taken place in the ensuing fight between Zimmerman, an armed “neighbourhood watch” volunteer, and Martin in February 2012.

Some suggest the law is a solution looking for a problem and point out that there was no evidence of any such problem prior to the signing of the Stand Your Ground law in Florida.

“It [the law] allows someone to shoot and kill another human being in the fear of great bodily harm. Great bodily harm means a fist fight,” Ladd Everitt, director of communications at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“Even if someone hasn’t sustained any damage, this law allows them to shoot and kill someone based only on a fear.”

Zimmerman’s lawyers did not bring up the law during his trial, but it was included in the instructions to the jury, who acquitted him on Saturday, Jul. 13.

Time to re-examine

“There has always been a legal defence for using deadly force if – and the ‘if’ is important – no safe retreat is available,” Holder noted Tuesday.

The Immunity from Criminal Prosecution clause of the Florida law states that if the person who used defensive force in accordance with the law is granted immunity in court and wins the case, the prosecution is required to pay the defence’s attorney fees, court costs and compensation for any loss of income. Zimmerman did not file for immunity in the criminal court case that ended last week.

“The attorney general fails to understand that self-defence is not a concept, it’s a fundamental human right,” Chris W. Cox, the executive director of the National Rifle Association‘s Institute for Legislative Action, the lobby group’s advocacy arm, said in a statement.

“To send a message that legitimate self-defence is to blame is unconscionable, and demonstrates again that this administration will exploit tragedies to push their political agenda.”

Following the 2005 passage of the Stand Your Ground law, NRA operatives and legislators aligned with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and created a piece of model legislation mirroring the Florida law and which could in turn be passed throughout the country. ALEC encouraged and advocated this passage and initially called the legislation one of its successes.

Subsequently, 49 major corporations, including General Motors, General Electric and Coca-Cola, severed ties with the organisation. ALEC has since abandoned its criminal justice task force that promoted the Stand Your Ground law and has disavowed gun bills.

Thirty-one states, including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana, currently have a Stand Your Ground law. Eight states have related bills in the legislature right now or are expected to have legislation introduced soon, including Alaska, Illinois and Massachusetts.

California, Colorado and Washington do not have a bill, but Stand Your Ground actions have been upheld in their courts, making it a de facto law. Only seven states have no such laws or bills.

The Zimmerman trial may have sparked pushback against this legislative trend, however.

President Barack Obama “urges upon all communities to examine what we can do … to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening in the future; and to reduce gun violence in general”, press secretary Jay Carney said during a press briefing at the White House on Tuesday.

The president is also urging communities “to look at our laws and examine whether those laws that we have serve to reduce gun violence or, in some cases, inadvertently make the problem worse”.

Holder sharpened this growing critique by suggesting on Tuesday that such self-defence laws actually undermine public safety.

“Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention,” he said, “it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defence and sow dangerous conflict in our neighbourhoods.”

The NRA did not return calls for comment.

Nationwide protests, marches and petitions have erupted in the days following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the focus of a widely watched murder trial over possible racial profiling, late on Saturday evening.

Protesters in New York City. Credit: Jere Keys/cc by 2.0

Zimmerman, a 29-year-old Hispanic man and volunteer neighbourhood watchman, shot and killed a black youth named Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, allegedly in self-defence. Zimmerman was subsequently charged with Martin’s murder.

Over the past five weeks, the trial has transfixed much of the U.S. television-viewing public, as commentators have explored what the incident has to say about race relations in the United States today.

After deliberating for more than 15 hours, the jury found Zimmerman not guilty, largely due to a controversial state law known as Stand Your Ground, which authorises the use of “deadly force” if someone is being threatened.

Following the court decision, crowds reportedly gathered in a Los Angeles park and chanted “Trayvon Martin”, while police officers looked on. In Chicago, hundreds more rallied downtown, chanting “No justice, no peace” and “Justice for Trayvon”.

“People have been speaking up and speaking out against this culture of violence and calling for people to be held accountable,” Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, an investigative reporting organisation, told IPS.

“In a civil society, gathering together to be heard is one of the most vital rights.”

Protests of up to several thousand demonstrators also took place in New York City and Boston, among other places.

“It’s outrageous that we have a situation in which a young man like Trayvon can’t walk home without the fear of being accosted by some police wanna-be who is armed and dangerous,” Graves told IPS.

A former advisor to President Barack Obama, Van Jones, tweeted an image showing civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt similar to the one Martin was wearing the night he was shot.

Along with the photo, Jones posted the words “April 4th, 1968 #RipTrayvon Martin”, the date King was shot; the image went viral and was re-tweeted by thousands.

“The worst thing we could do is sit back and accept this and that this is just the law,” Ajamu Dilahunt, a senior outreach coordinator for Black Workers for Justice, an advocacy group, told IPS. “If we don’t do this [protest and march], there will be many more Trayvons.”

Lethal combination

Signed into law in 2005 by then-Florida governor Jeb Bush, the Stand Your Ground legislation allows people to use deadly force to prevent bodily harm or death. The rate of so-called justifiable homicides in Florida tripled after 2005, and now 24 other states also have similar laws on the books.

Yet Saturday’s jury decision does not appear to be the end of the matter for Zimmerman or advocates on either side of the issue. The Center for Media and Democracy launched a petition on Monday asking the Department of Justice to file civil rights charges against Zimmerman, and Attorney General Eric Holder has vowed to pursue a federal investigation into the shooting, using evidence provided at the trial.

“We are resolved, as you are, to combat violence involving or directed at young people,” Holder said in Washington Monday, “to prevent future tragedies and to deal with the underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too common incidents.”

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have been particularly vocal about their support for the federal prosecution of Zimmerman.

“I am disappointed in the jury’s verdict, and heartbroken for the scores of young black men nationwide for whom this verdict delivers a startling message: Our fight for civil rights is far from over,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, and a senior member of the CBC.

In order to convict Zimmerman of any civil rights violations or hate crimes, the government has to prove to a jury that his actions against Martin were racially motivated. Though Martin’s friends and family say Zimmerman has a history as a racial profiler, Zimmerman’s lawyer says there is no evidence.

According to Graves, civil rights charges are not the only legal option for the Martin family to take.  The family could also pursue a civil case, where the burden of proof is less difficult than at a criminal trial.

“Often times, people do have success pursuing a civil case in the face of not prevailing in a criminal case,” Graves told IPS.

Yet Graves cautioned against pursing a civil case due to the Stand Your Ground law, which states that if the defendant is granted immunity and a win in court, the prosecution is required to pay their legal fees and losses. Zimmerman did not seek immunity in the criminal trial.

“Everyone is entitled to their day in court and shouldn’t be penalised for doing that,” Graves says. “[The Stand Your Ground law] creates huge incentives to not pursue justice for yourself. It imposes a penalty on people whose loved ones have been killed. It’s just wrong.”

Despite losing in court, an attorney for Martin’s parents said the experience will have a lasting impact on the United States, and compared Martin to Emmett Till, a black boy who was murdered in Mississippi after allegedly flirting with a white woman. Till became one of the more prominent martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Whenever there is injustice like this and someone loses their life, and there is a feeling or fear that it was based in part because of race, those types of parallels are quite natural,” Graves says.

She adds that such tragedies will happen again, due to the type of “vigilante culture” that laws such as the Stand Your Ground law have created.

“There are a lot more people who are armed and dangerous,” she says. “Combined with laws that say you don’t have the back down, that’s a very lethal combination.”

According to Dilahunt, the way to prevent future tragedies is to change the mindset of the country.

“The mindset of George Zimmerman that is shared by so many others in the country is that black youths ought to be seen as ‘others’, that they are criminals and that they should be profiled,” Dilahunt told IPS. “This happened over a long period of time and is widespread. We have to deal with that.”

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Technology education programmes are increasingly becoming a viable alternative to the standard four-year undergraduate university programme, according to the OECD, a major international grouping of rich countries.

On Wednesday, the OECD released findings from a new study, recommending implementing industry standards for certificates, which imply the recipient was specifically trained in that field. The study also encourages more CTE programmes, two-year institutions that train for a specific industry, to become accredited so employers can be more assured of their employees’ skills.

“In the 21^st century, a college degree is not an end in itself,” Simon Field, project leader for the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, says. “It is the skill development that is the key to greater individual and national prosperity.”

Between 2000 and 2003, the number of people seeking such professional certificates almost tripled, with the steepest increase coming from the information technology sector. The OECD study predicts that, by 2018, about two-thirds of all job vacancies will require more than a high school diploma, but only a third of vacancies will require a four-year degree or higher.

“The challenge has been that there is a segment of higher education regulations and institutions that look at work-based learning as of lesser importance, while the goal is to see this as an integrated system,” Sandi Vito, a state labour official, said at an event here Wednesday.  “Work-based learning isn’t ‘lesser than’, and it should be combined with academic learning as well.”

