Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/donald-trump-tariffs/index.html
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Once Again...Here Is How Tariffs Work
For anyone who *still* doesn't get it...
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/donald-trump-tariffs/index.html
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/donald-trump-tariffs/index.html
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
NONE OF THE ABOVE
Why people are reluctant to call themselves atheists
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
Sun March 10, 2024
In September, standing before a room full of Christian conservatives, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a bold pronouncement: “I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God.”
Being an atheist is still a political liability in the US — though it’s not as bad as DeSantis would have you think. While a 2020 Gallup poll found that six in 10 people would vote for a well-qualified atheist presidential candidate, fewer people said they would be willing to vote for an atheist than a candidate who was gay, lesbian or Muslim. Only socialists ranked lower among poll respondents.
Though the share of Americans who say they don’t believe in a higher power has increased in the past decade, some people still view atheists negatively. A 2017 study found that people believe atheists are more likely to be serial killers than believers, even though federal data suggests they are far less likely to commit crimes than religious people.
Just like people of faith, not all atheists believe the same things. Aside from their lack of belief in a higher power or powers, atheists vary widely in their answers to spiritual and existential questions.
Given the misconceptions surrounding this group, many people are reluctant to say that they’re atheists — which means it’s hard to pinpoint connections and differences among their numbers.
What is atheism?
An atheist is someone “who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods,” according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.
Because atheists are defined by what they don’t believe, it’s difficult to generalize what they do believe. In the words of comedian and outspoken atheist Ricky Gervais on X, “Saying ‘Atheism is a belief system’ is like saying ‘not going skiing, is a hobby.’”
Some atheists, like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and neuroscientist Sam Harris, are steadfast in their rejection of organized religion. Others are skeptical or apathetic when it comes to philosophical questions of whether a god exists.
Because of the social stigma atheists may face in the US and around the world, some people have complicated feelings about the term, said Nick Fish, president of the organization American Atheists. Plenty of people who fit the definition of an atheist don’t self-identify as such, instead preferring less fraught terms such as agnostic, humanist or freethinker, he added.
Then there are the cultural Catholics, the non-practicing Jews, the secular Muslims — people who don’t necessarily believe in a deity but identify with a particular faith because of their family upbringing, ethnicity or culture.
“A simple dictionary definition doesn’t necessarily encapsulate people’s self identity, and people use a variety of terms even when ultimately they believe the same thing,” Fish said.
What do atheists believe?
Atheists also have different interpretations of what it means to not believe. While nearly all self-described atheists don’t believe in the God described in the Judeo-Christian Bible, 23% do believe in God or some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe, according to a Pew Research Center report published in January.
Belief for atheists goes deeper than the question of whether there is a higher power.
Notably, a fifth of self-described atheists consider themselves spiritual, Pew’s recent survey on the religious “nones” found. The report contains other surprising insights, too: Most atheists say the natural world is all there is, but nearly a quarter believe there’s something spiritual beyond our present environment. About a third believe animals other than humans can have spirits or spiritual energies, and a slightly smaller share believe spiritual energies can be found in parts of nature, like mountains, trees or rivers. Just under one in five atheists believe cemeteries or memorial sites can have spiritual energies, while fewer than one in 10 say the same about objects such as crystals. Nearly a third of atheists believe humans have souls or spirits in addition to their physical body.
These responses might seem confusing or contradictory, but atheism and spirituality aren’t necessarily at odds. Though some people associate spirituality with a connection to a god, for others it can mean feeling connected to other people or to something else bigger than oneself.
Indeed, there are atheists who believe in cosmic interconnectedness or in transcendent moments of wonder without considering themselves religious. Long distance swimmer and self-proclaimed atheist Diana Nyad discussed this distinction in a 2013 interview with Oprah.
“I’m an atheist who’s in awe,” she said. “I think you can be an atheist who doesn’t believe in an overarching being who created all of this and sees over it. But there’s spirituality because we human beings, and we animals and maybe even we plants — but certainly the ocean and the moon and the stars — we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it.”
How many atheists are there?
It’s hard to know just how many atheists there are when some people are reluctant to claim the label.
While a 2018 Pew survey found that 10% of US adults say they don’t believe in any higher power or spiritual force, only about 4% of US adults identify as atheists. A 2022 Gallup poll puts the number of nonbelievers higher, with 17% of Americans saying they don’t believe in God.
Some scholars, however, consider these numbers underestimates — an analysis by psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine B. Najle suggests the true count is closer to 26%. Gervais points to Cold War era associations of atheists as “godless communists,” as well as Christianity’s enduring influence on American culture, as some reasons people may be hesitant to identify as nonbelievers.
“The term atheist has attracted some unsavory connotations,” he added. “Also, religion (in the US) is politically and socially rewarded, so people might be reluctant to out themselves as an atheist.”
It’s also worth noting that atheism — at least in the West — is often defined in relation to monotheistic traditions, namely the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As the organization American Atheists notes on its website, older dictionaries previously defined atheism as a “belief that there is no God” — the singular, proper noun typically used by Christians and some Jews. Even Gallup’s 2022 poll asked about belief in “God.”
Framing atheism in these terms doesn’t capture a range of other beliefs that atheists could conceivably hold. Strands of atheist thought can be found in non-theistic traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, as well cultures around the world that practice animism.
What is the difference between an atheist and an agnostic?
There are all kinds of labels to describe nonbelievers. While atheism and agnosticism are among the most common, there are some differences between those terms.
Though the two are often considered distinct worldviews, technically, they aren’t mutually exclusive. Rather, the terms atheism and agnosticism answer different questions, Nick Fish of American Atheists said. Atheism answers whether a person believes in a god or gods, and agnosticism answers whether it is possible to know if a supreme being exists.
But again, dictionary definitions prove limiting here. In reality, many people think of agnosticism as a less stringent form of atheism.
“If you spend a bit of time digging in, I think (many agnostics) will ultimately say, ‘I don’t believe in a God but I’m not sure, so I’m agnostic,’” Fish said.
Jocelyn Williamson, co-founder of the Central Florida Freethought Community, doesn’t believe in a higher power but says she can’t be certain. Technically, that fits the definition of an agnostic atheist. But she said she typically tells people who ask about her religious beliefs that she’s a secular humanist.
“Most people don’t know what that means, and then I can actually have a conversation,” Williamson said. “There’s too many preconceived notions if I just say I’m an atheist.”
The term atheist only conveys what she doesn’t believe in, Williamson said. The term humanist, meanwhile, signals that she’s motivated by compassion for others and that she believes societal decision-making should be grounded in reason and science.
What do people get wrong about atheists?
One of the most common misconceptions about atheists is that they lack morals that others typically attribute to religion.
In a 2019 Pew survey, 44% of US residents said belief in God was necessary to be moral and have good values — in other countries, that share is much higher.
Williamson is all too familiar with such notions. When she was first getting to know faith leaders in her state, through her work with the Central Florida Freethought Community, she recalls a clergy member asking her what stops her from killing other people if she doesn’t believe in a higher power.
“I had always thought that was a meme, a trope,” she said. “I didn’t think anybody actually believed that.”
In fact, various studies suggest that atheists are no more immoral than religious people. They’re also just as likely to participate in civic life as those who are affiliated with a religion and just as likely to engage in community service, according to Pew’s recent survey of religious “nones.”
Atheists also get stereotyped as angry people who vehemently oppose religion and its followers. Like any other population, though, they aren’t a monolith. Williamson, for example, is part of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida and works with faith leaders toward common goals. Plenty of nonbelievers volunteer with religious organizations out of a desire to serve their communities, she added — her father worked as a local director for the Christian nonprofit Habitat for Humanity despite not being religious.
Another misconception about atheists is that they’re certain or unwavering in their beliefs, Fish said. People often tell him that they aren’t sure on the big existential questions, and therefore can’t be atheists. But many atheists are figuring it all out, too.
“Just because we don’t believe in a god doesn’t mean that we have all the answers to everything else,” he said. “In fact, for many, for most of us, it’s the opposite. We recognize that we don’t.”
Link to original article on CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/us/atheism-beliefs-explained-cec/index.html
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
Sun March 10, 2024
In September, standing before a room full of Christian conservatives, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made a bold pronouncement: “I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God.”
Being an atheist is still a political liability in the US — though it’s not as bad as DeSantis would have you think. While a 2020 Gallup poll found that six in 10 people would vote for a well-qualified atheist presidential candidate, fewer people said they would be willing to vote for an atheist than a candidate who was gay, lesbian or Muslim. Only socialists ranked lower among poll respondents.
Though the share of Americans who say they don’t believe in a higher power has increased in the past decade, some people still view atheists negatively. A 2017 study found that people believe atheists are more likely to be serial killers than believers, even though federal data suggests they are far less likely to commit crimes than religious people.
Just like people of faith, not all atheists believe the same things. Aside from their lack of belief in a higher power or powers, atheists vary widely in their answers to spiritual and existential questions.
Given the misconceptions surrounding this group, many people are reluctant to say that they’re atheists — which means it’s hard to pinpoint connections and differences among their numbers.
What is atheism?
An atheist is someone “who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods,” according to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary.
Because atheists are defined by what they don’t believe, it’s difficult to generalize what they do believe. In the words of comedian and outspoken atheist Ricky Gervais on X, “Saying ‘Atheism is a belief system’ is like saying ‘not going skiing, is a hobby.’”
Some atheists, like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and neuroscientist Sam Harris, are steadfast in their rejection of organized religion. Others are skeptical or apathetic when it comes to philosophical questions of whether a god exists.
Because of the social stigma atheists may face in the US and around the world, some people have complicated feelings about the term, said Nick Fish, president of the organization American Atheists. Plenty of people who fit the definition of an atheist don’t self-identify as such, instead preferring less fraught terms such as agnostic, humanist or freethinker, he added.
Then there are the cultural Catholics, the non-practicing Jews, the secular Muslims — people who don’t necessarily believe in a deity but identify with a particular faith because of their family upbringing, ethnicity or culture.
“A simple dictionary definition doesn’t necessarily encapsulate people’s self identity, and people use a variety of terms even when ultimately they believe the same thing,” Fish said.
What do atheists believe?
Atheists also have different interpretations of what it means to not believe. While nearly all self-described atheists don’t believe in the God described in the Judeo-Christian Bible, 23% do believe in God or some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe, according to a Pew Research Center report published in January.
Belief for atheists goes deeper than the question of whether there is a higher power.
Notably, a fifth of self-described atheists consider themselves spiritual, Pew’s recent survey on the religious “nones” found. The report contains other surprising insights, too: Most atheists say the natural world is all there is, but nearly a quarter believe there’s something spiritual beyond our present environment. About a third believe animals other than humans can have spirits or spiritual energies, and a slightly smaller share believe spiritual energies can be found in parts of nature, like mountains, trees or rivers. Just under one in five atheists believe cemeteries or memorial sites can have spiritual energies, while fewer than one in 10 say the same about objects such as crystals. Nearly a third of atheists believe humans have souls or spirits in addition to their physical body.
These responses might seem confusing or contradictory, but atheism and spirituality aren’t necessarily at odds. Though some people associate spirituality with a connection to a god, for others it can mean feeling connected to other people or to something else bigger than oneself.
Indeed, there are atheists who believe in cosmic interconnectedness or in transcendent moments of wonder without considering themselves religious. Long distance swimmer and self-proclaimed atheist Diana Nyad discussed this distinction in a 2013 interview with Oprah.
“I’m an atheist who’s in awe,” she said. “I think you can be an atheist who doesn’t believe in an overarching being who created all of this and sees over it. But there’s spirituality because we human beings, and we animals and maybe even we plants — but certainly the ocean and the moon and the stars — we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it.”
How many atheists are there?
It’s hard to know just how many atheists there are when some people are reluctant to claim the label.
While a 2018 Pew survey found that 10% of US adults say they don’t believe in any higher power or spiritual force, only about 4% of US adults identify as atheists. A 2022 Gallup poll puts the number of nonbelievers higher, with 17% of Americans saying they don’t believe in God.
Some scholars, however, consider these numbers underestimates — an analysis by psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine B. Najle suggests the true count is closer to 26%. Gervais points to Cold War era associations of atheists as “godless communists,” as well as Christianity’s enduring influence on American culture, as some reasons people may be hesitant to identify as nonbelievers.
“The term atheist has attracted some unsavory connotations,” he added. “Also, religion (in the US) is politically and socially rewarded, so people might be reluctant to out themselves as an atheist.”
It’s also worth noting that atheism — at least in the West — is often defined in relation to monotheistic traditions, namely the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As the organization American Atheists notes on its website, older dictionaries previously defined atheism as a “belief that there is no God” — the singular, proper noun typically used by Christians and some Jews. Even Gallup’s 2022 poll asked about belief in “God.”
Framing atheism in these terms doesn’t capture a range of other beliefs that atheists could conceivably hold. Strands of atheist thought can be found in non-theistic traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, as well cultures around the world that practice animism.
