Dan Miller shares his passion and empathy for saving our planet. While focusing on a simple solution to help fix climate change, he alerts us on our responsibilities as engaged citizens to be involved and take urgent actions towards the environment, our planet, and our society.
A week after his arrest during protests in Ferguson, Dr. Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary professor, and author of (in dialogue with and edited by Christa Buschendorf) Black Prophetic Fire (Beacon Press, 2014), talks about his latest work, a reexamination of the lives and legacies of leading black activists Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells – and what today’s civil rights activists need to remember about them.
Sustainable development is the central drama of our time. The world’s governments are currently negotiating a set of Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, for the period 2015-2030, following the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which run from 2000-2015.
The MDGs focus on ending extreme poverty, hunger, and preventable disease. They have been the most important global development goals in the U.N.’s history. The SDGs will continue the fight against extreme poverty, but also add the challenges of ensuring more equitable economic growth and environmental sustainability, especially the key goal of curbing the dangers of human-induced climate change.
The starting point of sustainable development is our crowded planet. There are now 7.2 billion people on the planet, roughly 9 times the 800 million people estimated to have lived in 1750, at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The world population continues to rise rapidly, by around 75 million people per year. Soon enough there will be 8 billion by the 2020s, and these billions of people are looking for their foothold in the world economy.
The world economy is vast, growing rapidly (by 3–4 percent per year in scale), and highly unequal in the distribution of income within countries and between countries. Ours is a world of fabulous wealth and extreme poverty: billions of people enjoy longevity and good health unimaginable in previous generations, yet at least 1 billion people live in such abject poverty that they struggle for mere survival every day.
The world economy is not only remarkably unequal but also remarkably threatening to Earth itself. The unprecedentedly large scale of the world economy is creating an unprecedented environmental crisis, one that threatens the lives and well-being of billions of people and the survival of millions of other species on the planet, and perhaps even our own.
Thus we arrive at the Age of Sustainable Development. As an intellectual pursuit, sustainable development tries to make sense of the interactions of three complex systems: the world economy, the global society, and the Earth’s physical environment. How does an economy of 7.2 billion people and $90 trillion gross world output change over time? How does a global society of such inequality of income, wealth, and power function? And what happens when the world economy is on a collision course with the physical environment?
As a normative (or ethical) outlook, Sustainable development suggests a set of societal objectives or goals to which the world should aspire. The world’s nations will soon adopt Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) precisely to help guide the future course of economic and social development on the planet. Sustainable development: SDGs call for socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth.
To achieve the economic, social, and environmental objectives of the SDGs, a fourth objective must also be achieved: good governance. Among these core functions of government are the provision of social services such as health care and education; the provision of infrastructure such as roads, ports, and power; the protection of individuals from crime and violence; the promotion of basic science and new technologies; and the implementation of regulations to protect the environment. And in our world today, good governance cannot refer only to governments. Our well-being depends on the world’s multinational powerful companies obeying the law, respecting the natural environment, and helping the communities in which they operate, especially to help eradicate extreme poverty.
Thus the normative side of sustainable development envisions four basic pillars of a good society and a globally integrated world community: economic prosperity; social inclusion and cohesion; environmental sustainability; and good governance by major social actors, including governments and business. It’s a lot to ask for, and there is no shortage of challenges to achieving sustainable development in practice. Yet the stakes are high. Achieving sustainable development on our crowded, unequal, and degraded planet is the most important challenge facing our generation. The SDGs must be the compass, the lodestar, for the future development of the planet during the period 2015 to mid-century.
The world’s governments, within the framework of the United Nations, are currently attempting to negotiate a framework to help guide humanity through the very difficult environmental crises of our own making. 2015 is the most important year of diplomacy on sustainable development in at least 15 years. There are three mega-summits next year. The first is on Financing for Development, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in July 2015. The next is to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals, at the UN headquarters in New York, in September 2015. The third is on climate change — the COP21 [21st Conference of Parties] of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change — in Paris in December 2015. It is vital that these negotiations be successful, with the UN playing a central role in leading the world’s governments to set a global sustainable development framework and then to implement that framework in the decades to come.