According to a 2012 study by the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Education, about 65 million people in the United States workforce have an industry certificate or a license to practice. Currently, one in 10 workers reports such a certificate as their highest level of education, according to the OECD study.

“Employers don’t think they have a very receptive audience in the higher education world, and that’s a problem,” Andrew Kelly, the director of the Higher Education Reform programme at the American Enterprise Institute, a consevative think tank, said at Wednesday’s event.  “At a CTE, its pretty clear why you are there: you’re there to get a job.”

In 2010, 1.5 million postsecondary CTE credentials outlining specific skills acquired through CTE programmes were awarded. Half of such credentials given out today are from public two-year schools – as opposed to more traditional four-year colleges or universities – and the rest are from private technical businesses and trade institutions.

“The overarching recommendation from the report is the need for the U.S. to strategically pursue more quality, coherence and transparency in the U.S. postsecondary system,” the study states.

The OECD’s research and recommendations put significant emphasis on a traditional position that has largely fallen by the wayside in the United States: apprenticeships. The study highlights these interim positions as a way to learn necessary skills for a chosen field that might not be taught in a classroom setting.

“Apprenticeships combines work and education simultaneously,” David McCord, the director of the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee, said on Wednesday, calling the idea of apprenticeships “phenomenal”.

Unlike an internship, an apprenticeship involves some classroom work, usually lasts between four to six weeks, and is paid. In the United States, apprenticeships are most common in the construction and agriculture industry.     

Need for standardisation

Despite the rising evidence of the current and potential benefits of CTE programmes in the United States, the OECD and many education experts agree that much still needs to be improved in this area.

According to Malgorzata Kuczera, the lead author of the new report, it remains difficult for companies to tell a high-quality CTE programme from others.

“If we could strengthen quality overall and ensure even the weakest programmes are of strong quality, this would provide a really robust opportunity for students to invest in their own future,” Kuczera said Wednesday. “It would also offer a robust assurance to employers that students have the necessary skills.”

There are currently about 5,000 certification programmes in the U.S., according to Roy Swift, with the American National Standards Institute, a non-profit group that oversees adherence to certain standards. Of these programmes, only about 10 percent have been accredited to meet national standards, he says.

“We have a problem here [the number of un-accredited CTE programmes] and we need to have people meet national standards,” Swift told IPS. “By doing this, [accrediting the programmes] it will increase the quality of the workforce and employers will be more satisfied with who they are receiving.”

Community colleges and four-year universities, which often do have several CTE programmes, are reportedly reluctant to apply for accreditation.

“Reliance on these standards [for accreditation] is critical to increasing quality and transparency of certificates and certification in the United States, leading to a more qualified American workforce,” Swift says.

Still, advocates are currently optimistic about the future of CTE programmes and the improvements they can bring to the workforce and the economy.

“Accreditation is critical, but the bottom line is getting graduates employed and that they are doing a good job for their employers,” Jay Box, chancellor of the Kentucky community and technical college system, said at Wednesday’s discussion. “What drives us most is our graduate success.”

Occupy Wall Street joined the NAACP as thousands marched in midtown Manhattan on Dec. 10, 2011 to defend voting rights. Credit: Michael Fleshman/cc by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jul 4 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups here are reacting with frustration as several southern U.S. states have moved to enact stricter voting requirements in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision that rolled back key legislation that had safeguarded minority voters for decades.

Following last week’s five-to-four Supreme Court decision overturning a key part of the Voting Rights Act, nine southern states with a history of discriminatory voting requirements are now able to change their election laws without approval from the federal government.“Basically the voter [photo] ID is a solution looking for a problem." -- Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez of the Advancement Project

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, stating: “Our country has changed. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation is passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

Yet just 48 hours after the decision, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina announced plans to push through together voting restrictions that critics are warning could disenfranchise minority voters.

“Limiting the voices that can be heard is repugnant to what the country stands for,” Andrew Blotky, director of legal progress the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, told IPS. “We have always expanded the ability of people able to participate fully in our society, not restrict it.”

Just two hours after the Supreme Court decision came out, Texas announced that its voter identification law, requiring the presentation of a government-issued photo ID, would go into immediate effect.

Texas Governor Rick Perry also signed into law a new congressional voting map that is almost identical to the map that was ruled discriminatory last year, according to Kathy Culliton-Gonzalez, director of voter protection at the Advancement Project, an advocacy group.

“It’s not really that [southern states] weren’t treated equally; it’s about the fact that they earned this reputation to not be trusted,” Culliton-Gonzalez told IPS. “There is a reason that Texas, Mississippi, Florida and North Carolina were all covered in Section 4 [of the Voting Rights Act].”

Texas does offer free identification certificates for residents who lack other forms of photo ID, but the documents required to obtain these certificates are costly. According to Culliton-Gonzalez, some residents can be forced to drive up to 400 kilometres to apply for the free certificates, which is impractical for many voters, particularly those who are poor.

In North Carolina, meanwhile, another state impacted by the Supreme Court decision, lawmakers are now attempting to eliminate early voting, same-day registration and Sunday voting hours, and are likewise planning to implement new photo identification requirements.

According to Think Progress, an advocacy group associated with the Center for American Progress, about 613,000 North Carolinians currently lack the required photo ID, and nearly one third of these are African American.

Florida, too, is looking to cut the option to vote early, which has been seen as a key tool by which to allow more citizens to vote. Analysts suggest that eliminating early voting will have particularly serious consequences for African-American voters, half of whom cast their ballots during the early voting period in 2008, and made up 22 percent of the early vote in 2012.

“It’s terrible,” Blotky told IPS. “Its not coincidence that these states have already tried to take advantage of the opportunity to enact laws that will restrict the votes of some people who really rely on the ability to have access to polls before the election because they have work or families to take care of.”

Looking for a problem

In Alabama, residents have already been required to show identification at the polls in the form of utility bills, Society Security cards, or a copy of birth certificates. Now, conservatives in the state legislature reportedly hope to have a new photo identification requirement in place by the June 2014 “primary” elections, during which voters will choose candidates for subsequent national races.

In next-door Mississippi, 62 percent of voters have said they approve of requiring photo ID at the polls, and are in favour of a new requirement that is now also aimed to be in place by June of next year.

“Mississippi citizens have earned the right to determine our voting processes,” Secretary of State in Mississippi Delbert Hosemann recently told the press, adding that ne one should have any barriers when casting their ballot. “Our relationship and trust in each other have matured. This chapter is closed.”

Supporters of a requirement for government-issued photo ID at polls say the move will combat a purported voter fraud problem. Opponents, however, claim this issue has been significantly over-exaggerated.

“In case after case last year, we found those allegations of voter fraud were just allegations – that’s all there was to it,” said Culliton-Gonzalez. “Basically the voter [photo] ID is a solution looking for a problem – it doesn’t solve anything at all.”

Photo IDs are intended to cut down solely on in-person fraud. Yet according to a study published in August 2012, there have been just 10 documented cases of in-person voter fraud throughout the United States since 2000. Three of those cases were in a single state, Texas, and there was one conviction.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a legal assistance organisation that fights racial injustice, has stepped up its surveillance of the changes that are being implemented to voting requirements in the southern states that had been covered in Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The organisation says it intends to use these findings to show that the previous structure of the legislation was effective.

Importantly, the Supreme Court decision simply stated that the law was functioning off of an outdated formula for figuring out which states required federal oversight. The justices have struck down Section 4 only insofar as they have mandated that the U.S. Congress revisit the issue and come up with a new formula.

In that process, groups such as the NAACP see an opportunity to ensure that this legal cover is re-strengthened and continues as long as it’s required.

“There has been progress nationally and at the state levels, but that does not mean we’ve reached a place where those states are free from racial discrimination,” Leah Aden, assistant council with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told IPS. “The goal is to not only get people to register and turn out, but to make sure their votes are meaningfully counted.”

Environmental safety groups are stepping up efforts to prevent a reportedly dangerous yet widely used herbicide from being sold in the United States, even as the country’s primary environmental regulator is considering increasing the amount of the herbicide allowed in the U.S. food supply.

The agricultural giant Monsanto has for years relied on its flagship product, a weed-killer known as Roundup. The primary ingredient in Roundup is an herbicide called glyphosate, which Monsanto has used to selectively kill weeds while allowing genetically modified versions of sugarcane, corn, soy and wheat crops to grow.“Part of the problem is that there is no ethical way to prove that [glyphosate] is as toxic as it is.” -- Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo

“We are increasingly seeing more and more samples of surface water coming up with residues [of glyphosate], and this is affecting frogs that live there,” Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group, told IPS. “Potatoes and carrots are also picking it up in the soil – there are multiple routes of exposure.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal regulatory agency, is currently preparing to increase the allowable amount of glyphosate in crops like carrots, sweet potatoes and mustard seeds. A public comment period on the proposal to do so ends Monday night, and the EPA has reportedly already received some 9,000 comments.