What is the difference between an atheist and an agnostic?
There are all kinds of labels to describe nonbelievers. While atheism and agnosticism are among the most common, there are some differences between those terms.
Though the two are often considered distinct worldviews, technically, they aren’t mutually exclusive. Rather, the terms atheism and agnosticism answer different questions, Nick Fish of American Atheists said. Atheism answers whether a person believes in a god or gods, and agnosticism answers whether it is possible to know if a supreme being exists.
But again, dictionary definitions prove limiting here. In reality, many people think of agnosticism as a less stringent form of atheism.
“If you spend a bit of time digging in, I think (many agnostics) will ultimately say, ‘I don’t believe in a God but I’m not sure, so I’m agnostic,’” Fish said.
Jocelyn Williamson, co-founder of the Central Florida Freethought Community, doesn’t believe in a higher power but says she can’t be certain. Technically, that fits the definition of an agnostic atheist. But she said she typically tells people who ask about her religious beliefs that she’s a secular humanist.
“Most people don’t know what that means, and then I can actually have a conversation,” Williamson said. “There’s too many preconceived notions if I just say I’m an atheist.”
The term atheist only conveys what she doesn’t believe in, Williamson said. The term humanist, meanwhile, signals that she’s motivated by compassion for others and that she believes societal decision-making should be grounded in reason and science.
What do people get wrong about atheists?
One of the most common misconceptions about atheists is that they lack morals that others typically attribute to religion.
In a 2019 Pew survey, 44% of US residents said belief in God was necessary to be moral and have good values — in other countries, that share is much higher.
Williamson is all too familiar with such notions. When she was first getting to know faith leaders in her state, through her work with the Central Florida Freethought Community, she recalls a clergy member asking her what stops her from killing other people if she doesn’t believe in a higher power.
“I had always thought that was a meme, a trope,” she said. “I didn’t think anybody actually believed that.”
In fact, various studies suggest that atheists are no more immoral than religious people. They’re also just as likely to participate in civic life as those who are affiliated with a religion and just as likely to engage in community service, according to Pew’s recent survey of religious “nones.”
Atheists also get stereotyped as angry people who vehemently oppose religion and its followers. Like any other population, though, they aren’t a monolith. Williamson, for example, is part of the Interfaith Council of Central Florida and works with faith leaders toward common goals. Plenty of nonbelievers volunteer with religious organizations out of a desire to serve their communities, she added — her father worked as a local director for the Christian nonprofit Habitat for Humanity despite not being religious.
Another misconception about atheists is that they’re certain or unwavering in their beliefs, Fish said. People often tell him that they aren’t sure on the big existential questions, and therefore can’t be atheists. But many atheists are figuring it all out, too.
“Just because we don’t believe in a god doesn’t mean that we have all the answers to everything else,” he said. “In fact, for many, for most of us, it’s the opposite. We recognize that we don’t.”
Link to original article on CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/10/us/atheism-beliefs-explained-cec/index.html
Thursday, June 1, 2023
"Why isn't there Straight Pride Month?" by LZ Granderson
This article was written TEN YEARS AGO and while some things have changed--the Supreme Court did indeed rule in favor of marriage equality--some things have remained or turned decidedly for the worse. I think we need to read these words again and think hard about what is happening in the United States.
updated 7:56 AM EDT, Thu June 13, 2013
(CNN) -- On North Halsted Street, between Buckingham and Roscoe in Chicago, a monument stands with a plaque in honor of a brilliant thinker who is as responsible for the way we live our lives today as any person who has ever lived.
His name is Alan Turing, a Brit, and among his many credits and accolades, many historians refer to him as "the father of computer science." When Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people of the 20th century, it said "that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."
A pretty high honor to say the least. And yet in 1952, while filing a robbery report with the police, Turing -- the man whose algorithms cracked the Enigma code used by the Nazis in World War II -- found himself arrested at his home in England.
His crime? Being gay.
Turing was convicted of "gross indecency," a felony in Britain at that time. He was forced to choose between prison and being injected with female hormones, a form of chemical castration.
He reluctantly chose the latter. Despite his accomplishments, he lost his job. And in June 1954, he lost his will to live. He was 41.
If the Western world is somewhat haunted by what Steve Jobs might have accomplished had cancer not taken him from us, we should be downright tormented by what we lost from the senseless excommunication of his predecessor.
Turing's plaque is one of 18 that make up the city's Legacy Walk, which honors LGBT people who have made a contribution to history. It's a reminder of where we were and how far we've come. But as much as it seems the nation is talking about this topic, the fact remains that in much of the United States, it is still legal to fire someone for the same reason that Turing was fired 60 years ago in Britain.
Perhaps the prejudices in our rear view mirror may appear farther away than they actually are.
June is Gay Pride month. So if you find yourself exhausted from all of this gay rights talk and want to leave a not-so-kind comment on a story, remember it's because of an openly gay man that you even have the technology to do so.
If you're a black person who gets offended whenever the Civil Rights Movement is mentioned in the same sentence as the fight for gay rights, remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s close confidant and most influential mentor was an openly gay black man by the name of Bayard Rustin.
And if you ever find yourself wondering "How come there's no Straight Pride month?" I say the day being straight becomes a crime -- as being gay still is in many parts of the world -- start one.
Just as Stokely Carmichael's "Black is Beautiful" became the rallying cry against racism in the 1960s; just as "I am woman, hear me roar" was the anthem against sexism in the 1970s; "gay pride" is the banner that flies over a people whose dignity continues to be put to a vote in 2013.
News coverage in June may focus on the celebratory nature of Gay Pride parades, but it cannot rewrite the history that made these parades an integral part of our survival.
Why isn't there Straight Pride?
Because Congress has yet to pass a law requiring people to hide the fact they are straight. Because the streets are not filled with children who have been kicked out of their homes for being straight. Because there seems to be a lack of stories in which someone has been beaten, tied to a fence and left to die or shot in the face at point blank range because they were straight.
For this Gay Pride month, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said he expects to take up legislation to address workplace discrimination "soon." This month, the Supreme Court may make a ruling on whether or not same-sex couples can marry.
This month, 11-year-old Marcel Neergaard wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed that "during my first year in middle school, I experienced severe bullying. I was called terrible names that were quite hurtful. At that time, I had just realized that I'm gay, and the bullies used the word 'gay' as an insult.
"This made me feel like being gay was horrible, but my parents told me otherwise. Their support was tremendous. But as powerful as their love was, it couldn't fight off all the bullying. I don't want anyone else to feel the way I did. No one deserves that much pain, no matter who they are."
Yeah.
So maybe instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride month or movement, straight people should be thankful they don't need one. I'm sure Turing would have rather filed the police report and stayed home. I'm sure Marcel would prefer going to school in peace.
Link to original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/opinion/granderson-straight-pride/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Why isn't there Straight Pride Month?
By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributorupdated 7:56 AM EDT, Thu June 13, 2013
(CNN) -- On North Halsted Street, between Buckingham and Roscoe in Chicago, a monument stands with a plaque in honor of a brilliant thinker who is as responsible for the way we live our lives today as any person who has ever lived.
His name is Alan Turing, a Brit, and among his many credits and accolades, many historians refer to him as "the father of computer science." When Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people of the 20th century, it said "that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."
A pretty high honor to say the least. And yet in 1952, while filing a robbery report with the police, Turing -- the man whose algorithms cracked the Enigma code used by the Nazis in World War II -- found himself arrested at his home in England.
His crime? Being gay.
Turing was convicted of "gross indecency," a felony in Britain at that time. He was forced to choose between prison and being injected with female hormones, a form of chemical castration.
He reluctantly chose the latter. Despite his accomplishments, he lost his job. And in June 1954, he lost his will to live. He was 41.
If the Western world is somewhat haunted by what Steve Jobs might have accomplished had cancer not taken him from us, we should be downright tormented by what we lost from the senseless excommunication of his predecessor.
Turing's plaque is one of 18 that make up the city's Legacy Walk, which honors LGBT people who have made a contribution to history. It's a reminder of where we were and how far we've come. But as much as it seems the nation is talking about this topic, the fact remains that in much of the United States, it is still legal to fire someone for the same reason that Turing was fired 60 years ago in Britain.
Perhaps the prejudices in our rear view mirror may appear farther away than they actually are.
June is Gay Pride month. So if you find yourself exhausted from all of this gay rights talk and want to leave a not-so-kind comment on a story, remember it's because of an openly gay man that you even have the technology to do so.
If you're a black person who gets offended whenever the Civil Rights Movement is mentioned in the same sentence as the fight for gay rights, remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s close confidant and most influential mentor was an openly gay black man by the name of Bayard Rustin.
And if you ever find yourself wondering "How come there's no Straight Pride month?" I say the day being straight becomes a crime -- as being gay still is in many parts of the world -- start one.
Gay Pride was not born out of a need to celebrate not being straight but our right to exist without prosecution.
Just as Stokely Carmichael's "Black is Beautiful" became the rallying cry against racism in the 1960s; just as "I am woman, hear me roar" was the anthem against sexism in the 1970s; "gay pride" is the banner that flies over a people whose dignity continues to be put to a vote in 2013.
News coverage in June may focus on the celebratory nature of Gay Pride parades, but it cannot rewrite the history that made these parades an integral part of our survival.
Why isn't there Straight Pride?
Because Congress has yet to pass a law requiring people to hide the fact they are straight. Because the streets are not filled with children who have been kicked out of their homes for being straight. Because there seems to be a lack of stories in which someone has been beaten, tied to a fence and left to die or shot in the face at point blank range because they were straight.
For this Gay Pride month, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said he expects to take up legislation to address workplace discrimination "soon." This month, the Supreme Court may make a ruling on whether or not same-sex couples can marry.
This month, 11-year-old Marcel Neergaard wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed that "during my first year in middle school, I experienced severe bullying. I was called terrible names that were quite hurtful. At that time, I had just realized that I'm gay, and the bullies used the word 'gay' as an insult.
"This made me feel like being gay was horrible, but my parents told me otherwise. Their support was tremendous. But as powerful as their love was, it couldn't fight off all the bullying. I don't want anyone else to feel the way I did. No one deserves that much pain, no matter who they are."
Yeah.
So maybe instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride month or movement, straight people should be thankful they don't need one. I'm sure Turing would have rather filed the police report and stayed home. I'm sure Marcel would prefer going to school in peace.
Link to original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/opinion/granderson-straight-pride/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Wednesday, April 5, 2023
"The fight against ‘woke’ is really conservative gaslighting"
I found this opinion piece from author Clay Cane very insightful...
Opinion: The fight against ‘woke’ is really conservative gaslighting
Opinion by Clay Cane
Updated 7:35 AM EDT, Wed April 5, 2023
(CNN) I was at the barbershop recently when Childish Gambino’s 2016 track “Redbone” popped up on a playlist. Singing about infidelity, Gambino — also known as Donald Glover — belts out, “Stay woke!” in the chorus. As we nodded our heads in unison to the song, someone asked, “How did ‘woke’ become the new scary term? Do they even know what it means?”
We all had a wry laugh about language that has been misappropriated over the years, but the distortion of “woke” has been particularly insidious.
I must give credit to the Silent Majority, the Moral Majority, MAGA, Q-Anon and all the other iterations of conservatism that Republicans have transmogrified into over the past five decades: They are masterminds at coming up with messaging that scares the Jim Crow hell out of their base. “Woke” is their latest stunt.
In the 1960s, it was “Black Power,” a term about empowerment and self-reliance popularized by Kwame Ture, also known as Stokely Carmichael. Conservatives rebranded the term, which became a catch-all phrase to scare White voters that “Negroes” were taking over. Those two words would then be twisted by “White Power” adherents who, according to the ADL, deliberately mimicked the term “Black Power.”
Some years later, former California governor and later President Ronald Reagan famously deployed the “welfare queen” narrative, framing public assistance as a Black issue, even though more White people than Black have been helped over the years by those federal aid programs.
After Reagan, George H. W. Bush invoked the name of Willie Horton, a convicted Black man on weekend release from prison to rile up his base, during the 1988 presidential campaign. The Bush team made Horton a symbol of allegedly lenient prison furlough programs that were supposedly sending murderers and rapists into the suburbs.
Bush rocketed in the polls, framing his opponent, Democrat Michael Dukakis, as weak on crime. Bush won the presidential election and the Willie Horton television commercial — an ad General Colin Powell described as being “racist… cold political calculation” — was a turning point in the campaign. Yet again, Republicans had found a potent symbol of how to effectively manipulate voters’ fears.
Over the past several years, co-optation of language by the GOP has been on overdrive, due in part to the advent of social media. Once upon a time, politicians hammered incendiary language in speeches and interviews; Today, they have the ability to disseminate a similarly noxious narrative almost instantly online. Lee Atwater -— the brain behind the Willie Horton ad and other Southern Strategy tactics — would be proud. As he lay dying from cancer in the final months of his life, Atwater reportedly said he regretted the Horton ad, but the legacy of his racist actions lives on.