Setting Millennium Development Goals has made a huge difference in people’s lives, particularly in the poorest places on the planet. Sub-Saharan Africa has benefited enormously from the MDGs, and we can learn from that success in designing the SDGs. As special adviser to the U.N. secretary-general on the MDGs since 2001 (Kofi Annan until 2006, and Ban Ki-moon since 2007), I have seen how seriously many African governments take the targets, using them to set priorities, catalyze stakeholders, increase public awareness and motivation, and hold ministries accountable. Over time, the U.N. and the high-income countries’ donor agencies increasingly used the MDGs to help organize their own work in Africa as well. While the MDGs are not the only factor underpinning the improvements since 2000, they have played a huge role.
When U.N. member states turn to the next set of global development goals, they should learn from the MDGs. First, by keeping the list of SDGs relatively short — no more than 10 — the SDGs will be easier to remember and easier to support. Second, all governments, rich and poor, should be accountable for meeting the SDGs as implementers. Third, the SDGs should build on the MDGs. The MDGs helped to cut global extreme poverty by more than half. The SDGs should take on the challenge of ending extreme poverty for good. Finally, the SDGs should mobilize expert groups around the key challenges of sustainable development. A process of expert advice and problem solving is urgently needed on issues such as low-carbon energy, sustainable agriculture, resilient cities, and universal health coverage.
Fifty years ago, President John F. Kennedy declared, “By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.” The MDGs have helped to play that role in the fight against poverty. The SDGs can do the same for the even more complex global challenge of achieving sustainable development.
When Thurgood Marshall walked through the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 to challenge the doctrine of “separate but equal,” he knew that he was only focusing on one half of the problem. Marshall had spent his early years at the NAACP fighting for equal access to high-quality education in all-black and all-white schools alike. By the 1950’s the political winds had shifted enough to challenge legalized segregation, but there was a catch: equal education had to take a back seat.
On Saturday, the 60th anniversary of Marshall’s masterful victory in Brown v. Board of Education, we need to focus on the NAACP’s original, broader vision for schools that are both integrated and equal. I believe the new and much-discussed Common Core standards will move us toward that goal.
The educational landscape today is defined by its harsh inequities. Students of color lag behind their white peers in test scores and graduation rates on nearly every indicator. This is not an indication of these students’ ability or desire; rather, African-American and Latino students tend to live in poor neighborhoods with underfunded schools, and these schools lack the experienced teachers, extracurricular activities, and access to college courses that help students thrive.
The new Common Core standards are an essential tool for bridging the education divide. Simply put, Common Core is a set of benchmarks that define what students should be learning at each grade level in math and English. The standards were developed by two nonpartisan state organizations — the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers — and they have been adopted by 44 states and the District of Columbia. Yet they have come under increased scrutiny as they begin to take effect.
Critics on the right claim the standards represent a federal takeover of the public education system. Critics on the left argue the new, harder tests will be used to unfairly assess teachers. To be sure, the perspectives of parents and teachers are critical as we think about how to reform classroom teaching. Yet one constituency matters most: our students. Common Core standards will help us achieve Marshall’s original vision of equal access to high-quality education.
The first step to solving a problem is identifying it correctly. The Common Core standards offer clear, consistent and high expectations for what children should be learning at each grade level. Although the new tests are often more difficult, they also offer a more accurate portrait of student achievement. Parents and policymakers can use the new data to find out which districts, schools, and teachers are struggling to meet expectations — helping parents make a stronger case for investment in the schools that need it most.
Second, the Common Core standards will help students master critical thinking and problem-solving skills that will help them succeed in life. The standards set clear expectations for students to digest multifaceted text, gain the ability to understand the why — and not just the how — of math, and use evidence and data to make arguments. These abstract skills are more effective than rote memorization, and they will help students prepare for real-world challenges. In short, Common Core helps teach children how to think.
To be sure, Common Core is not a silver bullet. Closing gaps in education will also require that we increase access to high-quality pre-school, expand learning opportunities for struggling students and schools, and make much-needed structural changes to public education in disadvantaged communities. Also, if schools lack the resources to implement new standards and retrain teachers, then no program will have the desired effect.
Still, the Common Core remains a significant step forward. As we celebrate Brown v. Board of Education, we must recommit Marshall’s broader vision of an integrated and equitable public education system. Common Core will help us with that challenge.
The New School and Haymarket Books present: Danny Glover, Kathleen Cleaver, and Brian Jones discussing the new book: The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975. Moderated by School of Media Studies Assistant Professor, Michelle Materre.