The new EPA regulation would allow “oilseed” crops such as flax, canola and soybean oil to contain glyphosate at levels up to 40 parts per million (ppm), up from 20 ppm, which is over 100,000 times the concentration needed to cause cancer according to a recent study. It also raises the allowable glyphosate contamination level for food crops such as potatoes from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm.

Glyphosate has previously been shown to be an “endocrine disruptor”, which the National Institutes of Health has shown to have long-term effects on reproductive health. They can be very dangerous at low levels, thus restricting the amount allowed will not be effective.

“The EPA is failing to protect human health and the environment by neglecting to regulate the excessive use of herbicides,” a current Food & Water Watch petition states. “Instead, it is just changing its own rules to allow the irresponsible and potentially dangerous applications continue.”

Monsanto, meanwhile, claims glyphosate is safe because it only acts on a biological process that is present in plants, not animals.

“We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has,” Jerry Stainer, Monsanto’s executive vice president of sustainability, has stated in the past. “It has been very, very extensively studied.”

Yet new research says glyphosate interferes with gut bacteria, which can disrupt immunity and vitamin synthesis.

Indeed, according to EPA analysts, the consequences linked to exposure to the chemical include lung congestion and shortness of breath. Further, according to a study published in April, scientists have linked exposure to glyphosate to gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility and cancer.

“Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body,” the study states.

“Part of the problem is that there is no ethical way to prove that [glyphosate] is as toxic as it is,” Sayer Ji, director of GreenMedInfo, an advocacy group, told IPS. “Yet meanwhile, no new research is proving it’s safer, but rather the opposite. I think the EPA is really damaging its credibility.”

According to Lovera, the EPA tends to be very slow in taking new studies into account. (The EPA was unable to provide comment for this story before deadline.)

180 million pounds

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 180 million pounds of glyphosate are applied to U.S. soil annually. Herbicide use has increased by 26 percent since 2001, according Food & Water Watch.

Instead of pushing more environmentally friendly techniques to combat weeds – such as varying crops from year to year or using crop covers – biotech companies have focused on inventing genetically engineered crops  that can withstand the use of Roundup and other herbicides.

Yet the impacts of this massively increased use of chemical inputs on environmental systems and human communities are only slowly being understood.

Scientists have repeatedly found that the numbers of migrating monarch butterflies, for instance, are today at their lowest point in decades. Environmental advocacy groups say this is because milkweed plants – the only plant on which these butterflies lay their eggs – are being killed off by these herbicides.

Nor are plants and animals the only ones reportedly being affected by this increased use of glyphosate.

In its Farm Family Exposure Study, GreenMedInfo looked at the glyphosate concentration in the urine of 48 farmers, their spouses and 79 of their children on the day before, the day of, and for three days after a glyphosate application on their farms.

Of the farmers studied, 60 percent had detectable levels of the chemical the day of the application. So too did four percent of their spouses and 12 percent of their children.

“For consumers in the United States, the best way to get around this is to look for organic labels on food, because they are not allowed to use Roundup,” Lovera told IPS. “That’s one of the biggest distinctions between conventional and organic products.”

The Supreme Court ruled today that a key part of federal legislation banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Credit: Bigstock

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 27 2013 (IPS)

Large crowds cheered outside the U.S. Supreme Court here on Wednesday morning as the justices inside announced their majority decision that a key part of two-decade-old federal legislation banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

Cheering supporters held signs reading, “The people united will never be defeated.” When the decision was read, they began chanting, “DOMA is dead,” referring to the so-called Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), legislation that for 17 years has disallowed federal recognition of same-sex couples, even as state legislatures have begun to recognise such unions.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA and simultaneously required the extension of federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples. In a separate decision, the court also dismissed Proposition 8, a state law in California, effectively allowing same-sex marriage in that state.

“Today’s decision not only gives federal recognition and respect to the many married same-sex couples in the U.S.,” Graeme Reid, the director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group, told IPS. “More fundamentally, it also affirms that LGBT people are deserving of fundamental rights and equal protection in all areas of the law.”

The decision will immediately extend benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples, including social security, healthcare, pension and tax benefits, to legally recognised same-sex couples. Currently, around a dozen statess allow same-sex couples to marry."[Today's decision] affirms that LGBT people are deserving of fundamental rights and equal protection."
-- Graeme Reid

“Under DOMA, same-sex couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “By its great reach, DOMA touches many aspects of married and family life, from the mundane to the profound.”

President Bill Clinton originally signed DOMA into law in 1996, though he has since recanted his support of the legislation. Clinton’s view on the issue mirrors a broader cultural shift throughout the United States, with analysts suggesting that public opinion on same-sex marriage has changed faster than on almost any other issue in memory.

“The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts,” President Barack Obama stated in response to Wednesday’s rulings. “When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.”

Obama himself is a good example of the shift in U.S. popular views on the subject, having announced his support for same-sex marriage only last year.

Still, Wednesday’s court decision was narrowly split, with several of the dissenters suggesting that the court didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the case in the first place, similar to the decision on Proposition 8. Justice Antonin Scalia even read his dissenting opinion from the bench, which is done in a small number of cases, typically when the opinion is very strong.

“In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us.  The truth is more complicated,” Scalia wrote. “It is hard to admit that one’s political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today’s Court can handle.”  

Path towards equality

While the crowd waited Wednesday morning for the second decision, on California’s Proposition 8, a protestor put up a sign that read “Gay Mormon for Marriage Equality”.

“For those of you who don’t know, 10 years ago today a [judicial] decision came down in Lawrence v. Texas, allowing us to be gay,” he said. “And in 15 minutes, we’ll find out if we are considered equals.”

In a 6-3 ruling in 2003, the Supreme Court struck down the sodomy laws in Texas and invalidated these laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every state.

When it was announced, the Proposition 8 decision was also split 5-4, yet essentially the justices decided that they did not have the power to make a full ruling on the case. Proposition 8 banned same-sex marriage in California based on the results of a state-wide referendum in 2008.

In effect, however, the decision is a boon for supporters of same-sex marriage. It allows to stand a 2010 injunction made by a federal district court that sough to prevent the state of California from enforcing Proposition 8, stating that the law violated due process of law and equal protection.

“The Court does not question California’s sovereign right to maintain an initiative process, or the right of initiative proponents to defend their initiatives in California courts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority on the Proposition 8 case. “But standing in federal court is a question of federal law, not state law.”

Despite the fact that the justices decided not to offer a full ruling on Proposition 8, critics of the law rejoiced.

“This is truly a day for the history books,” Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer who argued the case at the Supreme Court, said following the decision, “one that will be marked by future generations as a giant step forward along our nation’s continuing path towards equality.”

Though noisy opposition was noticeably absent from the rally at the Supreme Court, not everyone was pleased with Wednesday’s decisions.

“Kennedy’s decision is not law,” Maggie Gallagher, a fellow at the American Principle Project, a conservative advocacy group, said in a release. “It is Justice Kennedy’s moral values written into our Constitution, and interfering with our rights as Americans to pass laws that accord with our values on marriage.”

Tim Wildmon, president of the conservative American Family Association, similarly said he was deeply saddened by the decision in a country founded on “biblical principles”. “Our next line of defense is to vigorously protect our religious liberty.”

Meanwhile, others are already looking forward to using Wednesday’s rulings to help new plans to push state-level legislators to bolster support for same-sex marriage legislation.

“Now what needs to happen is [gay] Americans in the other 37 states need to have the same rights that all Americans get: To marry the person they love and have full, equal rights,” Neil Sroka, the communications director for Democracy for America, an advocacy group close to President Obama, told IPS.

“Our supporters and members are ready to hit the ground running.”

U.S. President Barack Obama's in Accra, Ghana in 2009. Credit: US Army Africa/CC by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 24 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups here are urging U.S. President Barack Obama to focus on more than just economic development during his upcoming trip to Africa.

They are also hoping that the state visits will be able to turn the tide on years of U.S. engagement with Africa only through the lens of security and counter-terrorism.

Starting Wednesday, Obama will visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania on what will be his second trip to the continent as president. His advisors say he hopes to focus on increasing trade, investments and other economic opportunities.

“This shouldn’t be a light-hearted and easy trip,” Adotei Akwei, Africa advocacy director for Amnesty International, told IPS. “It shouldn’t just be about economics and investing, because there are some serious issues that need to be addressed.”

According to aides, Obama will also put significant emphasis on supporting growing democracies in each of the three countries, as well as on the African youth population."If the U.S. wants to be in step with the 21st century and the centuries to come...it needs to pay attention to Africa." -- Emira Woods

“Each of the countries that we’re visiting are strong democracies,” National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said in a White House briefing conference call. “The president has made it a priority to support the consolidation of democratic institutions in Africa so that Africans are focused not just on democratic elections, but institutions like parliaments, independent judiciaries and strengthening of the rule of law.”

In addition to bilateral meetings with political leaders in the three countries, Obama will participate in events with private sector leaders. Development issues will play a role, particularly regarding food security.