The current list of terms that conservatives have weaponized is long and growing: Black Lives Matter. Defund the police. Critical race theory. Intersectionality. Now, add to it the ubiquitous — almost inescapable — word “woke.”
To be clear, woke is not political, but it has been politically weaponized by bad-faith actors, mostly on the right. Being “woke” is not a term exclusive to the realm of social justice; it’s a decades-old slang in Black communities, meaning to “be aware.” For example: “I heard your man is cheating — stay woke!”
Blues icon Lead Belly, at the end of his recording of the 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys,” talked about the need to “stay woke” after Black men and children were wrongfully accused of raping two White women in Alabama.
In other words, be alert, keep your eyes open and watch your back — figuratively and literally.
The mangling of “woke” cannot be solely placed on politicians. Celebrities and comedians have played a role: Bill Maher, Sean Penn, Russell Brand, Kanye West and Dave Chappelle to name a few, have all misused the word in recent years, contributing to the despoiling of a cherished cultural term. Either out of willful ignorance or arrogance, they deploy the term out of context, often while pouting about “cancel culture.”
Meanwhile, pushing back against “woke-ism” has become a profitable business model for anti-woke warriors. John McWhorter wrote a 2021 book titled, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America,” this New York Times bestseller was partly popular because a Black writer was denouncing “wokeness.”
Bethany Mandel recently released “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation,” which, according to her, included a whole chapter on “wokeness” yet she famously struggled to provide a definition in an eye-rolling television interview. She later complained about being lampooned on Twitter — but also bragged about how many copies of her book that she had sold as a result. Journalist Bari Weiss, meanwhile, who rants incessantly about wokeness, has been dubbed an “anti-woke warrior” and is a co-founder of the “anti-woke” University of Austin.
What’s more dangerous than any of the misappropriation, however, is the way that attacks on “woke-ism” have made their way into policy.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Stop WOKE Act,” which is wreaking havoc on Florida’s colleges, universities, libraries and schools. “Woke-ism” now somehow has expanded to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s even being cited as the real reason for prosecuting the former president on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Even the most anodyne mention of civil rights is suppressed, as seen recently with revered figures like Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges.
The boogeyman framing around “woke” is intentional. In 2021, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott complained about “woke supremacy,” a term with inescapable echoes of “White supremacy”— creating a deeply racist, false equivalency that pandered to a faction of the GOP in his state.
It was a move that perhaps was not all that surprising coming from the only Black Republican in the US Senate, who is fond of saying that his family had gone from “cotton to Congress” when he downplays racism in his party. Not even Lee Atwater could have predicted the Southern Strategy tactics being used by Black politicians.
There are no “woke” villains attempting to take over America. Is there sometimes unnecessary word policing? Can people be oversensitive? Can corporations overreact to the latest scandal or a trending topic? Absolutely, but that is not “woke-ism.” Labeling so-called overreactions or something you don’t like with a term rooted in Black communities, racializes — and shuts down — discourse many people claim we need.
Here’s what my friends at the barbershop say about right-wing politicians, conservative media outlets, privileged celebrities, Twitter trolls: You can’t have the word “woke.” It doesn’t belong to you, and never did. Be creative and think up your own dog whistles. What you refer to as “woke-ism” is old school, political gaslighting.
I will keep using “woke” in its proper context. And if you don’t understand it, then maybe the word is not yours to use.
Thank you, Clay!
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/opinions/woke-weaponized-racism-gaslighting-cane-ctpr/index.html
Opinion: The fight against ‘woke’ is really conservative gaslighting
Opinion by Clay Cane
Updated 7:35 AM EDT, Wed April 5, 2023
(CNN) I was at the barbershop recently when Childish Gambino’s 2016 track “Redbone” popped up on a playlist. Singing about infidelity, Gambino — also known as Donald Glover — belts out, “Stay woke!” in the chorus. As we nodded our heads in unison to the song, someone asked, “How did ‘woke’ become the new scary term? Do they even know what it means?”
We all had a wry laugh about language that has been misappropriated over the years, but the distortion of “woke” has been particularly insidious.
I must give credit to the Silent Majority, the Moral Majority, MAGA, Q-Anon and all the other iterations of conservatism that Republicans have transmogrified into over the past five decades: They are masterminds at coming up with messaging that scares the Jim Crow hell out of their base. “Woke” is their latest stunt.
In the 1960s, it was “Black Power,” a term about empowerment and self-reliance popularized by Kwame Ture, also known as Stokely Carmichael. Conservatives rebranded the term, which became a catch-all phrase to scare White voters that “Negroes” were taking over. Those two words would then be twisted by “White Power” adherents who, according to the ADL, deliberately mimicked the term “Black Power.”
Some years later, former California governor and later President Ronald Reagan famously deployed the “welfare queen” narrative, framing public assistance as a Black issue, even though more White people than Black have been helped over the years by those federal aid programs.
After Reagan, George H. W. Bush invoked the name of Willie Horton, a convicted Black man on weekend release from prison to rile up his base, during the 1988 presidential campaign. The Bush team made Horton a symbol of allegedly lenient prison furlough programs that were supposedly sending murderers and rapists into the suburbs.
Bush rocketed in the polls, framing his opponent, Democrat Michael Dukakis, as weak on crime. Bush won the presidential election and the Willie Horton television commercial — an ad General Colin Powell described as being “racist… cold political calculation” — was a turning point in the campaign. Yet again, Republicans had found a potent symbol of how to effectively manipulate voters’ fears.
Over the past several years, co-optation of language by the GOP has been on overdrive, due in part to the advent of social media. Once upon a time, politicians hammered incendiary language in speeches and interviews; Today, they have the ability to disseminate a similarly noxious narrative almost instantly online. Lee Atwater -— the brain behind the Willie Horton ad and other Southern Strategy tactics — would be proud. As he lay dying from cancer in the final months of his life, Atwater reportedly said he regretted the Horton ad, but the legacy of his racist actions lives on.
The current list of terms that conservatives have weaponized is long and growing: Black Lives Matter. Defund the police. Critical race theory. Intersectionality. Now, add to it the ubiquitous — almost inescapable — word “woke.”
To be clear, woke is not political, but it has been politically weaponized by bad-faith actors, mostly on the right. Being “woke” is not a term exclusive to the realm of social justice; it’s a decades-old slang in Black communities, meaning to “be aware.” For example: “I heard your man is cheating — stay woke!”
Blues icon Lead Belly, at the end of his recording of the 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys,” talked about the need to “stay woke” after Black men and children were wrongfully accused of raping two White women in Alabama.
In other words, be alert, keep your eyes open and watch your back — figuratively and literally.
The mangling of “woke” cannot be solely placed on politicians. Celebrities and comedians have played a role: Bill Maher, Sean Penn, Russell Brand, Kanye West and Dave Chappelle to name a few, have all misused the word in recent years, contributing to the despoiling of a cherished cultural term. Either out of willful ignorance or arrogance, they deploy the term out of context, often while pouting about “cancel culture.”
Meanwhile, pushing back against “woke-ism” has become a profitable business model for anti-woke warriors. John McWhorter wrote a 2021 book titled, “Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America,” this New York Times bestseller was partly popular because a Black writer was denouncing “wokeness.”
Bethany Mandel recently released “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation,” which, according to her, included a whole chapter on “wokeness” yet she famously struggled to provide a definition in an eye-rolling television interview. She later complained about being lampooned on Twitter — but also bragged about how many copies of her book that she had sold as a result. Journalist Bari Weiss, meanwhile, who rants incessantly about wokeness, has been dubbed an “anti-woke warrior” and is a co-founder of the “anti-woke” University of Austin.
What’s more dangerous than any of the misappropriation, however, is the way that attacks on “woke-ism” have made their way into policy.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Stop WOKE Act,” which is wreaking havoc on Florida’s colleges, universities, libraries and schools. “Woke-ism” now somehow has expanded to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s even being cited as the real reason for prosecuting the former president on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Even the most anodyne mention of civil rights is suppressed, as seen recently with revered figures like Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges.
The boogeyman framing around “woke” is intentional. In 2021, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott complained about “woke supremacy,” a term with inescapable echoes of “White supremacy”— creating a deeply racist, false equivalency that pandered to a faction of the GOP in his state.
It was a move that perhaps was not all that surprising coming from the only Black Republican in the US Senate, who is fond of saying that his family had gone from “cotton to Congress” when he downplays racism in his party. Not even Lee Atwater could have predicted the Southern Strategy tactics being used by Black politicians.
There are no “woke” villains attempting to take over America. Is there sometimes unnecessary word policing? Can people be oversensitive? Can corporations overreact to the latest scandal or a trending topic? Absolutely, but that is not “woke-ism.” Labeling so-called overreactions or something you don’t like with a term rooted in Black communities, racializes — and shuts down — discourse many people claim we need.
Here’s what my friends at the barbershop say about right-wing politicians, conservative media outlets, privileged celebrities, Twitter trolls: You can’t have the word “woke.” It doesn’t belong to you, and never did. Be creative and think up your own dog whistles. What you refer to as “woke-ism” is old school, political gaslighting.
I will keep using “woke” in its proper context. And if you don’t understand it, then maybe the word is not yours to use.
Thank you, Clay!
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/opinions/woke-weaponized-racism-gaslighting-cane-ctpr/index.html
Saturday, June 5, 2021
"40 years ago, the first cases of AIDS were reported in the US"
As a gay man who was 18 when the AIDS pandemic started, this article and the anniversary itself brought back a lot of memories and sadness and anger. And our recent COVID pandemic strongly resonated for me, and reminded me of the fear that was in the air in my community for a decade and more. I feel like I held my breath from anxiety for about fifteen years, from 1981 until the mid-90s, so it is comical for me to see how people this last year kicked and screamed for having to wear a mask and practice physical distancing, while I have a living memory of all of us in my community having to alter our behavior, and wear something that was uncomfortable that we did not want to wear, and live with fear while not knowing exactly how the virus was spread in the early days, and watch as scores of wonderful, talented, valuable men died horribly. Please, I've done this exercise already. A mask is nothing.
40 years ago, the first cases of AIDS were reported in the US
By Harmeet Kaur, CNN
Updated 1:01 PM ET, Sat June 5, 2021
(CNN) On June 5, 1981, a curious report appeared in the Center for Disease Control's weekly public health digest: Five young, gay men across Los Angeles had been diagnosed with an unusual lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) -- and two of them had died.
It was the first time that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) -- the devastating advanced-stage of HIV infection that would go on to claim the lives of more than 32 million people globally -- was reported in the US.
Days after the initial report hit the newspapers, the CDC learned of many more such cases in gay men. Not only did those men have PCP, they also had other secondary infections, among them a rare and aggressive cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the nation's first reported cases of AIDS. More than 700,000 people in the US have died of the disease since then -- and though medical advancements have drastically changed the prognosis for HIV/AIDS patients, there remains to this day no cure.
President Joe Biden released a statement marking the anniversary and noting the work the US has done to combat the illness at home and around the globe.
About a month after that first report, the write-up in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report counted 26 gay men across New York and California with those diagnoses -- a number that would increase exponentially.
He said he's asked Congress to provide $670 million to fight new HIV cases by increasing treatment, expanding the use of preexposure prophylaxis and ensuring equitable access to treatment.
"In honor of all those we have lost and all those living with the virus -- and the selfless caregivers, advocates, and loved ones who have helped carry the burden of this crisis -- we must rededicate ourselves to reducing HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths," the President said in the statement.
"We must continue empowering researchers, scientists, and health care providers to ensure equitable access to prevention, care, and treatment in every community -- particularly for communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community."
Here's a look back at how the AIDS epidemic unfolded.
Activists drove the early response
The early years of the AIDS epidemic were an uncertain and unsettling time.
LGBTQ communities were losing friends and loved ones to the disease, one after another -- with little idea as to how or why. All the while, it seemed society had turned a blind eye.
"Can you imagine what it must be like if you had lost 20 of your friends in the last 18 months?" Larry Kramer, famed AIDS activist and co-founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, said in a 1983 interview with the "Today" show.
"No cause, no cure, people in hospitals. It's a very angry community."
President Ronald Reagan's administration paid little attention to the epidemic, with four years going by before Reagan made a public mention of AIDS.
Exchanges between Reagan's press secretary and reporters in 1982 and 1983 indicate that the nation's top officials and mainstream society viewed the disease as a joke, and not an issue of great concern.
That stemmed from the perception of AIDS as a "gay plague" -- a condition thought to be tied to the lifestyles and behaviors of gay men, even though cases had also been reported in women, infants, those with hemophilia and people who injected drugs.
In a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine, AIDS researcher Alexandra Levine spoke of "the horror of watching as society as a whole turned its back on this suffering, the horror of watching as many of my own colleagues refused to help, refused to care, refused to act as the professionals they were supposed to be."