The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 is an extraordinary window into the black freedom struggle in the United States, offering a treasure trove of fresh archival information about the Black Power movement from 1967 to 1975 and vivid portraits of some of its most dynamic participants, including Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael. The book — like the documentary film that inspired it — includes historical speeches and interviews by: Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Emile de Antonio, and Angela Davis. And it also features new commentary voiced by: Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Harry Belafonte, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Robin Kelley, Abiodun Oyewole, Sonia Sanchez, Bobby Seale, John Forte, and Questlove.
A few years ago in New York City, a 17-year-old black transgender girl named Trina was walking down the street when she was stopped by police officers and frisked. When a warrant check came up clean, the officer looked in her purse, found condoms and then arrested her for loitering with the purposes of prostitution—the type of arrest that would be unthinkable had she been a cisgender, heterosexual boy.
Yet it’s the type of arrest that happens to gay men and women of color—as well as transgender women of color and homeless LGBT youths of color—on an all-too-frequent basis during encounters with police, and it represents a hidden but devastating form of profiling.
The fight against profiling by law enforcement is at a critical moment. Last week U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to collect hard data on stops, searches and arrests by federal law-enforcement officials, just weeks after proposing a new ban on profiling—one that includes profiling based on sexual orientation and gender identity. These are important steps toward a fairer criminal-justice system. Still, there is more to be done to make sure that the national conversation around profiling deals with the crisis of profiling against LGBT people and LGBT people of color, specifically.
Last week a diverse group led by the Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, the Center for American Progress, the Center for HIV Law and Policy and Streetwise and Safe released a federal-policy road map to address the continuing and pervasive profiling, policing and punishment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans—many of whom are young men and women of color and young transgender people of color. This road map offers critical guidance to the federal government in its efforts to stamp out injustice in the legal system.
Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community are significantly overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system. In one national survey, 73 percent of LGBT individuals reported an encounter with a law-enforcement officer over the preceding year. According to data collected by anti-violence programs, 48 percent of LGBT people seeking protection from police reported instances of police misconduct. Researchers have also documented higher levels of verbal, physical and sexual abuse from law enforcement against LGBT youths.
The problems are compounded for LGBT people of color, who deal with discrimination on multiple fronts, including homophobia and transphobia, in addition to racial bias. More than a third of LGBT people of color reported experiencing verbal or physical abuse in encounters with law enforcement.
Combating this pattern are a number of grassroots organizations working in their communities at the intersections of racial justice, criminal justice and LGBT rights. In New Orleans, BreakOUT! played a pivotal role in securing comprehensive protections for LGBT people after the New Orleans Police Department came under fire. In New York City, Streetwise and Safe helped pass the stop-and-frisk bill that outlawed profiling against LGBT people as well as people of color. The crisis, however, demands a response from the highest levels of government.
Here are some next steps to take:
We need to end institutionalized homophobia and transphobia, just as we need to end institutionalized racism. Let us be sure to leave no one behind.
In this video, John Oliver hosts a mathematically representative climate change debate, with the help of special guest Bill Nye the Science Guy, of course.
This Vox video summarizes what people and especially politicians mean when they say “single payer healthcare.” It acknowledges that single payer healthcare is a contentious issue – some think that it is the solution to the healthcare system’s issues or “silver bullet” others think that it is government takeover.
First, Vox describes the current healthcare system in the U.S. that they describe as multiple “tubes” or “thousands and thousands of payer healthcare and each of them pay different amounts for the exact same medical service.” This leads to a lot of administrative work.
In contrast, a single payer system is “just one tube of payments” where all the money comes from the government to the doctors.Vox comments that single payer healthcare is “actually pretty popular” in countries that have adopted single payer.
However, Vox describes that there is a “catch” because the government “gets to decide what they will and will not pay for.” In addition, if the government has not raised enough in taxes for the healthcare plan it could lead to more wait times.
The video ends referencing Vermont’s attempt at creating a single payer healthcare system and the possibility that if a state were to successfully implement a system like that, the country could follow suit.
Time magazine named Reich one of the 10 most effective Cabinet secretaries of the 20th century. He is a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. Come hear his provocative thoughts on the future of the U.S. economy.
In 2013, Harry Belafonte was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP. The Spingarn Medal is awarded annually by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for outstanding achievement by an African American. In his acceptance speech, Harry Belafonte call upon all artists to use their art and their positions as celebrities to address many of the unfairness and discrimination leveled at the black community. Belafonte specifically focuses on gun and criminal justice issues.