“Food security has been one of our key development priorities,” Rhodes said, “in which we’ve brought together the international community as well as the private sector behind approaches that strengthen African capacity in developing agricultural sectors that better feed the populations.”

Obama has been criticised for paying relatively little attention to Africa during his presidency. His first and only trip to the continent lasted less than 24 hours.

“If the U.S. wants to be in step with the 21st century and the centuries to come,” Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS, “it needs to pay attention to Africa.”

Security focus

Further, for many humanitarian advocates, what little focus Obama has paid to Africa has been largely security related.

“I am concerned that in recent years, the degree to which there is a focus in Africa has been aimed at counterterrorism initiatives,” John Hutson, director of communications at the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “I hope this trip will create a sense of interest and actions that will help African development and thereby help the United States.”

The Institute for Policy Studies’ Woods concurred, “The U.S. has focused overwhelmingly on the security sector, at the expense of those other building blocks of a healthy society.”

Obama will not be visiting two of the continent’s most unstable countries, Somalia and Mali. Yet according to some observers, the instability in these parts of Africa is due in part to U.S. support of authoritarian regimes.

Independent policy analyst and activist Nii Akkuetteh applauded the Obama administration for not visiting countries that, at a panel discussion here Monday, he called “U.S.-friendly tyrants”.

“The criticism right now is, if you flood a country like Mali with arms and it goes wrong, we don’t think it’s right to turn your back on the problem,” said Akkuetteh. “It is in the U.S.’s best interest to help Mali rebuild since they were partners when Mali slipped into their problematic state.”

Meanwhile, others are pointing to climate change as a more pressing long-term security threat to Africa. On Tuesday, Obama is scheduled to unveil a major new U.S. policy push to combat climate change, but so far Washington has been a significant contributor to the inability of international negotiations to arrive at a comprehensive agreement on the issue.

“Clearly what we are calling for is for the Obama administration to look at the affects of its policies on climate change,” said Woods. According to Dev Kar, chief economist at the research and advocacy organisation Global Financial Integrity, scientists and security analysts are already forecasting a increase in the number of conflicts in Africa and beyond as a result of water shortage.

According to recently released World Bank data, such an uptick will likely be visible within decades.

Meanwhile, the cost of Obama’s trip, reportedly from 60 to 100 million dollars, has led to some furious criticism from within the United States, where austerity measures are continuing to upset long-running government programmes. But Amnesty International’s Akwei suggests this is not only a sideshow, but a problematic indication of the broader U.S. view of Africa.

“This criticism continues a sad trend of the perception of the continent, which is basically that it doesn’t matter and its irrelevant,” he said.

“In fact, it is relevant. It is a major front of the Pentagon and its work on terror, it is a major source of oil to this country, and it is a humanitarian focal point.”

Advocacy groups here are urging U.S. President Barack Obama to focus on more than just economic development during his upcoming trip to Africa. They are also hoping that the state visits will be able to turn the tide on years of U.S. engagement with Africa only through the lens of security and counter-terrorism.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s in Accra, Ghana in 2009. Credit: US Army Africa/CC by 2.0

Starting Wednesday, Obama will visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania on what will be his second trip to the continent as president. His advisors say he hopes to focus on increasing trade, investments and other economic opportunities.

“This shouldn’t be a light-hearted and easy trip,” Adotei Akwei, Africa advocacy director for Amnesty International, told IPS. “It shouldn’t just be about economics and investing, because there are some serious issues that need to be addressed.” According to aides, Obama will also put significant emphasis on supporting growing democracies in each of the three countries, as well as on the African youth population.

“Each of the countries that we’re visiting are strong democracies,” National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said in a White House briefing conference call. “The president has made it a priority to support the consolidation of democratic institutions in Africa so that Africans are focused not just on democratic elections, but institutions like parliaments, independent judiciaries and strengthening of the rule of law.”

In addition to bilateral meetings with political leaders in the three countries, Obama will participate in events with private sector leaders. Development issues will play a role, particularly regarding food security.

“Food security has been one of our key development priorities,” Rhodes said, “in which we’ve brought together the international community as well as the private sector behind approaches that strengthen African capacity in developing agricultural sectors that better feed the populations.” Obama has been criticised for paying relatively little attention to Africa during his presidency. His first and only trip to the continent lasted less than 24 hours.

“If the U.S. wants to be in step with the 21st century and the centuries to come,” Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank, told IPS, “it needs to pay attention to Africa.” Further, for many humanitarian advocates, what little focus Obama has paid to Africa has been largely security related.

“I am concerned that in recent years, the degree to which there is a focus in Africa has been aimed at counterterrorism initiatives,” John Hutson, director of communications at the Enough Project, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “I hope this trip will create a sense of interest and actions that will help African development and thereby help the United States.”

The Institute for Policy Studies’ Woods concurred, “The U.S. has focused overwhelmingly on the security sector, at the expense of those other building blocks of a healthy society.” Obama will not be visiting two of the continent’s most unstable countries, Somalia and Mali. Yet according to some observers, the instability in these parts of Africa is due in part to U.S. support of authoritarian regimes.

Independent policy analyst and activist Nii Akkuetteh applauded the Obama administration for not visiting countries that, at a panel discussion here Monday, he called “U.S.-friendly tyrants” “The criticism right now is, if you flood a country like Mali with arms and it goes wrong, we don’t think its right to turn your back on the problem,” said Akkuetteh. “It is in the U.S.’s best interest to help Mali rebuild since they were partners when Mali slipped into their problematic state.”

Meanwhile, others are pointing to climate change as a more pressing long-term security threat to Africa. On Tuesday, Obama is scheduled to unveil a major new U.S. policy push to combat climate change, but so far Washington has been a significant contributor to the inability of international negotiations to arrive at a comprehensive agreement on the issue.

“Clearly what we are calling for is for the Obama administration to look at the affects of its policies on climate change,” said Woods. According to Dev Kar, chief economist at the research and advocacy organisation Global Financial Integrity, scientists and security analysts are already forecasting a increase in the number of conflicts in Africa and beyond as a result of water shortage. According to recently released World Bank data, such an uptick will likely be visible within decades.

Meanwhile, the cost of Obama’s trip, reportedly from 60 to 100 million dollars, has led to some furious criticism from within the United States, where austerity measures are continuing to upset long-running government programmes. But Amnesty International’s Akwei suggests this is not only a sideshow, but a problematic indication of the broader U.S. view of Africa.

“This criticism continues a sad trend of the perception of the continent, which is basically that it doesn’t matter and its irrelevant,” he said. “In fact, it is relevant. It is a major front of the Pentagon and its work on terror, it is a major source of oil to this country, and it is a humanitarian focal point.”

U.S. President Barack Obama chairing the Security Council Summit on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in 2009. Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

Reactions have been mixed to President Barack Obama’s call for greater nuclear arms reductions in the United States and Russia, made during his speech in Berlin on Wednesday.

“We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe,” Obama stated. “We may strike blows against terrorist networks, but if we ignore the instability and intolerance that fuels extremism, our own freedom will eventually be endangered.”

The president addressed about 6,000 invited guests at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, marking 50 years after U.S. President John F. Kennedy made a similar speech at the height of the Cold War."So long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe."
-- President Barack Obama

Obama announced he would push to work with Russia to reduce the number of U.S. and Russian tactical weapons in Europe, as well as the total number of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by both countries.

“To me, the speech today was disappointing,” John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), a New York advocacy group, told IPS. “Obama did not talk about some important multi-lateral opportunities, nor about creating more opportunities.”

Others lauded the president’s call as critical, if belated.

“The Berlin Wall fell more than two decades ago, and these reductions are long overdue,” Lisbeth Gronloud, a senior scientist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.

“The president’s initiative implicitly acknowledges that today nuclear weapons are a liability, not an asset,” Gronloud added.

The New START Treaty of 2010 limited U.S. and Russian stockpiles to 800 missiles, bombers and submarine launchers each, as well as 1,550 deployed strategic warheads.

The Obama administration is now proposing cutting each country’s strategic warheads by a third, which would leave the United States and Russia with slightly over 1,000 nuclear weapons each.

“Bipartisan national security leaders agree that further, deeper nuclear reductions would increase U.S. security, lead to budget savings, and help pressure other nuclear-armed states to join the disarmament enterprise,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Arms Control Association, said Wednesday.

An expensive system

According to the Arms Control Association, the United States spends an estimated 31 billion dollars annually to support its arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear warheads and associated delivery systems.

If the country reduced its deployed strategic warheads to 1,000 or fewer, the group estimates, taxpayers would save some 58 billion dollars over the coming decade.

With terrorist and cyber attacks increasingly prevalent in recent years, analysts have stepped up calls for the U.S. government to re-evaluate whether a massive nuclear arsenal remains the most relevant way of addressing those threats, particularly given the hundreds of billions of dollars in upkeep those arsenals require.