As politicians and government entities proved slow to act, activists took matters into their own hands, doing what they could to combat homophobia and stigma and make sure their communities received the public health information they needed.
Among those efforts was the 1982 pamphlet titled, "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach."
Created by Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, it was one of the first times that gay men were advised to use condoms during sex with other men, according to an exhibit by the National Library of Medicine. Though the two are widely considered to be pioneers of safe sex, many in the gay community at the time criticized their work as "sex negative."
Black gay and lesbian organizations, meanwhile, fought back through poster campaigns against misconceptions that AIDS primarily affected White gay men.
Scientists struggled to understand AIDS
In the early '80s, HIV/AIDS was considered a death sentence.
Scientists and physicians were struggling to understand what caused the disease and how it spread -- making the process of finding a treatment all the more challenging.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the height of the AIDS epidemic, refers to that period of his career as the "dark years."
"I went from a person who was seeing patients with other diseases and developing cures and adequate therapies for them in the early part of my career, to every day taking care of people who inevitably were going to die, usually within a short period of time," he said in a recent interview with CNN.
It was an experience shared by many clinicians who cared for early AIDS patients: Feeling as though there was nothing they could do to stop the suffering.
"You were really putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages for a while," Fauci added.
In the absence of viable treatments, Gerald Friedland, who worked on early AIDS cases at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, recalled how he focused on empathy.
"The onslaught of death and dying of young men and women was beyond 'usual professional commitments' and terribly hard," he said in a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine. "But I learned how to become skilled at providing people with a 'decent death.'"
Therapies came in the late '80s and '90s
The tide started to turn in the late '80s and '90s, as more effective therapies became available and transformed what it meant for an individual to live with HIV.
On March 19, 1987, the Food and Drug Administration approved an antiretroviral drug known as AZT to treat HIV infection.
Another important change also happened that year.
After pressure from activists fighting for their community's survival, the FDA issued new regulations around clinical drug trials -- making it possible for patients to access experimental, potentially life-saving therapies without having to wait years for official agency approval.
By the late '80s and '90s, public perception of HIV/AIDS was also starting to shift -- thanks in part to high-profile activists and celebrities.
One of those activists was Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS in 1984 through contaminated needles while being treated for hemophilia. He experienced discrimination in his community after his diagnosis, even being denied entry to his middle school. As White spoke publicly about his experiences and his family challenged his treatment in court, he became one of the early public faces of the disease.
Princess Diana was also instrumental in shattering stigmas and myths around the illness, famously photographed visiting HIV/AIDS patients in hospital wards and shaking hands with them without gloves.
And in 1991, NBA star Earvin "Magic" Johnson revealed he had been diagnosed with HIV -- his identity as a straight, Black man helped demonstrate that anyone could contract the disease.
Another scientific breakthrough came in 1996, when the FDA approved the first protease inhibitors. That development brought into use what's known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), turning HIV/AIDS from a fatal diagnosis to a controllable condition.
"We now are giving drugs to people who are living with HIV -- not only do these save their lives and give them essentially a normal lifespan, but you can prevent them from infecting other people," Fauci told CNN on June 1.
Richard Chaisson, a physician who helped lead the fight against AIDS at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in the late '80s and '90s, described the feeling to the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Desperation changed to hope. Hope changed to belief, and belief changed to joy," he recalled. "So many patients returned home from the ship of the doomed and went back to living near-normal lives."
In 2010, researchers announced yet another exciting development: A study had found that taking a daily dose of HIV drugs reduced the risk of infection for men who had sex with other men. In 2012, the FDA approved the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for adults at high risk of infection -- one of the most significant milestones of the epidemic.
As new treatments for HIV/AIDS have made the diagnosis more manageable and even help prevent infection, public health challenges remain.
About 1.2 million people in the US were living with HIV at the end of 2018, according to the CDC.
There are disparities in access to treatment, and Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV. Resistance to HIV/AIDS medications has also become increasingly common.
Some researchers and clinicians began to shift their attention and efforts elsewhere after the toll of the early years, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. And despite the US setting a goal in 1997 to find an HIV vaccine within 10 years, four decades later, there is still no vaccine or cure.
Link to original article:
Updated 1:01 PM ET, Sat June 5, 2021
(CNN) On June 5, 1981, a curious report appeared in the Center for Disease Control's weekly public health digest: Five young, gay men across Los Angeles had been diagnosed with an unusual lung infection known as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) -- and two of them had died.
It was the first time that acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) -- the devastating advanced-stage of HIV infection that would go on to claim the lives of more than 32 million people globally -- was reported in the US.
Days after the initial report hit the newspapers, the CDC learned of many more such cases in gay men. Not only did those men have PCP, they also had other secondary infections, among them a rare and aggressive cancer known as Kaposi's sarcoma (KS).
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of the nation's first reported cases of AIDS. More than 700,000 people in the US have died of the disease since then -- and though medical advancements have drastically changed the prognosis for HIV/AIDS patients, there remains to this day no cure.
President Joe Biden released a statement marking the anniversary and noting the work the US has done to combat the illness at home and around the globe.
About a month after that first report, the write-up in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report counted 26 gay men across New York and California with those diagnoses -- a number that would increase exponentially.
He said he's asked Congress to provide $670 million to fight new HIV cases by increasing treatment, expanding the use of preexposure prophylaxis and ensuring equitable access to treatment.
"In honor of all those we have lost and all those living with the virus -- and the selfless caregivers, advocates, and loved ones who have helped carry the burden of this crisis -- we must rededicate ourselves to reducing HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths," the President said in the statement.
"We must continue empowering researchers, scientists, and health care providers to ensure equitable access to prevention, care, and treatment in every community -- particularly for communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community."
Here's a look back at how the AIDS epidemic unfolded.
Activists drove the early response
The early years of the AIDS epidemic were an uncertain and unsettling time.
LGBTQ communities were losing friends and loved ones to the disease, one after another -- with little idea as to how or why. All the while, it seemed society had turned a blind eye.
"Can you imagine what it must be like if you had lost 20 of your friends in the last 18 months?" Larry Kramer, famed AIDS activist and co-founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, said in a 1983 interview with the "Today" show.
"No cause, no cure, people in hospitals. It's a very angry community."
 |
| Gary Walsch, who was living with AIDS, leans on a friend's shoulder before a candlelight vigil in San Francisco in 1983. The vigil was held to bring attention to the AIDS crisis affecting the gay community. |
President Ronald Reagan's administration paid little attention to the epidemic, with four years going by before Reagan made a public mention of AIDS.
Exchanges between Reagan's press secretary and reporters in 1982 and 1983 indicate that the nation's top officials and mainstream society viewed the disease as a joke, and not an issue of great concern.
That stemmed from the perception of AIDS as a "gay plague" -- a condition thought to be tied to the lifestyles and behaviors of gay men, even though cases had also been reported in women, infants, those with hemophilia and people who injected drugs.
In a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine, AIDS researcher Alexandra Levine spoke of "the horror of watching as society as a whole turned its back on this suffering, the horror of watching as many of my own colleagues refused to help, refused to care, refused to act as the professionals they were supposed to be."
 |
| Demonstrators in New York in 1987 hold hands during a moment of silence while demanding more government action in the fight against AIDS. |
As politicians and government entities proved slow to act, activists took matters into their own hands, doing what they could to combat homophobia and stigma and make sure their communities received the public health information they needed.
Among those efforts was the 1982 pamphlet titled, "How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach."
Created by Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, it was one of the first times that gay men were advised to use condoms during sex with other men, according to an exhibit by the National Library of Medicine. Though the two are widely considered to be pioneers of safe sex, many in the gay community at the time criticized their work as "sex negative."
Black gay and lesbian organizations, meanwhile, fought back through poster campaigns against misconceptions that AIDS primarily affected White gay men.
Scientists struggled to understand AIDS
In the early '80s, HIV/AIDS was considered a death sentence.
Scientists and physicians were struggling to understand what caused the disease and how it spread -- making the process of finding a treatment all the more challenging.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, who became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the height of the AIDS epidemic, refers to that period of his career as the "dark years."
"I went from a person who was seeing patients with other diseases and developing cures and adequate therapies for them in the early part of my career, to every day taking care of people who inevitably were going to die, usually within a short period of time," he said in a recent interview with CNN.
 |
| Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, talks to his team about HIV/AIDS during a meeting in 1990. |
It was an experience shared by many clinicians who cared for early AIDS patients: Feeling as though there was nothing they could do to stop the suffering.
"You were really putting Band-Aids on hemorrhages for a while," Fauci added.
In the absence of viable treatments, Gerald Friedland, who worked on early AIDS cases at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, recalled how he focused on empathy.
"The onslaught of death and dying of young men and women was beyond 'usual professional commitments' and terribly hard," he said in a recently published interview with the New England Journal of Medicine. "But I learned how to become skilled at providing people with a 'decent death.'"
Therapies came in the late '80s and '90s
The tide started to turn in the late '80s and '90s, as more effective therapies became available and transformed what it meant for an individual to live with HIV.
On March 19, 1987, the Food and Drug Administration approved an antiretroviral drug known as AZT to treat HIV infection.
Another important change also happened that year.
After pressure from activists fighting for their community's survival, the FDA issued new regulations around clinical drug trials -- making it possible for patients to access experimental, potentially life-saving therapies without having to wait years for official agency approval.
 |
| Princess Diana visited patients with AIDS at a hospital in Rio de Janeiro on April 25, 1991. Her advocacy and compassion for people with HIV/AIDS helped destigmatize the disease and change public perception. |
By the late '80s and '90s, public perception of HIV/AIDS was also starting to shift -- thanks in part to high-profile activists and celebrities.
One of those activists was Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who contracted AIDS in 1984 through contaminated needles while being treated for hemophilia. He experienced discrimination in his community after his diagnosis, even being denied entry to his middle school. As White spoke publicly about his experiences and his family challenged his treatment in court, he became one of the early public faces of the disease.
Princess Diana was also instrumental in shattering stigmas and myths around the illness, famously photographed visiting HIV/AIDS patients in hospital wards and shaking hands with them without gloves.
And in 1991, NBA star Earvin "Magic" Johnson revealed he had been diagnosed with HIV -- his identity as a straight, Black man helped demonstrate that anyone could contract the disease.
Another scientific breakthrough came in 1996, when the FDA approved the first protease inhibitors. That development brought into use what's known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), turning HIV/AIDS from a fatal diagnosis to a controllable condition.
"We now are giving drugs to people who are living with HIV -- not only do these save their lives and give them essentially a normal lifespan, but you can prevent them from infecting other people," Fauci told CNN on June 1.
Richard Chaisson, a physician who helped lead the fight against AIDS at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in the late '80s and '90s, described the feeling to the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Desperation changed to hope. Hope changed to belief, and belief changed to joy," he recalled. "So many patients returned home from the ship of the doomed and went back to living near-normal lives."
 |
| Visitors and volunteers walk on the 21,000-panel AIDS Memorial Quilt on October 10, 1992 in Washington. |
In 2010, researchers announced yet another exciting development: A study had found that taking a daily dose of HIV drugs reduced the risk of infection for men who had sex with other men. In 2012, the FDA approved the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for adults at high risk of infection -- one of the most significant milestones of the epidemic.
As new treatments for HIV/AIDS have made the diagnosis more manageable and even help prevent infection, public health challenges remain.
About 1.2 million people in the US were living with HIV at the end of 2018, according to the CDC.
There are disparities in access to treatment, and Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV. Resistance to HIV/AIDS medications has also become increasingly common.
Some researchers and clinicians began to shift their attention and efforts elsewhere after the toll of the early years, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. And despite the US setting a goal in 1997 to find an HIV vaccine within 10 years, four decades later, there is still no vaccine or cure.
Link to original article:
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Van Jones Gets It Right
This is a big deal. Character matters. Truth matters. Being a good person matters.
Friday, October 30, 2020
Georgetown created fact sheets on illegal militias at the polls and what to do if you spot them by Scottie Andrew
Georgetown created fact sheets on illegal militias at the polls and what to do if you spot them
By Scottie Andrew, CNN
Updated 1:50 PM ET, Tue October 6, 2020
It's illegal in all 50 states to engage in militia activity. Still, militia members will almost certainly appear at some polling places this election cycle.
To prepare voters for potential voter intimidation, Georgetown University Law Center created fact sheets for all 50 states on illegal militias and what to do if voters encounter them.
A private militia engages in law enforcement activities without authorization by state or federal officials. Their members are often armed and wearing uniforms or identifying insignias, and they often believe they have legal authority to protect property or control crowds.
But no private militia has that authority. Every state bans unauthorized militias from taking on the activities of law enforcement.
So, Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, along with several pro bono law firms, created state-specific fact sheets about militias and the state statutes that ban their activities.
Voter intimidation is more than likely this election
Voter intimidation is more than likely this election
The threat of voter intimidation is high this election. The US has already seen private militias deploy themselves this year, most notably at protests against racism, often inciting violence and intimidating protesters.
