July 14, 2022
The 4 civic skills we need to keep our democracy
As primaries roll out around the country, we’re tracking voter turnout. Raised on the cartoon civics lessons of “Schoolhouse Rock,” I know that being a good American means voting.
As primaries roll out around the country, we’re tracking voter turnout. Raised on the cartoon civics lessons of “Schoolhouse Rock,” I know that being a good American means voting.
I moved to Wyoming a few years ago for its outdoor recreation, but I also liked the state’s history of championing equal rights for women. As early as 1869, it codified women’s voting rights, 50 years before the 19th Amendment did the same thing. Western women in the 19th century quickly proved their mettle, helping to build communities in rugged and isolated landscapes.
We know now that the largest recorded fire in New Mexico history was started by an escaped “prescribed burn,” or rather by two. The Hermit’s Peak fire bolted away on April 6, when unexpectedly gusty winds blew sparks beyond control lines.
“An unusually intense, early season heat wave is gripping areas from Texas to the entire Southwest, including major metro area such as Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Sacramento,” is how one media source explained the “dangerous” heat wave, with temperatures between 100-106°F (Sacramento) and 122°F (Death Valley) that swept over Texas, Arizona and California earlier this month, causing the National Weather Service to issue a high warning for heat-related illnesses.
It was an ordinary Valentine’s Day four years ago when my class was interrupted by incoming news of an active shooter in a Florida high school. On Feb. 14, 2018, a 19-year-old opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but the impacts were far-reaching indeed.
“The threats became much more specific, much more graphic, and included not just me by name but included members of my family…” This is how Al Schmidt, the former City Commissioner of Philadelphia and a Republican member of the election board, described the intimidation he faced during and after the 2020 election.
“They were at places that seemed safe — but few spaces in America are guaranteed safe anymore.”
It has been more than 17 months since the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on our United States Capitol — 17 months since someone planted a pipe bomb outside a building containing our then vice-president elect Kamala Harris, the first woman ever elected to the vice presidency; 17 months since people erected a noose and makeshift gallows outside our Capitol and cried for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence; 17 months since someone seemingly removed the panic buttons from a Democratic congresswoman’s office; and 17 months since Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters hurled racial slurs and beat Capitol Police officers on duty that day.
Fifty-five years ago this month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. published his fourth and final book: “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” In it, he described the turmoil then engulfing American cities as representing a new phase in the struggle for freedom: as a shift from a primary focus on dismantling Southern apartheid to a broader grappling with racism and economic inequality nationwide. Extending his analysis globally, Dr. King called for an end to the madness of the Vietnam War, for an eradication of global poverty, and for a recognition of nonviolence as the only sane path forward.
Speakers’ behavior at WSD school board meeting ‘disturbing’