Obama has renewed commitments to the U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which forbids all nuclear test explosions. Ratification of the treaty has already failed once in Congress, however, and the president has set no new deadline for submitting it to the Senate.

Obama has also stated that he plans to hold the fourth meeting of the Nuclear Security Summit, a biennial meeting to prevent nuclear terrorism around the world, in 2016, with the United States hosting the talks.

The administration now hopes to work with NATO allies to come up with concrete proposals for reducing the world’s stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons, which are not covered by the New START Treaty from 2010.

Russia, which has many more tactical weapons than either the United States or Europe, has been resistant to such reductions in the past.

On Wednesday, Russia’s initial response to Obama’s call for reductions was lukewarm. One senior foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladmir Putin said Moscow wants to “expand the circle of participants” of countries reducing their nuclear arms.

“How can we take seriously this idea about cuts in strategic nuclear potential while the United States is developing its capabilities to intercept Russia’s nuclear potential?” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters in St. Petersburg.

Rehashing statements

In the United States, some civil society voices are suggesting that Obama’s new proposals sound suspiciously repetitive.

“President Obama’s nuclear proposals in Berlin are a tired rehash of U.S. nuclear policy,” said Alice Slater, the director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group, “designed to maintain America’s global military superiority in a web of alliances entangling other nations in a U.S. sphere of nuclear weapons and missile ‘offenses’ under the ribs of a leaky nuclear umbrella.”

Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have already made it clear that they will push back against any treaty that proposes cuts deeper than those proposed in the 2010 New START Treaty, suggesting that the proposed reductions would hurt U.S. security.

“I do not believe the American people will support the president’s policy, which will serve only to weaken our nuclear deterrent and our ability to deal with threats to our strategic interest in the years to come,” James Inhofe, a conservative senator and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday.

According to LCNP’s Burroughs, if proposed cuts made it into the treaty, it is not certain they would receive the required two-thirds majority in the Senate. However, he said a political understanding between the Obama administration and the Russian government would not actually require congressional approval.

But he also warned of severe objections to proceeding in that direction.

“The steps that Obama was talking about taking with respect to tactical nuclear weapons or the long-range strategic weapons is basically making any U.S. reduction contingent on Russian reciprocity,” Burroughs told IPS.

“I understand the political reasons…but the United States could make reductions on its own and invite Russia to follow – and we’d be perfectly safe.”

The Supreme Court has struck down requirements demanding proof of citizenship during voter registration. Credit: Korean Resource Centre/CC by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 17 2013 (IPS)

In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down voter application requirements demanding proof of citizenship, making it much easier for naturalised citizens to register to vote.

The decision looked at the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which does not require proof of citizenship, as well as state-level legislation in the western state of Arizona. In a 7-2 decision, the nine Supreme Court justices ruled the state’s voting requirement, which has been in effect for two years, unconstitutional.

“The anti-immigration sentiment [in Arizona] is unconstitutional and people aren’t going to tolerate it,” Petra Falcon, executive director of Promise Arizona, an Arizona-based immigrant advocacy group, told IPS. “We need decision-makers that appreciate the diversity in our communities.”

The 1993 Voter Registration Act, known as the “Motor Voter” law, requires applicants to sign an oath, punishable as perjury, stating that they are U.S. citizens. But it does not require any proof.

“It’s extremely inadequate,” Arizona Attorney General Thomas Horne, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, said of the 1993 legislation in March. “It’s essentially an honour system. It does not do the job.”

Yet others have applauded the Motor Voter law, with civil liberties advocates suggesting that the legislation significantly eased voter registration by issuing a standard registration form nationwide.

Arizona went a step further, however, by requiring all first-time applicants to provide citizenship in the form of a birth certificate, a passport or naturalisation documents, without which the application would be rejected.

Several other states, including Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee, have similar requirements, and Monday’s ruling will now directly affect those laws.

“This decision reaffirms the principle that states may not undermine this critical law’s effectiveness by adding burdens not required under federal law,” Laughlin McDonald, director emeritus of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Voting Rights Project, said Monday.

“The court has taken a vital step in ensuring the ballot remains free, fair and accessible for all citizens,” McDonald added.

Those opposed to Proposition 200, as Arizona’s law was called, highlighted the enormous problem it creates for naturalised citizens. Using a naturalisation document as proof of citizenship requires applicants to register in person as opposed to through the mail, because federal law prohibits the copying of naturalisation documents.

The ACLU estimates that about 13 million people in the United States lack documentation to prove their citizenship. It also estimates that 31,000 Arizona residents who attempted to register during the two years the law has been in effect were denied, 90 percent of them born in the United States. And in two years in a single Arizona county, community voter registration reportedly dropped by 44 percent.

Advocates say Thursday’s ruling offers the opportunity to start healing some of those wounds.

“Justice is on our side,” Falcon told IPS. “We are working towards rebuilding a united Arizona and one Arizona, rather than a divided Arizona.”

Attempts to tighten requirements

Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, emphasised that Arizona is allowed to ask the federal government to include the extra documents as a state-specific voter-registration requirement. He also noted that states can take the federal government to court if it refuses to do so.

State officials can also check other information on the voter registration form and refuse to register the applicant if it turns out they are not citizens.

Conservatives’ response to the ruling has already been fierce.

“This hole in federal statutory laws allows non-citizens to register and thereby encourages voter fraud,” Senator Ted Cruz, from Texas, said Monday. Cruz also announced that he would file an amendment to currently pending immigration legislation to allow states to require identification before registering voters.

Monday’s decision comes as voting rights activists eagerly await another race-based voting case before the Supreme Court. This case deals with a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that requires states with a history of discrimination, including Arizona, to receive clearance from the Justice Department before they change their voting laws.

That decision is expected within days.

Arizona has been in the vanguard of a new spate of conservative-led state governments attempting to crack down on illegal immigration. Last year, the Supreme Court also decided that a number of laws in Arizona were unconstitutional.

Yet the most controversial one, a law requiring police officers to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant, was allowed to stand. Critics say the court’s decision greenlighted racial profiling.

“This is a country of immigrants but also of U.S. values,” said Falcon. “We want to embrace those values rather than run away from them and abuse them.”

Up to 1 million unpaid internships are offered each year. Credit: Joel Gillman/CC by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 15 2013 (IPS)

A landmark court decision this week has challenged the controversial existence of unpaid internships, highlighting calls for greater clarity on the legal definition of an internship.

The judge, William Pauley, ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures, a movie studio, violated U.S. and New York minimum wage laws by not paying two of its interns during the production of a 2010 movie, “Black Swan”.

“Just like someone that has an entry-level position, interns receive benefits and contacts, but they don’t get paid,” Maurice Pianko, director and lead attorney of Intern Justice, an advocacy group, told IPS. “Just because somebody is receiving experience doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get paid.”

In the “Black Swan” case, plaintiff Eric Glatt, a law student and former accounting intern during the movie’s production, called unpaid internships “a form of institutionalised wage theft”.

According to a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 55 percent of the class of 2012 in the United States had an internship sometime during their time at school, and 47 percent of those were unpaid."Just because somebody is receiving experience doesn't mean they shouldn't get paid."
-- Maurice Pianko

Up to 1 million unpaid internships are offered each year, according to estimates by Ross Eisenbrey, vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. Further, he said the number of unpaid positions has increased in the aftermath of the 2008 economic downturn.

Eisenbrey also blamed unpaid internships for bringing down overall wages.

“The return on a college investment has fallen,” he recently told the media. “Students are facing higher and higher debt burdens, and the reaction of employers is to make matters worse for them by hiring more and more people without paying them.”

Benefiting the intern

Under the Fair Labour Standards Act, the U.S. Department of Labour has outlined six criteria for a position to be considered an internship and thus be legally unpaid in the private sector.

Among them are requirements that the experience must be for the benefit of the intern and the employer cannot derive any immediate advantage from the intern’s work.

If the six criteria are not met, interns must be paid according the minimum wage or more. This week, Pauley ruled that the “Black Swan” interns did not receive any training similar to that of an educational setting, one of the criteria given by the Department of Labour.

“The benefits they may have received – such as knowledge of how a production or accounting office functions or references for future jobs – are the results of simply having worked as any other employee works,” the judge stated in the ruling.

20th Century Fox, the parent company of Fox Searchlight Pictures, issued a statement expressing its disappointment with the ruling, calling it “erroneous” and saying it would appeal.

“I hope this sends a shockwave through employers who think, ‘If I call someone an intern, I don’t have to pay them,'” Glatt said.

Corporate liability

Last month, another federal judge in New York declined to allow a class action lawsuit proceed against the Hearst Corporation, a publisher, challenging unpaid internships at Harper’s Bazaar, one of the publisher’s magazines.

In that case, Diana Wang, a former Harper’s Bazaar intern, filed the lawsuit on behalf of all Hearst Corporation interns. But a judge denied the class action status because Wang couldn’t prove that all Hearst interns had faced similar conditions.