It's also the first election since the expiration of a 1982 consent decree put in place to prevent Republicans from engaging in voter intimidation schemes. And President Donald Trump has repeatedly nudged his supporters to appear at voting locations to "watch very carefully," spouting unproven theories even as his own FBI director has denied evidence of widespread voter fraud.
For those reasons, "communities must prepare for similar unlawful private militia activity and intimidation in connection with the election," said Mary McCord, legal director of Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice.
Contemporary militias are illegal
The Constitution -- a document created in the 18th century, when colonial militias were operated by states -- uses the word "militia" to refer to "all able-bodied residents between certain ages who may be called forth by the government when there is a specific need," according to Georgetown Law.
That definition of "militia" has changed. Now, an "organized militia" may refer to the National Guard or National Reserve. Some states operate state defense forces legally.
But it's illegal for private citizens to "activate themselves" for militia duty. Private militias also aren't protected by the Second Amendment, according to Georgetown Law.
What to do if voters see armed people at the polls
If voters spot armed groups near a polling place, they should first document what they see, according to the fact sheets.
Voters should take stock of what the group is doing, what type of firearm members might be carrying, if they're wearing an insignia that might identify which group they belong to and if they're speaking to people or threatening violence.
Georgetown Law advises voters to report that they see to the Election Protection helpline, a nonpartisan coalition for voting equity, at 866-OUR-VOTE.
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/06/us/georgetown-militias-voter-intimidation-fact-sheets-trnd/index.html
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Why a Democratic landslide could crush the GOP for years to come by Chris Cillizza
"As November 3 draws closer, independent political handicappers are revising upwards the likelihood of Joe Biden winning the presidency and Democrats making gains in Congress. In other words, a Democratic landslide could be coming. CNN’s Chris Cillizza explains how this potential wave will crash hardest -- and with the most impact -- at the state legislative level."
EVEN THOUGH POLLS SHOW BIDEN/HARRIS WINNING AND THE STRONG POSSIBILITY OF A DEMOCRATIC WAVE, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS A DONE DEAL AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO VOTE. THE POLLS ARE SO BECAUSE THEY ARE BASED ON THE IDEA OF YOU ACTUALLY VOTING. IF YOU DON'T VOTE, IT WON'T HAPPEN. DON'T THINK "OTHER PEOPLE" ARE GOING TO VOTE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO. YOU ARE THE "OTHER PEOPLE!"
PLEASE VOTE.
EVEN THOUGH POLLS SHOW BIDEN/HARRIS WINNING AND THE STRONG POSSIBILITY OF A DEMOCRATIC WAVE, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS A DONE DEAL AND YOU DON'T HAVE TO VOTE. THE POLLS ARE SO BECAUSE THEY ARE BASED ON THE IDEA OF YOU ACTUALLY VOTING. IF YOU DON'T VOTE, IT WON'T HAPPEN. DON'T THINK "OTHER PEOPLE" ARE GOING TO VOTE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO. YOU ARE THE "OTHER PEOPLE!"
PLEASE VOTE.
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
200,000
By Theresa Waldrop, CNN
Updated 7:40 PM ET, Tue September 22, 2020
Even as the nation surpasses 200,000 Covid-19 deaths, there are still people who think the coronavirus is a hoax. Survivors of the disease and members of victims' families beg to differ and are sharing their very real experiences with the deadly disease.
Ann and Marvin Robinson, a married couple in Casper, Wyoming, got the virus almost three months ago. Marvin, 73, still has shortness of breath, and both are battling fatigue.
"We have friends who still believe it's a hoax. They think that it's going to go away on Election Day," Ann, 72, told CNN's Brianna Keilar on Tuesday.
"It's trying to convince people that the 200,000 people who have died were important," Ann said of her efforts to assure people of the reality of the virus.
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 6.88 million people have contracted the virus nationwide, and at least 200,477 people have died.
Covid-19 is now the second-leading cause of death in the US, just after heart disease, according to the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
Heather-Elizabeth Brown, a 35-year-old police chaplain and corporate trainer in the Detroit area, spent about 100 days in the hospital with Covid-19. More than a month of her hospital stay was spent on a ventilator and in a coma in intensive care.
She said she still has trouble breathing and with fatigue.
"I find that I can't get through a whole day without having to stop and lie down and rest, just because I'm absolutely exhausted from doing everyday simple tasks like, you know, getting a shower or making breakfast."
"I absolutely want people to know that Covid is a real disease," Brown told Keilar. "It's not fake, it's not made up, it's not a conspiracy. It is something that is communicable and it is something that can be very dangerous."
Sondra Wolfe lost her husband to Covid-19. She is frustrated that the pandemic has become a political issue in the United States.
Diana Berrent was one of the first in her New York community to be diagnosed with the virus on March 18, she said.
She founded a support group for survivors, Survivors Corps, that has more than 90,000 members.
At the end of August, Berrent was "still having terrible GI issues, massive headaches, and what feels like a deep ear infection," she told CNN's Jake Tapper. "But it pales in comparison to what many of our members are experiencing, really dramatic things, neurological issues, tachycardia, things as dramatic as Covid-onset diabetes and Covid-onset lupus."
What she wants people to know, she said, is that "this is not a matter of either getting the flu or dying. There is a very, very large bucket in the middle, which seems to constitute a huge proportion of people who get Covid, who are not recovering. You do not want to end up in that group of people."
Maureen Fagan's sister Adeline Fagan, 28-year-old and a second-year OB-GYN resident living in Houston, died Saturday after battling Covid-19 for a few months. Fagan's family has been speaking out since in an effort to save other lives.
"Everyone could be an Adeline and that's the scary part of this," Fagan told CNN's Kate Bolduan, asking people to follow the guidelines to protect other people.
"If you can do something as simple as wearing the mask, social distancing, even just using hand sanitizer, to do your part," she said.
"I think you have a right to do that, just as a human being and trying to be a good person."
Link to original article:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/us/covid-19-survivors-say-virus-not-a-hoax/index.html
Saturday, May 26, 2018
"Trump's sustained attacks on American rights" by Joan Biskupic
Trump's sustained attacks on American rights
Analysis by Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer
Updated 2:15 PM ET, Sat May 26, 2018
(CNN)Two years ago Sunday, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump derided US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, hearing a lawsuit against Trump University, for his "Mexican" heritage and complained of being "railroaded" by the legal system.
It was shocking, Democrats and Republicans alike condemned Trump's racially intemperate criticism of the Indiana-born judge.
Turns out, it was nothing.
Over the past 24 months, Trump has scorned judges, derided the American court system, and trampled on all manner of constitutional principles. Trump has especially ridiculed due process of law, the bedrock against government's arbitrary denial of a person's life, liberty or property.
Critics warn that denunciations that once seemed so aberrational may be seeping into the American psyche and influencing how government operates.
This week, Trump suggested immigrants at the border could be summarily deported without any hearing to determine if they deserved asylum or were US citizens wrongly apprehended. In a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday, Trump flatly deemed the system of immigration judges "corrupt" and said, "Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials? Where do these judges come from?"
The administrative system, in fact, is part of Trump's executive branch, run by the Justice Department; the attorney general appoints immigration judges.
In the same interview, Trump responded to the NFL policy prohibiting kneeling during the "Star-Spangled Banner," with a message for players who refuse to stand for the anthem: "Maybe you shouldn't be in the country."
Such an attitude inflames controversy over league rules for players protesting racial injustice to intimations of government rejection of its citizens - for speaking out.
Due Process. Citizenship. Racial Equality. Trump's targets seem to merit none of these. It is not lost on Trump's detractors that he routinely takes aim at immigrants and racial minorities.
At the same time, the President expresses outrage over what happens to the men of his world.
When his former staff secretary Rob Porter was accused by two ex-wives of domestic violence, Trump emphasized in February to the news media, "He says he's innocent." Then in a tweet, Trump wrote: "Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"
In April, Trump referred to an FBI raid on the home and office of Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen, executing a court-approved subpoena, as "an attack on our country ... an attack on what we all stand for."
If Trump's norm-shattering derision of the courts and constitutional principles has only accelerated in the past two years, public responses appear more polarized. Opponents are overwhelmingly Democratic. Trump's approval rating among Republicans remains high.
There also may be fatigue. Trump is constant. His questioning Thursday of a legal process for people apprehended at the border drew scant public response.
Long before he was a candidate, Trump was known for complaints about the justice system and incendiary rhetoric. He railed against five black and Latino men accused (and wrongfully convicted) for a 1989 rape of a jogger in New York's Central Park. Trump bought full-page ads in New York newspapers proclaiming, "Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police." Even after the men were exonerated, he suggested they were guilty.
The difference now, of course, is that he is America's top leader. So last fall, when he tweeted that an Uzbekistan man who was charged with killing eight pedestrians and bikers in New York City "SHOULD GET THE DEATH PENALTY," some law professors and analysts wondered if the President's comments would hurt the government's legal case.
Trump sets a tone for the whole country - a reality that spurred Republican op-ed columnist Michael Gerson, a former aide to President George W. Bush, to pen a scathing assessment earlier this month.
"Whatever else Trumpism may be," Gerson wrote in The Washington Post, "it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. His record is rich in dehumanization. ... This is more than a disturbing pattern; it is an organizing political principle. And it has resulted in a series of radiating consequences."
As one of many examples, Gerson pointed to West Virginia GOP Senate candidate Don Blankenship's statement that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was creating jobs for "China people." (His wife, Elaine Chao, was born in Taiwan.)
"The Trump era is a renaissance of half-witted intolerance," Gerson concluded, urging Republican leaders to challenge Trump. (The President endorsed one of Blankenship's opponents and Blankenship lost the primary.)
If such protests from the right are rare, the left has tried to remain energized.
The stream of Trump rhetoric against due process "is exhausting, yet requires us to remain vigilant," said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Gupta said an overriding concern is that dehumanizing language and attacks on minorities influence administration policy "The daily hits to due process are real and it is dangerous for any of us to accept this as normal," she said.
Irrespective of how responses have evolved over the past two years, Trump has not deviated from his personal script.
As he declared in May 2016, when many of his comments were rallying fans and roiling critics, "You think I'm going to change? I'm not changing."
Link to original article
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/26/politics/trump-rights-due-process-curiel/index.html
Analysis by Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer
Updated 2:15 PM ET, Sat May 26, 2018
(CNN)Two years ago Sunday, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump derided US District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, hearing a lawsuit against Trump University, for his "Mexican" heritage and complained of being "railroaded" by the legal system.
It was shocking, Democrats and Republicans alike condemned Trump's racially intemperate criticism of the Indiana-born judge.
Turns out, it was nothing.
Over the past 24 months, Trump has scorned judges, derided the American court system, and trampled on all manner of constitutional principles. Trump has especially ridiculed due process of law, the bedrock against government's arbitrary denial of a person's life, liberty or property.
Critics warn that denunciations that once seemed so aberrational may be seeping into the American psyche and influencing how government operates.
This week, Trump suggested immigrants at the border could be summarily deported without any hearing to determine if they deserved asylum or were US citizens wrongly apprehended. In a Fox News interview that aired on Thursday, Trump flatly deemed the system of immigration judges "corrupt" and said, "Whoever heard of a system where you put people through trials? Where do these judges come from?"
The administrative system, in fact, is part of Trump's executive branch, run by the Justice Department; the attorney general appoints immigration judges.
In the same interview, Trump responded to the NFL policy prohibiting kneeling during the "Star-Spangled Banner," with a message for players who refuse to stand for the anthem: "Maybe you shouldn't be in the country."
Such an attitude inflames controversy over league rules for players protesting racial injustice to intimations of government rejection of its citizens - for speaking out.
Due Process. Citizenship. Racial Equality. Trump's targets seem to merit none of these. It is not lost on Trump's detractors that he routinely takes aim at immigrants and racial minorities.
At the same time, the President expresses outrage over what happens to the men of his world.
When his former staff secretary Rob Porter was accused by two ex-wives of domestic violence, Trump emphasized in February to the news media, "He says he's innocent." Then in a tweet, Trump wrote: "Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?"
In April, Trump referred to an FBI raid on the home and office of Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen, executing a court-approved subpoena, as "an attack on our country ... an attack on what we all stand for."
If Trump's norm-shattering derision of the courts and constitutional principles has only accelerated in the past two years, public responses appear more polarized. Opponents are overwhelmingly Democratic. Trump's approval rating among Republicans remains high.
There also may be fatigue. Trump is constant. His questioning Thursday of a legal process for people apprehended at the border drew scant public response.
Long before he was a candidate, Trump was known for complaints about the justice system and incendiary rhetoric. He railed against five black and Latino men accused (and wrongfully convicted) for a 1989 rape of a jogger in New York's Central Park. Trump bought full-page ads in New York newspapers proclaiming, "Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police." Even after the men were exonerated, he suggested they were guilty.