On Thursday, two previous magazine interns filed a lawsuit against another U.S. publisher, Conde Nast Publications, for failing to pay them minimum wage. The lawsuit is currently waiting to receive class action status.

For some advocates of changes to U.S. labour policy regarding internships, the overall goal needs to be to turn those unpaid positions into entry-level positions.

“Employers need workers to help them produce that product,” Intern Justice’s Pianko said. “What that means is that if there are no interns, those positions will be transitioned into paid entry-level positions.”

Still, others say achieving this goal would be very difficult. Brantley Davis, of the advocacy group Coalition for the Future American Worker, estimated that eliminating unpaid internships stands just a 10 percent chance.

“Experience is experience,” he told IPS, “and you need it for the workforce.”

In 2010, federal and state labour official did indeed move to crack down on illegal internships. But at the time, few plaintiffs came forward.

That now appears to be changing. Over the past two years, six lawsuits have been filed demanding minimum wage compensation for activities performed as interns.

According to Pianko, “All we need is one former unpaid intern to come forward and they [corporations] could be facing a four-, five- or six-figure liability.”

Food aid from the United States often travels thousands of miles before reaching its final destination. Credit: Ephraim Nsingo/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

Lawmakers attempted Wednesday to push along an ongoing effort to modernise U.S. international food aid policy amid mounting bipartisan support for the use of more locally grown food products over the long-standing practise of shipping U.S.-grown commodities.

The Food Aid Reform Act, introduced by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Representative Ed Royce and Africa Subcommittee Ranking Member Representative Karen Bass, would eliminate previous requirements that food assistance be grown in the United States and transported on U.S.-flagged ships. Advocates say the changes would deliver aid up to 14 weeks faster and reach an estimated two to four million more people.

“Increasing flexibility is extremely important in these programmes in order to reach more people and react to individual situations on the ground that require different solutions,” Katie Lee, advocacy and policy coordinator for international development at InterAction, a Washington-based network of U.S.-based NGOs, told IPS.

Implementing partners, too, have lined up behind the proposed changes.

In addition to such projections of increased efficiency, the proposed reforms would significantly decrease transportation costs for the United States. According to Royce, who spoke Wednesday in a conference of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 50 percent of the U.S. food aid budget is currently spent on shipping costs.

“You have to order the food in the Midwest, it gets put on a ship, it can go 7,000 miles to the other side of the world, put on to trucks, and then moved into the famine or emergency zone,” Andrew Natsios, a professor at Texas A&M University, testified during Wednesday’s discussions. “If the food is bought locally, you can avoid the 7,000-mile food chain.”"Shipment devastated the Haitian rice farmers after the earthquake because we couldn't buy it locally."
-- Andrew Natsios

Throughout Wednesday’s Congressional discussions, experts highlighted the consequences of this food chain, particularly in war zones or emergency situations. According to Natsios, a regular strategy in a civil war is to starve the enemy by blowing up food trucks.

“The Syrian government is trying to starve the opposition into surrender,” he said. “The Sudanese government did the same thing in southern Sudan over the course of 22 years of civil war.”

Advocates add that the proposed reforms would have long-term benefits for both the U.S. and foreign economies.

“The future interest of U.S. agriculture is less in the provision of U.S. food aid and more in developing a thriving economy that can create new consumers for American productions,” said Dan Glickman, executive director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program, an educational initiative for members of Congress.

The changes would allot a larger percent of the food aid budget as cash spent in local markets, which economists say would significantly stimulate local economies.

“Shipment devastated the Haitian rice farmers after the earthquake because we couldn’t buy it locally,” said Natsios. “But we couldn’t not give them food either, because they needed it.”

U.S. branding

On Monday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a massive, five-year bill that covers much of U.S. agriculture and food-related policy and known as the Farm Bill. The focus now shifts to the House of Representatives to fashion a similar bill, expected to be voted upon later this month.

For now, the Senate bill would reduce overall spending by about 24 billion dollars over 10 years. But that legislation will have to be reconciled with whatever comes out of the House, where the Farm Bill battles are expected to be far more bitter.

Currently, the Food Aid Reform Act is a separate bill, but many observers assume that it will probably be tied into the House Farm Bill eventually. At the moment, experts project it to have less than a seven percent chance of being enacted on its own.

“We don’t expect this to pass free-standing – it’d be great, but that is probably unlikely,” Blake Selzer, a senior policy advocate at CARE, a humanitarian organisation, told IPS.

Still, many U.S. lawmakers and aid experts are concerned as to how the United States would continue to receive public credit for locally procured assistance – an important consideration in any foreign assistance programme. During Wednesday’s discussion, several House representatives expressed such concerns.

“Nobody is talking about going to a cash-only system – not the White House, not the chairman,” Glickman said, emphasising that under the current proposal, only a portion of the aid budget would go to a cash system and the rest would be U.S. shipped commodities.

“I would not support going to a cash only system, I don’t care what country does it. That would be a mistake.”

Indeed, according to USAID, the U.S. government’s main foreign aid arm, such branding has been important, at least in certain situations. U.S. approval ratings in Indonesia, for instance, are said to have nearly doubled, from 37 to 66 percent, following a large delivery prominently branded as U.S. aid.

Natsios emphasised repeatedly that in emergency situations it is very clear where assistance is coming from. “No one would argue that we should only provide aid if we get credit for it,” he said.

Latin American governments have increasingly been working to lessen inequality in the region, but new data suggests their efforts vary widely in quality and impact.

Latin America has for decades been considered one of the world’s most unequal regions, with chasms between the richest and poorest in each country. At a World Bank discussion here on Monday, however, researchers suggested that these gaps have been closing over the past several years – surprising many analysts.“There is no doubt that fiscal policy, the structure of taxes, can be a powerful mechanism to change the distribution of wealth in a society.” -- Jaime Saadera-Chanduvi of the World Bank

Still, major work remains to be done in spreading these reforms to all members of society.

“The main reasons for these high levels of inequality have had to do with corruption, lack of functioning justice systems and rule of law,” Jennifer Johnson, a senior associate of the Latin American Working Group, an advocacy group, told IPS. “As yet, the gains that have been made have not reached the marginalised populations.”

Increasingly, researchers have been looking into what Latin American governments have and haven’t been doing over the past decade to achieve lower levels of poverty and inequality.

“These questions don’t go away,” Stephen Younger, an economics professor at Ithaca College, said Monday at the World Bank. “People are always concerned about the equity implications of a policy, and that includes fiscal policy.”

Early results from a study released last week highlight a wide variety of public policy choices confronting Latin American governments regarding poverty reduction and income redistribution. The report looks at Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay.

“The idea of the project is not only to measure the result of what’s going on with regard to inequality, poverty and social development in Latin America,” Nora Lustig, a professor of Latin American economics and co-author of the new study, said at a panel discussion last week.

“Rather, it is to look more deeply at how this process has been happening and, particularly, how much effort governments themselves are really making.”

That analysis has now identified Argentina as the most effective Latin American country at reducing inequality. Particularly useful in this regard have been measures such as direct cash transfers, when governments give money directly to poor citizens.

Lustig and her colleagues found that this approach has helped to reduce poverty levels in Argentina by more than 60 percent.

Yet in other countries, such an approach has not been nearly as effective. In Peru and Bolivia, for instance, cash transfers have only reduced poverty by around seven percent.

According to Lustig, this discrepancy can be explained by simple spending levels.

“Peru spends much less money in all these transfers,” she told IPS. “It also had to do with who the transfers are targeted at, but it mainly has to do with spending.”

Argentina comes out as a “shining star”, Louise Cord, a sector manager with the World Bank’s Latin America and Caribbean office, said at the unveiling of the results. “And yet we have to all wonder about the sustainability of this fiscal framework.”

According to the study, Argentina has funded the majority of its public spending since the early 2000s through “distortionary taxes” and “unsustainable revenue-raising mechanisms”.

In nearly all countries throughout the region, so-called indirect taxes, on goods and services as opposed to on people and organisations, are seen as problematic for the poor. Such practices have been shown to wipe out all the effects of direct taxes and direct cash transfers, especially in Brazil and Bolivia.

“There is no doubt that fiscal policy, the structure of taxes, can be a powerful mechanism to change the distribution of wealth in a society,” Jaime Saadera-Chanduvi, director of poverty reduction and equity at the World Bank, said Monday.

“It’s critical to understand how taxes and benefits can be shaped through the distribution of incomes and, through that, increase standards of living.”

Economic blossoming

By 2009, nearly a third of the Latin America population had moved into the middle class, with just an estimated 10 percent chance of falling back into poverty.

“Despite these important gains, there is still room to move forward and I think a study like this highlights that,” said Cord.

According to some advocates, Latin American governments need to focus particular attention on corruption, in order to ensure that social policies are not used for political gain or other manipulation.

“States must begin to analyse poverty reduction initiative through coordination with marginalised sectors that have traditionally been excluded from these policy discussions,” Kelsey Alford-Jones, the director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, a Washington-based advocacy group, told IPS.

“They need to focus on models that meet needs identified at the local level,” he said.

Alford-Jones notes that U.S. economic policy, “including the imposition of structural adjustment programmes and free trade agreements, has played a major role in the perpetuation of poverty and inequality.”

Meanwhile, the United States is currently looking for ways to more closely engage with the rising economies of Latin America. Over the past week, both Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry made highly visible trips to the region.

Biden noted during his five-day trip that he had seen an “economic blossoming” in the region.

“What the United States needs to do is be far more flexible and less inclined to favour the demands of transnational organisations,” Laura Carlsen, director of the Mexico City-based Americas Program for the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank, told IPS.

“In particular, it also needs to look more carefully at what’s happening to the weakest countries.”

President Barack Obama’s administration and several major rights groups are reacting with frustration to the decision of an Egyptian court, announced Tuesday night, to convict 43 civil society organisations and 16 U.S. employees of illegal use of foreign funds.

Reactions by both the administration and members of the U.S. Congress are implying that the U.S. government may withhold an annual allotment of some 1.3 billion dollars in military aid to Egypt unless the U.S. accused are pardoned.“We were in the process of seeking registration at the time of the original raid – we were trying to comply with Egyptian law." -- Charles Dunne of Freedom House

“This decision runs contrary to the universal principle of freedom of association and is incompatible with the transition to democracy,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday. “I urge the government of Egypt to work with civic groups as they respond to the Egyptian people’s aspirations for democracy as guaranteed in Egypt’s new constitution.”

The decision was followed by an order to close the Egyptian offices of five U.S.-based NGOs, including Freedom House, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and the International Center for Journalists. Some from these groups are criticising the U.S. response for being too weak.

Kerry’s statement “could have certainly been stronger,” Charles Dunne, the director of Middle East and North African programmes at Freedom House, told IPS. “It called on the Egyptian government to work with civil society organisations in the midst of a campaign to destroy civil society, which is not the right tone to be striking.”

Tuesday’s verdicts originated from the December 2011 crackdown on NGOs as issued by Egypt’s transitional military government. According to some analysts, holdovers from longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime held civil society groups responsible for helping to start the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak.

During the crackdown, NGO offices were raided and criminal charges were brought against personnel.

More recently, President Mohamed Morsi has proposed a new law for regulating NGOs that would require the registration of foreign-funded groups with a committee that includes a government-appointed majority. Dunne condemned the law, calling it the “the most oppressive out there right now”.

Others have expressed similar concerns.

“If this bill passes, all of Egypt’s NGOs would essentially work under the government,” Hafez Abu Seada, chairman of the non-profit Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, told IPS. “We would operate not as independents but as agents for the state.”

The proposed law received criticism from Egyptian NGOs, who say it would be stronger than Mubarak’s requirements, as well as from international groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Both groups say the law contradicts the terms of international treaties Egypt has ratified.

Quasi-government endowment

All but one of the U.S. defendants in the court case decided Tuesday, Robert Becker, a former employee of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), left Egypt before the trial was held, after posting bail. According to media reports, Becker was fired by the NDI after his decision to stay in Egypt.

“Personally, I will once again ignore my lawyer’s advice and will be in Egypt,” Becker wrote on his blog. “I was told it would be best for me to go home, so that is exactly where I will be … home, in Cairo.”

Eleven hours after the verdict was announced, Becker again wrote via Twitter that he had “unwillingly and angrily gone into exile until appeals get sorted out.”

If one looks at the history of several of the groups indicted under the new court decision, it is perhaps unsurprising that today’s Egyptian government would be sceptical of these groups’ goals. Four are connected with a quasi-government programme called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

During the Cold War, U.S intelligence agents set up several fake foundations through which they gave money to anti-communist or at least non-communist groups. During the 1980s, the government set up the National Endowment for Democracy to take the place of these various groups.

Over the years, several countries, including, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, Costa Rica and Czechoslovakia, have complained about interference in national elections by the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2012, Congress gave the group around 118 million dollars.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) make up the endowment’s core constituents, while Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists received funding from the endowment.

According to CQ Roll Call, a Washington newspaper, the IRI has been accused of attempting to choose winners and losers in elections in Haiti and several countries in South America, though the organisation has denied this.

Though several of these NGOs have denied any wrongdoing, defendants received anywhere from one and five years in prison. Egyptian lawyer Khaled Abo Bakr, not involved in this case, said those defendants who did not receive suspended sentences would have to go to prison before they could appeal, and defendants returning to Egypt would be arrested upon arrival.

According to Freedom House’s Dunne, the court decision was political, and not the result of a legitimate judicial proceeding.

“We were in the process of seeking registration at the time of the original raid – we were trying to comply with Egyptian law,” he said. “This has to be resolved politically, and that’s going to require involvement at the highest level of U.S. government.”

President Barack Obama tried Monday to jumpstart a new national discussion on mental health, sponsoring a conference with Vice-President Joe Biden aimed at reducing social stigma around the issue.

The event took place five months after two-dozen schoolchildren were killed in a shooting spree in the state of Connecticut by a killer who allegedly suffered from psychological problems. Since then bipartisan supporters have urged greater government focus on overhauling the country’s creaky mental health infrastructure.“If someone had cancer in your family or diabetes, you wouldn’t be afraid to seek help or talk about it." -- Dennis Wharton of the National Association of Broadcasters

“For the first time in a really long history, we have a president who is actually doing something tangible on this issue,” Mike Fitzpatrick, executive director the National Alliance on Mental Health, an advocacy group, told IPS. “President Obama is actually moving into the community and bringing together groups that haven’t worked together before to develop new partnerships. It’s exciting.”

Fitzpatrick called the United States’ current system of care for young adults dealing with mental health issues “abysmal”.

According to President Obama, speaking Monday at the opening of the conference, one in five adults in the United States experiences some form of mental illness. In addition, some 22 veterans of war commit suicide each day.

“The main goal of this conference is not to start a conversation, so many of you have spent decades waging long and lonely battles to be heard,” the president stated. “Instead, it’s about elevating that conversation to a national level and bringing mental illness out of the shadows.”

President Obama announced the launch of the new website, mentalhealth.gov, a clearinghouse of information for those seeking mental health services. The site will also host stories of those who have overcome mental health-related problems.

“We also need a change of hearts and minds,” Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said at Monday’s conference. “We need to break down social barriers and help people understand that recovery is very real.”

Alongside the website, U.S. media outlets across the country are set to start a coordinated national campaign aimed at destigmatising mental health. According to organisers, the campaign will start by focusing simply on getting those suffering from mental health problems to feel comfortable talking about their experiences.

“If someone had cancer in your family or diabetes, you wouldn’t be afraid to seek help or talk about it,” Dennis Wharton, a communications executive for the National Association of Broadcasters, told IPS.

“So this new ad campaign will include television, radio and online advertisements targeted at 13- to 24-year-olds with the message that is it okay to talk about mental illness.”

Wharton says the new ads will not star celebrities, but instead feature a cross-section of U.S. society. “Because mental health knows no gender or race boundaries – this affects all walks of life,” he says.

Years of cost-cutting

Significant resources will be aimed at people who have served in the U.S. military.

For instance, Blue Star Families, an advocacy group for military families, will be producing a series of ads featuring country music stars urging veterans with mental health problems to seek help.

According to Barbara Van Dahlen, president of Give an Hour, a mental health advocacy group for veterans, says it’s unsurprising that many veterans suffer from mental illness, given their wartime experiences.

“It doesn’t mean that they are broken,” she said Monday. “It doesn’t mean that they can’t be great parents, great partners and great co-workers.”

Van Dahlen stresses the need for trauma and substance abuse to be included in the category of mental illnesses. Advocates emphasise that substance abuse is an indicator of deeper problems, often mental health issues – and that dealing with those problems often helps with the substance abuse, as well.

President Obama announced that in coming months more than 150 “summits”, similar to Monday’s conference, would take place across the country. Hosted by the Department of Veteran Affairs, these will be held between July and September.

“What we ultimately want to do is take the conversations we are having today in the White House, and take them to school auditoriums, community centres, houses of worship, living rooms and kitchen tables across this country,” Health Secretary Sebelius said.

Nonetheless, she also warned of the presence of significant barriers to the new initiative, particularly given years of cost-cutting and the current environment of financial austerity.

“States have cut back on mental health services, and there’s no question that there has been dramatic reduction in state funding,” she said. “We have been trying at the federal level not only to keep federal funding, but also to increase access to services.”

The president’s 2014 budget, for instance, has a request for the training of 5,000 new mental health providers, particularly those who can work with people to transition into university.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Health’s Fitzpatrick, the United States currently requires a massive effort to train practitioners and other medical professionals to be able to offer some form mental health care. Currently, he says, many who are actively seeking help simply cannot find it.