The difference now, of course, is that he is America's top leader. So last fall, when he tweeted that an Uzbekistan man who was charged with killing eight pedestrians and bikers in New York City "SHOULD GET THE DEATH PENALTY," some law professors and analysts wondered if the President's comments would hurt the government's legal case.
Trump sets a tone for the whole country - a reality that spurred Republican op-ed columnist Michael Gerson, a former aide to President George W. Bush, to pen a scathing assessment earlier this month.
"Whatever else Trumpism may be," Gerson wrote in The Washington Post, "it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. His record is rich in dehumanization. ... This is more than a disturbing pattern; it is an organizing political principle. And it has resulted in a series of radiating consequences."
As one of many examples, Gerson pointed to West Virginia GOP Senate candidate Don Blankenship's statement that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was creating jobs for "China people." (His wife, Elaine Chao, was born in Taiwan.)
"The Trump era is a renaissance of half-witted intolerance," Gerson concluded, urging Republican leaders to challenge Trump. (The President endorsed one of Blankenship's opponents and Blankenship lost the primary.)
If such protests from the right are rare, the left has tried to remain energized.
The stream of Trump rhetoric against due process "is exhausting, yet requires us to remain vigilant," said Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Gupta said an overriding concern is that dehumanizing language and attacks on minorities influence administration policy "The daily hits to due process are real and it is dangerous for any of us to accept this as normal," she said.
Irrespective of how responses have evolved over the past two years, Trump has not deviated from his personal script.
As he declared in May 2016, when many of his comments were rallying fans and roiling critics, "You think I'm going to change? I'm not changing."
Link to original article
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/26/politics/trump-rights-due-process-curiel/index.html
Friday, June 14, 2013
Why There's No Straight Pride Month
Why isn't there Straight Pride Month?
By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor
updated 7:56 AM EDT, Thu June 13, 2013
(CNN) -- On North Halsted Street, between Buckingham and Roscoe in Chicago, a monument stands with a plaque in honor of a brilliant thinker who is as responsible for the way we live our lives today as any person who has ever lived.
His name is Alan Turing, a Brit, and among his many credits and accolades, many historians refer to him as "the father of computer science." When Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people of the 20th century, it said "that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."
A pretty high honor to say the least. And yet in 1952, while filing a robbery report with the police, Turing -- the man whose algorithms cracked the Enigma code used by the Nazis in World War II -- found himself arrested at his home in England.
His crime? Being gay.
Turing was convicted of "gross indecency," a felony in Britain at that time. He was forced to choose between prison and being injected with female hormones, a form of chemical castration.
He reluctantly chose the latter. Despite his accomplishments, he lost his job. And in June 1954, he lost his will to live. He was 41.
If the Western world is somewhat haunted by what Steve Jobs might have accomplished had cancer not taken him from us, we should be downright tormented by what we lost from the senseless excommunication of his predecessor.
Turing's plaque is one of 18 that make up the city's Legacy Walk, which honors LGBT people who have made a contribution to history. It's a reminder of where we were and how far we've come. But as much as it seems the nation is talking about this topic, the fact remains that in much of the United States, it is still legal to fire someone for the same reason that Turing was fired 60 years ago in Britain.
Perhaps the prejudices in our rear view mirror may appear farther away than they actually are.
June is Gay Pride month. So if you find yourself exhausted from all of this gay rights talk and want to leave a not-so-kind comment on a story, remember it's because of an openly gay man that you even have the technology to do so.
If you're a black person who gets offended whenever the Civil Rights Movement is mentioned in the same sentence as the fight for gay rights, remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s close confidant and most influential mentor was an openly gay black man by the name of Bayard Rustin.
And if you ever find yourself wondering "How come there's no Straight Pride month?" I say the day being straight becomes a crime -- as being gay still is in many parts of the world -- start one.
Gay Pride was not born out of a need to celebrate not being straight but our right to exist without prosecution.
Just as Stokely Carmichael's "Black is Beautiful" became the rallying cry against racism in the 1960s; just as "I am woman, hear me roar" was the anthem against sexism in the 1970s; "gay pride" is the banner that flies over a people whose dignity continues to be put to a vote in 2013.
News coverage in June may focus on the celebratory nature of Gay Pride parades, but it cannot rewrite the history that made these parades an integral part of our survival.
Why isn't there Straight Pride?
Because Congress has yet to pass a law requiring people to hide the fact they are straight. Because the streets are not filled with children who have been kicked out of their homes for being straight. Because there seems to be a lack of stories in which someone has been beaten, tied to a fence and left to die or shot in the face at point blank range because they were straight.
For this Gay Pride month, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said he expects to take up legislation to address workplace discrimination "soon." This month, the Supreme Court may make a ruling on whether or not same-sex couples can marry.
This month, 11-year-old Marcel Neergaard wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed that "during my first year in middle school, I experienced severe bullying. I was called terrible names that were quite hurtful. At that time, I had just realized that I'm gay, and the bullies used the word 'gay' as an insult.
"This made me feel like being gay was horrible, but my parents told me otherwise. Their support was tremendous. But as powerful as their love was, it couldn't fight off all the bullying. I don't want anyone else to feel the way I did. No one deserves that much pain, no matter who they are."
Yeah.
So maybe instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride month or movement, straight people should be thankful they don't need one. I'm sure Turing would have rather filed the police report and stayed home. I'm sure Marcel would prefer going to school in peace.
Link to original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/opinion/granderson-straight-pride/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor
updated 7:56 AM EDT, Thu June 13, 2013
(CNN) -- On North Halsted Street, between Buckingham and Roscoe in Chicago, a monument stands with a plaque in honor of a brilliant thinker who is as responsible for the way we live our lives today as any person who has ever lived.
His name is Alan Turing, a Brit, and among his many credits and accolades, many historians refer to him as "the father of computer science." When Time magazine listed him among its 100 most influential people of the 20th century, it said "that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."
A pretty high honor to say the least. And yet in 1952, while filing a robbery report with the police, Turing -- the man whose algorithms cracked the Enigma code used by the Nazis in World War II -- found himself arrested at his home in England.
His crime? Being gay.
Turing was convicted of "gross indecency," a felony in Britain at that time. He was forced to choose between prison and being injected with female hormones, a form of chemical castration.
He reluctantly chose the latter. Despite his accomplishments, he lost his job. And in June 1954, he lost his will to live. He was 41.
If the Western world is somewhat haunted by what Steve Jobs might have accomplished had cancer not taken him from us, we should be downright tormented by what we lost from the senseless excommunication of his predecessor.
Turing's plaque is one of 18 that make up the city's Legacy Walk, which honors LGBT people who have made a contribution to history. It's a reminder of where we were and how far we've come. But as much as it seems the nation is talking about this topic, the fact remains that in much of the United States, it is still legal to fire someone for the same reason that Turing was fired 60 years ago in Britain.
Perhaps the prejudices in our rear view mirror may appear farther away than they actually are.
June is Gay Pride month. So if you find yourself exhausted from all of this gay rights talk and want to leave a not-so-kind comment on a story, remember it's because of an openly gay man that you even have the technology to do so.
If you're a black person who gets offended whenever the Civil Rights Movement is mentioned in the same sentence as the fight for gay rights, remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s close confidant and most influential mentor was an openly gay black man by the name of Bayard Rustin.
And if you ever find yourself wondering "How come there's no Straight Pride month?" I say the day being straight becomes a crime -- as being gay still is in many parts of the world -- start one.
Gay Pride was not born out of a need to celebrate not being straight but our right to exist without prosecution.
Just as Stokely Carmichael's "Black is Beautiful" became the rallying cry against racism in the 1960s; just as "I am woman, hear me roar" was the anthem against sexism in the 1970s; "gay pride" is the banner that flies over a people whose dignity continues to be put to a vote in 2013.
News coverage in June may focus on the celebratory nature of Gay Pride parades, but it cannot rewrite the history that made these parades an integral part of our survival.
Why isn't there Straight Pride?
Because Congress has yet to pass a law requiring people to hide the fact they are straight. Because the streets are not filled with children who have been kicked out of their homes for being straight. Because there seems to be a lack of stories in which someone has been beaten, tied to a fence and left to die or shot in the face at point blank range because they were straight.
For this Gay Pride month, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said he expects to take up legislation to address workplace discrimination "soon." This month, the Supreme Court may make a ruling on whether or not same-sex couples can marry.
This month, 11-year-old Marcel Neergaard wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed that "during my first year in middle school, I experienced severe bullying. I was called terrible names that were quite hurtful. At that time, I had just realized that I'm gay, and the bullies used the word 'gay' as an insult.
"This made me feel like being gay was horrible, but my parents told me otherwise. Their support was tremendous. But as powerful as their love was, it couldn't fight off all the bullying. I don't want anyone else to feel the way I did. No one deserves that much pain, no matter who they are."
Yeah.
So maybe instead of wondering why there isn't a straight pride month or movement, straight people should be thankful they don't need one. I'm sure Turing would have rather filed the police report and stayed home. I'm sure Marcel would prefer going to school in peace.
Link to original article:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/opinion/granderson-straight-pride/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Saturday, June 1, 2013
Why bias puts young gays' health at risk
This is a topic that is very important to me, so I am posting this CNN article in its entirety. There is a link to the original article (with links to footnotes and statistics) at the bottom.
Why bias puts young gays' health at risk
By Rob Stephenson, Special to CNN
Editor's note: Rob Stephenson is a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project and associate professor of Global Health at Emory University.
(CNN) -- When I was 8, I joined the Boy Scouts. I lasted three weeks--couldn't get the hang of all that knot tying, and no one was interested in singing show tunes around the campfire. I was gay and I knew it. At that time, revealing my sexual identity would have resulted in my exclusion from Scouting. Until the Boy Scouts of America's historic May 23 vote -- which allows gay youth to join the scouts, but upholds the ban on gay adult leaders -- thousands of boys across the country faced similar discrimination from the Scouts, who actively and vocally banned gays.
The Scouts' decision to include gay youth is part of the sea change sweeping across the United States on the issue of gay equality, an issue that has long centered on equal rights for all. But discrimination, in the Boy Scouts as in every walk of life, brings with it another effect that is left out of the conversation on rights: poorer health.
Hiding one's sexual identity and being excluded from activities and social groups causes stress, and research shows this can have a significant impact on health. In her review of the health of gay youth, Tumaini Coker notes that gay youth are three times more likely to partake in substance abuse, and that adolescents who said they felt stigmatized -- for example, in the form of family rejection -- are five times more likely to experience depression.
Still, this is an area that, unfortunately, has not been well studied. On the rare occasions that this link is discussed, the academic community has tended to focus on adults. But the health effects on young people who are stigmatized is surely as significant.
My own recent research, published in the American Journal of Men's Health, drew on a sample of 1,000 gay men from Atlanta, and showed that gay men who reported that they heard statements such as "being gay is not normal" in their youth were more likely as adults to have unprotected sex and to have sex while intoxicated or high. The study is among the first to demonstrate associations between stigma induced stress in childhood and negative health behaviors as adults that put them at risk for HIV infection.
There is already ample evidence to suggest that adult gay men and women experience poorer health relative to straight people.
For one thing, gay men have been more heavily affected by the AIDS epidemic than the general population. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2006 and 2009, gay men -- and other men who have sex with men -- were the only risk group to experience an increase in HIV incidence. There also is a wealth of data showing that gay men and women are more likely to engage in smoking, alcohol and drug use, and experience poorer mental health.
A study of 577 gay adults by Sean McCabe and colleagues at the University of Michigan showed that gay adults who experience discrimination are nearly four times more likely to experience substance abuse disorders, while Diana Burgess and colleagues at the University of Minnesota noted that compared with heterosexuals, gay adults are 68% more likely to experience depression and 56% more likely to experience anxiety.
Ilan Meyer, a senior scholar at UCLA's School of Law, offers an explanation for these disparities through the "Theory of Minority Stress," which suggests that these health inequities may be rooted in discrimination, with negative health behaviors acting as coping mechanisms for repeated exposure to stigma-related stress.
As impressionable children we internalize messages we receive about what is right, what is normal, what we are allowed to be -- each shaping our views about our sexual identity and whether we "belong." Being exposed to messages that same-sex relationships are not "normal" is damaging. These messages set scripts for youth to follow, divide them into normal and abnormal, and arm bullies with justification to harm them. As my own research shows, these messages have lasting impacts — sometimes fatal -- on health behaviors as adults.
The consequences for youth are painfully illustrated by the It Gets Better Project, created by writer Dan Savage in 2010 to give gay youth hope that life will be easier as a gay adult. Savage developed the project in response to the high rates of suicide among gay youth. Research indeed shows that gays are significantly more likely to attempt suicide compared with heterosexual youth (21.5% vs 4.2%), and that among gay youth, the risk of attempting suicide is 20% greater in unsupportive environments compared with supportive environments.
Being told we are different at an age when we are trying to establish who we are can be devastating. But what if it didn't have to get better? What if it could be better from the start?