First, however, the new Obama administration push on this issue is focusing on trying to make people comfortable enough to discuss their experiences in the first place. In closing comments Monday, Vice-President Biden drew on personal experiences to urge others seek out mental health-related help if they need it.

“There is nothing, nothing to be ashamed of if you are struggling with mental issues or if your child is or your spouse or your friend,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to ask for help.”

The Control Arms Coalition demonstrated in front of the United Nations in July 2012 to remind delegates of the price paid every day by armed violence. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups here are stepping up a campaign to pressure President Barack Obama to quickly sign on to a new United Nations treaty aimed at regulating, for the first time, the international small-arms trade.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), adopted by the U.N. in April following on years of preparation, opens for country signature on Monday. It passed with just three “no” votes, coming from Iran, North Korea and Syria, and will require the ratification of 50 countries to come into effect."The issue here is simply the symbolism of saying that [the U.S.] is committed to this on an international level." -- Rachel Stohl of the Stimson Center

“The U.S. has said that it feels its export control system is one of the best in the world, and that it would like to see those standards replicated in the ATT,” Clare Da Silva, legal advisor on the ATT with Amnesty International, told IPS.

She says she is confident that the United States will sign on, though it most likely will not be on Monday.

“There is nothing in this treaty that requires the U.S. to do anything differently,” Rachel Stohl, a senior associate at the Stimson Center, a think tank here, said at a panel discussion Friday. “Rather, the issue here is simply the symbolism of saying that [the U.S.] is committed to this on an international level – that’s really important.”

For the first time, the ATT states that if a country knows its weapons will be used to commit genocide or violate a U.N. arms embargo, they cannot be transferred. Stohl believes the ATT has the potential to address some U.S. national security and foreign policy concerns, including terrorism.

A significant majority of U.S. allies, human rights and religious groups have supported the treaty, the passage of which was seen as a key victory for the United States. And while many groups are now calling on President Obama to sign on to the ATT immediately, others are saying he will need to do so no later than the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September.

“If he doesn’t do that, the momentum behind the force will be undermined,” Daryll Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a bipartisan advocacy group here, said Friday.

“U.S. credibility will be questioned, we are going to be pulling the rug out from under our allies, and the president is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

According to both Kimball and Stohl, other countries will be looking to the U.S. to sign on before they make their final decisions. Neither Russia nor China, for instance, has announced whether they will sign the ATT, and analysts suggest that these decisions will hinge on the U.S.’s own moves.

“The U.S. is the largest weapons exporter in the world,” Stohl says. “So people will look and say, well if its okay with the United States, then [signing the ATT] must not be too damaging to legitimate trade.”

Political momentum

The Obama administration has formally supported the ATT, a turnaround from previous U.S. policy under George W. Bush.

Nonetheless, it appears unlikely that the United States will sign the treaty on Jun. 3. Observers say this is due simply to typographical errors in translations from the original English text, however, which are currently being corrected following which countries will have three months to lodge comments.

Even once the Obama administration does sign on, the U.S. Congress will still need to approve the ratification before it can be signed into law. According to Amnesty International’s Da Silva, many international treaties never get ratified, and she does not expect to see the ATT made into law anytime soon.

Indeed, Republican politicians have already moved to pass legislation specifically barring the United States’ ratification of the ATT, while gun-rights advocates here continue to see opposition of the treaty as a primary rallying point. The majority of this opposition has come from the National Rifle Association (NRA), a lobby group.

“The text of the approved treaty is deeply problematic and threatens the rights of privacy of American gun owners,” the NRA says on its website.

In fact, the ATT deals solely with the international arms trade between governments. Nonetheless, this opposition has been so strong that U.S. delegation specifically wrote into the ATT text language that no infringement will occur for recreational, cultural, historical and lawful ownership.

Still, the Stimson Center’s Stohl notes that there remains an important opportunity for the United States to set an example.

“The symbolism is not that there has to be any change to U.S. law,” she told IPS. “Rather, it would be sending a signal to the rest of the world that the United States, which is responsible for 75 percent of the arms trade, is taking on this obligation as the world’s largest [arms] exporter.”

Following a recent legislative defeat of President Obama’s attempts to strengthen domestic gun laws – unrelated to the ATT – Stohl notes that the treaty could be an opportunity for the administration, as well.

“Here’s an opportunity to say, the NRA didn’t like this and we did it anyway,” she says.

Paul O’Brien, an advocate with Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, agrees.

“Do they sign it in a moment when the world is paying attention? We hope so,” he said at Friday’s panel discussion.

“Do they wait until Congress isn’t paying attention and the NRA has probably gone to bed for a couple of weeks? We hope not. We hope they use the moment to continue to build political momentum”.

High-quality pre-school programmeshave been shown to improve early literacy, language and math skills by almost 50 percent. Credit: Cathy Stanley-Erickson/cc by 2.0

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, May 30 2013 (IPS)

Over 300 business, civil society and academic groups here are urging U.S. lawmakers to support early childhood education, months after President Barack Obama hinted that his administration would be pushing for a change in U.S. policy to support universal preschool.

Organisations supporting an open letter sent Wednesday include Macy’s, a national department store chain, the Committee for Economic Development and the University of Miami.“The bigger challenge for me is most politicians, regardless of party, are wired to think short term and for the next election." -- Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

“The letter is specifically about getting the business community, both organisationally and individually, to demonstrate that there are groups outside of the typical parent organisations that care about this issue,” Colleen Wilber, vice-president of media relations at America’s Promise Alliance, the U.S.’s largest partnership dedicated to improving the lives of children, told IPS.

In February, during his annual State of the Union Address, President Obama outlined his administration’s plans for overhauling early childhood education. In the United States, only around 30 percent of four-year-olds are currently thought to be enrolled in high-quality programmes.

“Most middle-class parents can’t afford a few hundred bucks a week for private preschool,” President Obama stated. “And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives.”

According to the PEW Center for States, a research group here, children from disadvantaged homes can start kindergarten as far as 18 months behind, after which point it has been found to be extremely difficult for them to catch up. High-quality pre-school programmes, on the other hand, have been shown to improve early literacy, language and math skills by almost 50 percent.

Those groups involved in Wednesday’s open letter are now pushing for pre-school education for prenatal to five year olds, as well as home visits for families considered “at risk” starting at pregnancy, better teacher training and smaller teacher-to-student ratios.

“Many of us compete in the global marketplace. We see other countries investing in their young children both for the long-term benefits of a stronger workforce and the current benefits that come from enhancing the productivity of parents. To compete, we have to do the same,” stated the ReadyNation open letter.

Though there is still work to be done, Sarah Watson, director of ReadyNation, a part of America’s Promise Alliance aimed at emphasising business leaders’ support of early childhood development, which organised the new letter, says President Obama’s proposed reforms would constitute the largest expansion of the country’s early childhood development programme in a decade.

“It would be an enormous leap forward for the country,” she told IPS.

“It’s important to note that even if the entire plan were enacted, children would still have other needs. But the important point is that this is a very ambitious proposal, and if we enact even a significant proportion of it, it would make a huge difference.”

Need to coordinate

ReadyNation’s initiative is placing a significant focus on business perspectives. This move has allowed the group to compare the returns on investment in education to other expenditures.

Watson says that being able to offer such hard economic data made a huge difference in bringing together the business community and other constituencies. Studies have shown a return of seven dollars for every dollar spent on early education and development.

According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, speaking on Wednesday, many in the U.S. have yet to realise these economics.

“The United States badly lags behind other nations supporting early learning development,” Duncan said at a panel discussion here. “That’s an embarrassment and a missed opportunity for a huge return on investment.”

The Preschool Initiative, a large expansion to early childhood education programmes and home visits proposed by President Obama, though available to all U.S. children, is specifically aimed at struggling single parents and teenage parents.

Yet early education has been found to improve high school graduation rates by up to 16 percent, and college attendance by more than 50 percent, according to the PEW Center for States study.

According to Nancy Johnson, a former member of Congress, taking an inventory of successful early education and kindergarten programmes would now allow both state and the federal government to better understand what needs to be done to achieve this goal.

“What I worry about is that little rural school, and that [Preschool Initiative money] isn’t making it down to those schools,” Johnson said Wednesday, speaking alongside Duncan. “Both parties talk about smart government, but nobody does anything about it.”

Despite this new momentum, legislative progress for Obama’s plan still looks very complicated. Immediately after the president floated the reforms proposal in February, Republican members of Congress rejected it out of hand due to its expense.

Many Republicans expressed interest in fixing already existing initiatives, as opposed to created new ones that will cost an estimated 90 billion dollars. Several Republicans could not spot the difference between this new proposal and Head Start, a programme that has failed in the eyes of many. Obama appears to have a bit of an uphill battle in pushing this proposal through Congress.

“The bigger challenge for me is most politicians, regardless of party, are wired to think short term and for the next election,” Duncan said. “And this is the ultimate long-term investment.”