Last week the Boy Scouts sent an important signal to gay youth: You are not different. But it is not quite enough. The ban on gay Scout leaders remains. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, withdrew his proposed amendment to provide U.S. citizens the right to sponsor their same-sex partners for green cards.
And in June the Supreme Court will vote on the Defense of Marriage Act. Each inequity sends a message to young people that they can expect not to be treated equally when they grow up, setting them on the pathway to lowered self-esteem and poorer health. Perhaps it is time to examine how we are treating America's gay youth through that lens. By creating equality, we can create better health — right from the start.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/31/opinion/stephenson-gay-youth-health/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Why bias puts young gays' health at risk
By Rob Stephenson, Special to CNN
Editor's note: Rob Stephenson is a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project and associate professor of Global Health at Emory University.
(CNN) -- When I was 8, I joined the Boy Scouts. I lasted three weeks--couldn't get the hang of all that knot tying, and no one was interested in singing show tunes around the campfire. I was gay and I knew it. At that time, revealing my sexual identity would have resulted in my exclusion from Scouting. Until the Boy Scouts of America's historic May 23 vote -- which allows gay youth to join the scouts, but upholds the ban on gay adult leaders -- thousands of boys across the country faced similar discrimination from the Scouts, who actively and vocally banned gays.
The Scouts' decision to include gay youth is part of the sea change sweeping across the United States on the issue of gay equality, an issue that has long centered on equal rights for all. But discrimination, in the Boy Scouts as in every walk of life, brings with it another effect that is left out of the conversation on rights: poorer health.
Hiding one's sexual identity and being excluded from activities and social groups causes stress, and research shows this can have a significant impact on health. In her review of the health of gay youth, Tumaini Coker notes that gay youth are three times more likely to partake in substance abuse, and that adolescents who said they felt stigmatized -- for example, in the form of family rejection -- are five times more likely to experience depression.
Still, this is an area that, unfortunately, has not been well studied. On the rare occasions that this link is discussed, the academic community has tended to focus on adults. But the health effects on young people who are stigmatized is surely as significant.
My own recent research, published in the American Journal of Men's Health, drew on a sample of 1,000 gay men from Atlanta, and showed that gay men who reported that they heard statements such as "being gay is not normal" in their youth were more likely as adults to have unprotected sex and to have sex while intoxicated or high. The study is among the first to demonstrate associations between stigma induced stress in childhood and negative health behaviors as adults that put them at risk for HIV infection.
There is already ample evidence to suggest that adult gay men and women experience poorer health relative to straight people.
For one thing, gay men have been more heavily affected by the AIDS epidemic than the general population. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2006 and 2009, gay men -- and other men who have sex with men -- were the only risk group to experience an increase in HIV incidence. There also is a wealth of data showing that gay men and women are more likely to engage in smoking, alcohol and drug use, and experience poorer mental health.
A study of 577 gay adults by Sean McCabe and colleagues at the University of Michigan showed that gay adults who experience discrimination are nearly four times more likely to experience substance abuse disorders, while Diana Burgess and colleagues at the University of Minnesota noted that compared with heterosexuals, gay adults are 68% more likely to experience depression and 56% more likely to experience anxiety.
Ilan Meyer, a senior scholar at UCLA's School of Law, offers an explanation for these disparities through the "Theory of Minority Stress," which suggests that these health inequities may be rooted in discrimination, with negative health behaviors acting as coping mechanisms for repeated exposure to stigma-related stress.
As impressionable children we internalize messages we receive about what is right, what is normal, what we are allowed to be -- each shaping our views about our sexual identity and whether we "belong." Being exposed to messages that same-sex relationships are not "normal" is damaging. These messages set scripts for youth to follow, divide them into normal and abnormal, and arm bullies with justification to harm them. As my own research shows, these messages have lasting impacts — sometimes fatal -- on health behaviors as adults.
The consequences for youth are painfully illustrated by the It Gets Better Project, created by writer Dan Savage in 2010 to give gay youth hope that life will be easier as a gay adult. Savage developed the project in response to the high rates of suicide among gay youth. Research indeed shows that gays are significantly more likely to attempt suicide compared with heterosexual youth (21.5% vs 4.2%), and that among gay youth, the risk of attempting suicide is 20% greater in unsupportive environments compared with supportive environments.
Being told we are different at an age when we are trying to establish who we are can be devastating. But what if it didn't have to get better? What if it could be better from the start?
Last week the Boy Scouts sent an important signal to gay youth: You are not different. But it is not quite enough. The ban on gay Scout leaders remains. Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, withdrew his proposed amendment to provide U.S. citizens the right to sponsor their same-sex partners for green cards.
And in June the Supreme Court will vote on the Defense of Marriage Act. Each inequity sends a message to young people that they can expect not to be treated equally when they grow up, setting them on the pathway to lowered self-esteem and poorer health. Perhaps it is time to examine how we are treating America's gay youth through that lens. By creating equality, we can create better health — right from the start.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/31/opinion/stephenson-gay-youth-health/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Friday, March 22, 2013
Older and Slower! Now With More Dark Matter!
(CNN) -- How cute was our universe as a baby? We now know better than ever: The picture of our early universe just got sharper and tells scientists with greater precision many important facts about how the universe evolved.
This new photogenic moment, released Thursday, comes courtesy of the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope, which detects cosmic microwave background radiation -- the light left over from the Big Bang. Scientists used data from Planck to create an artificially colored map of temperature variations across the sky in the early universe, in more detail than ever before.
"It's a big deal," said Charles Lawrence, Planck project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news briefing. He added, "We can tie together a whole range of phenomena that couldn't be tied together so well before, and the sum total of that, the impact, is felt in many, many ways."
The light is technically from 380,000 years after the Big Bang, but that's still infancy when you consider that, according to the new data, the age of the universe is about 13.8 billion years.
"By the matching observations from Planck to predictions from models, we can assemble a surprisingly detailed picture of the universe as it was one nano-nano-nano-nanosecond after the Big Bang," said Marc Kamionkowski, professor of physics and astronomy at John Hopkins University.
Kamionkowski compared the Planck map to the Human Genome Project in terms of its importance for cosmology.
After analyzing the new data, scientists now believe that the universe is about 100 million years older than they thought.
The universe's light started out as a white hot glow and would have been blindingly bright if anyone had been around to see it, Lawrence said.
But since the Big Bang, that hot light has cooled significantly, and the universe itself has expanded by a factor of 1,100. The light has cooled so much that we can't see it, but Planck can detect subtle variations in temperature, which give scientists a wealth of information. By subtle, we mean about one-hundred-millionth of a degree.
The colors in the temperature map image that scientists released Thursday were arbitrarily chosen to show these intensity variations, Lawrence said. Red means a little bit warmer than average, blue means cooler than average, and white is average.
Planck data also suggest that our universe has more dark matter than previously thought. A full 26.8% appears to be dark matter, an invisible phenomenon that scientists have only been able to detect indirectly; experiments both in space and at the Large Hadron Collider are hoping to pin it down.
It appears that ordinary matter -- all of the stuff that we can see, such as planets and stars -- makes up only 4.9% of all the universe.
The rest of the universe is an even more mysterious phenomenon called dark energy, which has also never been detected and appears to be in less abundance than researchers thought.
Scientists said the rate at which the universe is expanding, based on these observations, is 67.15 kilometers per second per megaparsec, a unit of vast distance in space (1 megaparsec = 3.3 million light years). That's significantly less than what had been calculated previously (73.8 km/sec/Mpc). This number, known as the Hubble constant, describes the acceleration of the stretching of spacetime.
The discrepancy between these Hubble constants will likely attract a lot of attention in the scientific community and is one of the most exciting parts of the new data, said Martin White, a scientist with the Planck mission based at the University of California, Berkeley.
"The hope would be that this is actually pointing toward some deficiency in the models, or some extra physics that we're not aware of, and maybe spark a whole new research direction," White said.
One theory that could be explored is that the nature of dark energy, which scientists think is causing the accelerated expansion of the universe, is different from the simplest human-calculated models. Is dark energy increasing with time over some volume of space? That's a radical theory, though, White said, and there are other possibilities.
Another anomaly of these results is that temperature fluctuations are not uniform across the sky map. There are more variations in one direction than in another.
"Perhaps we could say that our universe has thrown us a curve ball, and it rarely fails to surprise us," said Krzysztof Gorski, Planck scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Scientists ran 10 million computer simulations and chose from among them the best match to the new data, White said. Out of those, they found a good match describing important statistics about the universe.
The Planck telescope is aboard a spacecraft that launched in May 2009. It is not circling the Earth but orbits a point in the Sun-Earth system called the second Lagrange point.
The Planck mission helps to nail down many of the parameters that other experiments must know to explore aspects of the universe, such as its expansion history, White said.
New analyses are based on the first 15.5 months of data from this mission, which is run principally by the European Space Agency. NASA is a partner of the project.
Planck represents the third generation of attempts to map the cosmic microwave background. The first was COBE, launched in 1989, followed by WMAP, launched in 2001. Comparing the resulting maps shows just how much better the maps have gotten with each successive satellite.
"This is a beautiful illustration of how science works," Lawrence said. "Make a measurement, learn from it, make a better measurement, learn from it."
By Elizabeth Landau
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/tech/innovation/universe-planck-map/index.html?hpt=hp_c3
Saturday, December 15, 2012
ENOUGH
Roland Martin writing for CNN:
Enough!
Enough with putting off tomorrow what we should be talking about today. Enough with being afraid to step on someone's delicate sensibilities when it comes to the Second Amendment. Enough with elected leaders who are too cowardly to confront the National Rifle Association and their ardent supporters. Enough with moms and dads and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and pastors and deacons who are afraid to make public the private anguish of mental illness.
Enough! Enough! Enough!
Enough with just asking for thoughts and prayers. Enough with just hugging our children. Enough with leaving flowers and teddy bears at a makeshift memorial.
It's time for action. It's time for people of conscience to, in the words of the late civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, be "sick and tired of being sick and tired."
America, 20 of our children are dead, and we are all paralyzed, not knowing what to do or say. I've shed tears for the lives of the innocent children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Many of you have likely done the same.
We witnessed the president of the United States, Barack Obama, stand before the country fighting back tears talking about the lives lost, reminding us of other tragedies involving guns and sick individuals behind the trigger.
And every time this happened, those who refuse to discuss gun control are quick to say, "Now is not the time."
One day after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, NBC Sports anchor Bob Costas said it was time to talk about this nation's fascination with guns. Instead of being hailed as an honest communicator, he was vilified for having the audacity to raise the subject at the halftime of a football game.
Have we become such a nation of cowards that we are desperate to not discuss a real issue, instead saying, "Please, shut up so I can watch the game?"
Yet today, we are glued to the television, unable to turn from the scene in Newtown, Connecticut, eager to find every new detail as to what led to the horrific mass murder of a classroom full of kindergartners.
It wasn't time to talk about this when Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, and six others were killed in January 2011. It wasn't time in July 2012 when 12 people were blown away in a movie theater in Colorado. Seven were killed at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee near August, and we were told then, "Now is not the time."
So, please, exactly when is the time?
This nation, whether we want to admit it not, is one that is fascinated and enraptured with guns. It courses through our veins like heroin shooting through the arms of an addict. We love to see it in our movies, video games, on television, and then we'll fiercely defend the right to bear arms, all while flagrantly waving the U.S. Constitution in the face of anyone who objects.
There is absolutely no reason why we need as many guns in America. None. It simply shouldn't be the way of life others are so quick to defend. There is absolutely no doubt that we need tough and stringent gun control. Not solely to prevent murders like those in Connecticut, but to remove the option when someone is angered, depressed or in the case of too many, mentally ill.
And that's the second issue that it's time that we come to grips with in this country: We are a nation that has chosen to either medicate or ignore altogether.
"They have a few screws loose." "You know he's off his rocker." We've heard all of the terms. We often laugh and dismiss the mentally ill in America, choosing to cross the street when we see the homeless veteran screaming and cussing at anyone who walks by. When it's time for budget cuts, those most vulnerable often get thrown out first.
For years American cities, counties and states have shirked their responsibility when it comes to the mentally ill, choosing to abandon helping them, but quick to build a new prison to incarcerate them when a law is broken.
Now we wait to see if the Newtown, Connecticut, killer will be the latest Jared Lee Loughner (Gabby Giffords), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), or James Holmes (Colorado movie theater all individuals who were described as mentally unstable.
Too often the warning signs were there, but ignored for one reason or another.
Could any of these tragedies have been prevented? No one knows for sure. But I sure as hell would rather try than have to be a first responder and look a parent in the eye and say, "Sir or ma'am, I'm sorry. But your baby is dead, killed in the classroom along with 19 other classmates."
See, now is the time that they are having that conversation. Now is the time those parents are grieving the loss of their babies. Now is the time parents in Newtown, Connecticut are eschewing Christmas plans to prepare for a funeral.
America, now is the time for us to stop living in denial. We must address guns. We must address mental illness. We must have the courage and conviction to put aside our political views and deal with the task at hand.
America, NOW IS THE TIME.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/opinion/martin-gun-control/index.html?hpt=hp_c4
Enough!
Enough with putting off tomorrow what we should be talking about today. Enough with being afraid to step on someone's delicate sensibilities when it comes to the Second Amendment. Enough with elected leaders who are too cowardly to confront the National Rifle Association and their ardent supporters. Enough with moms and dads and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and pastors and deacons who are afraid to make public the private anguish of mental illness.
Enough! Enough! Enough!
Enough with just asking for thoughts and prayers. Enough with just hugging our children. Enough with leaving flowers and teddy bears at a makeshift memorial.
It's time for action. It's time for people of conscience to, in the words of the late civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, be "sick and tired of being sick and tired."
America, 20 of our children are dead, and we are all paralyzed, not knowing what to do or say. I've shed tears for the lives of the innocent children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Many of you have likely done the same.
We witnessed the president of the United States, Barack Obama, stand before the country fighting back tears talking about the lives lost, reminding us of other tragedies involving guns and sick individuals behind the trigger.
And every time this happened, those who refuse to discuss gun control are quick to say, "Now is not the time."
One day after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, NBC Sports anchor Bob Costas said it was time to talk about this nation's fascination with guns. Instead of being hailed as an honest communicator, he was vilified for having the audacity to raise the subject at the halftime of a football game.
Have we become such a nation of cowards that we are desperate to not discuss a real issue, instead saying, "Please, shut up so I can watch the game?"
Yet today, we are glued to the television, unable to turn from the scene in Newtown, Connecticut, eager to find every new detail as to what led to the horrific mass murder of a classroom full of kindergartners.
It wasn't time to talk about this when Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, and six others were killed in January 2011. It wasn't time in July 2012 when 12 people were blown away in a movie theater in Colorado. Seven were killed at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee near August, and we were told then, "Now is not the time."
So, please, exactly when is the time?
This nation, whether we want to admit it not, is one that is fascinated and enraptured with guns. It courses through our veins like heroin shooting through the arms of an addict. We love to see it in our movies, video games, on television, and then we'll fiercely defend the right to bear arms, all while flagrantly waving the U.S. Constitution in the face of anyone who objects.
There is absolutely no reason why we need as many guns in America. None. It simply shouldn't be the way of life others are so quick to defend. There is absolutely no doubt that we need tough and stringent gun control. Not solely to prevent murders like those in Connecticut, but to remove the option when someone is angered, depressed or in the case of too many, mentally ill.
And that's the second issue that it's time that we come to grips with in this country: We are a nation that has chosen to either medicate or ignore altogether.
"They have a few screws loose." "You know he's off his rocker." We've heard all of the terms. We often laugh and dismiss the mentally ill in America, choosing to cross the street when we see the homeless veteran screaming and cussing at anyone who walks by. When it's time for budget cuts, those most vulnerable often get thrown out first.
For years American cities, counties and states have shirked their responsibility when it comes to the mentally ill, choosing to abandon helping them, but quick to build a new prison to incarcerate them when a law is broken.
Now we wait to see if the Newtown, Connecticut, killer will be the latest Jared Lee Loughner (Gabby Giffords), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), or James Holmes (Colorado movie theater all individuals who were described as mentally unstable.
Too often the warning signs were there, but ignored for one reason or another.
Could any of these tragedies have been prevented? No one knows for sure. But I sure as hell would rather try than have to be a first responder and look a parent in the eye and say, "Sir or ma'am, I'm sorry. But your baby is dead, killed in the classroom along with 19 other classmates."
See, now is the time that they are having that conversation. Now is the time those parents are grieving the loss of their babies. Now is the time parents in Newtown, Connecticut are eschewing Christmas plans to prepare for a funeral.
America, now is the time for us to stop living in denial. We must address guns. We must address mental illness. We must have the courage and conviction to put aside our political views and deal with the task at hand.
America, NOW IS THE TIME.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/opinion/martin-gun-control/index.html?hpt=hp_c4
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Ideas, Awe, and Euphoria
By Jason Silva for CNN
Can ideas get you high?
My approach to creating content is focused on pulling people out of their intellectual comfort zones. I'm interested in presenting ideas in unique ways that challenge people to question their assumptions.
My mode of presentation is short-form video -- basically I create fast cut, impassioned "idea explainers" that explode with enthusiasm and intensity as they distill how technology is expanding our sphere of possibility.
I want big ideas to have aesthetic relevance. I want to tickle people's intellectual sensibilities and instill a sense of wonder. I think big ideas should get people high!
My short videos, which I call shots of philosophical espresso, are trailers for these ideas. They are not a substitute for a book or academic paper -- they are instigators. My work is simply another way for wider audiences to engage with these ideas.
My goal is for those who might not be inclined toward heady discourse to find a way still to connect to these ideas.
Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey coined the term "the biological advantage of being awestruck" to describe his theory on why our unique ability to be enthralled was, somehow, biologically selected for in a Darwinian sense. He believes this quirk of our consciousness imbues our lives with a sense of cosmic significance that over the course of history has resulted in a species that works harder not just to survive but to flourish and thrive. To "awe" gives us a "raison d'etre." A reason for being. You can learn more about Humphrey's idea in my video "A Movie Trailer for Awe."
Humphrey says being enchanted by the magic of experience, rather than being just an aid to survival, provides an essential incentive to survive.
"We relish just being here," he says. "We feel the yen to confirm and renew, in small ways or large, our own occupancy of the present moment, to go deeper, to extend it, to revel in being there, and when we have the skill, to celebrate it in words. ..."
As pop philosopher Alain De Botton wrote in "The Art of Travel," "There is an urge to say: I was here, I felt this, and it matters!"
And this sense of cosmic awe continues to manifest itself in the age of technology, as Erik Davis wrote in his book "TechGnosis":
"Collectively, Human societies can no more dodge sublime imaginings or spiritual yearnings than they can transcend the tidal pulls of Eros. ...
"We are beset with a thirst for meaning and connection that centuries of skeptical philosophy, hardheaded materialism cannot eliminate. ... Today we turn to the cosmic awe conjured by science fiction, or the outer-space snapshots of the Hubble telescope as it calls forth our ever-deeper, ever-brighter possible selves."
Terence McKenna, in his book "Food of the Gods," wrote about the origins of human language: this unique, often ecstatic expression of consciousness that bursts forth as morsels of meaning encoded as vocal patterns.
He believes the origins of language stem from our early use of psychedelic compounds, which caused a sort of "ontological awakening" of our species and thus acted as an early catalyst for religion, cosmic feelings of awe and a desire for transcendent experiences.
These experiences, to borrow the words of Tim Doody, re-contextualize oneself as a marvelous conduit in a timeless whole, through which molecules and meaning flow, from nebulae to neurons and back again. Early shamans, Davis wrote in "TechGnosis," became ecstatic technicians of the sacred.
Regardless of whether you buy McKenna's theory, he does provide a compelling case for the relationship between "cosmic, out-of-body euphoria" and the cognitive leaps to which it can give rise.
Some of our greatest poets, scientists and other thinkers have attributed some of their greatest inspiration to the use of these psychedelic chemicals and their resulting out-of-context perspectives.
But it's not necessarily the chemicals themselves I'm interested in, but rather what they do to our sense of perspective and our reference points. My focus is the subjective experiences they seem "to occasion."
Tom Robbins explains:
"The plant genies don't manufacture imagination, nor do they market wonder and beauty -- but they force us out of context so dramatically and so meditatively that we gawk in amazement at the ubiquitous everyday wonders that we are culturally disposed to overlook, and they teach us invaluable lessons about fluidity, relativity, flexibility and paradox. Such an increase in awareness, if skillfully applied, can lift a disciplined, adventurous artist permanently out of reach of the faded jaws of mediocrity."
In my mind the key idea here is that of being forced out of context. We don't necessarily require psychedelics for this, although they might offer a shortcut.
What we require is a bold new attitude and a sense of humility that accepts the ambiguity of many of our so-called truths, habitual thought patterns and cultural reality tunnels. By accepting the need to constantly de-condition our thinking to approach the world with new eyes, we can reconnect with our sense of awe and wonder.
As Michael Pollan wrote, "In order to see things as if for the first time, we must remember to forget." Bucky Fuller used to say "dare to be naive." Oftentimes, our sense of what we think we know is precisely what prevents us from approaching situations free of prejudice.
"Banality is a defense against being overwhelmed," Pollan wrote in his book "The Botany of Desire."
This makes perfect sense to me: In a world where disruption is the new normal, and technological change is happening at an exponential rate; a world where we are bombarded with media messages, and where "attention" is the new limited resource, it seems easier to recoil away from all the mindblowingness going on, and instead look for reasons to be bored. The mundane can be quite comforting for those terrified of leaving their comfort zone.
And this where I think my work serves the purpose of infecting people with wonderment. My short videos are "digital psychedelics" meant to "de-center" the self, dwindle the broadcast of the ego and provide people with a long view, "big picture" perspective on humanity, technology and how their symbiosis might make a dent in the cosmos.
As Alan Harrington wrote in "The Immortalist": "We must never forget we are cosmic revolutionaries."
Original article on CNN.com here.
http://thisisjasonsilva.com/
Do yourself a favor and watch these very short, very inspirational films. Silva talks fast, but stay with him... or just let it wash over you and feel it. His excitement is contagious.
Can ideas get you high?
My approach to creating content is focused on pulling people out of their intellectual comfort zones. I'm interested in presenting ideas in unique ways that challenge people to question their assumptions.
My mode of presentation is short-form video -- basically I create fast cut, impassioned "idea explainers" that explode with enthusiasm and intensity as they distill how technology is expanding our sphere of possibility.
I want big ideas to have aesthetic relevance. I want to tickle people's intellectual sensibilities and instill a sense of wonder. I think big ideas should get people high!
My short videos, which I call shots of philosophical espresso, are trailers for these ideas. They are not a substitute for a book or academic paper -- they are instigators. My work is simply another way for wider audiences to engage with these ideas.
My goal is for those who might not be inclined toward heady discourse to find a way still to connect to these ideas.
Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey coined the term "the biological advantage of being awestruck" to describe his theory on why our unique ability to be enthralled was, somehow, biologically selected for in a Darwinian sense. He believes this quirk of our consciousness imbues our lives with a sense of cosmic significance that over the course of history has resulted in a species that works harder not just to survive but to flourish and thrive. To "awe" gives us a "raison d'etre." A reason for being. You can learn more about Humphrey's idea in my video "A Movie Trailer for Awe."
Humphrey says being enchanted by the magic of experience, rather than being just an aid to survival, provides an essential incentive to survive.
"We relish just being here," he says. "We feel the yen to confirm and renew, in small ways or large, our own occupancy of the present moment, to go deeper, to extend it, to revel in being there, and when we have the skill, to celebrate it in words. ..."
As pop philosopher Alain De Botton wrote in "The Art of Travel," "There is an urge to say: I was here, I felt this, and it matters!"
And this sense of cosmic awe continues to manifest itself in the age of technology, as Erik Davis wrote in his book "TechGnosis":
"Collectively, Human societies can no more dodge sublime imaginings or spiritual yearnings than they can transcend the tidal pulls of Eros. ...
"We are beset with a thirst for meaning and connection that centuries of skeptical philosophy, hardheaded materialism cannot eliminate. ... Today we turn to the cosmic awe conjured by science fiction, or the outer-space snapshots of the Hubble telescope as it calls forth our ever-deeper, ever-brighter possible selves."
Terence McKenna, in his book "Food of the Gods," wrote about the origins of human language: this unique, often ecstatic expression of consciousness that bursts forth as morsels of meaning encoded as vocal patterns.
He believes the origins of language stem from our early use of psychedelic compounds, which caused a sort of "ontological awakening" of our species and thus acted as an early catalyst for religion, cosmic feelings of awe and a desire for transcendent experiences.
These experiences, to borrow the words of Tim Doody, re-contextualize oneself as a marvelous conduit in a timeless whole, through which molecules and meaning flow, from nebulae to neurons and back again. Early shamans, Davis wrote in "TechGnosis," became ecstatic technicians of the sacred.
Regardless of whether you buy McKenna's theory, he does provide a compelling case for the relationship between "cosmic, out-of-body euphoria" and the cognitive leaps to which it can give rise.
Some of our greatest poets, scientists and other thinkers have attributed some of their greatest inspiration to the use of these psychedelic chemicals and their resulting out-of-context perspectives.
But it's not necessarily the chemicals themselves I'm interested in, but rather what they do to our sense of perspective and our reference points. My focus is the subjective experiences they seem "to occasion."
Tom Robbins explains:
"The plant genies don't manufacture imagination, nor do they market wonder and beauty -- but they force us out of context so dramatically and so meditatively that we gawk in amazement at the ubiquitous everyday wonders that we are culturally disposed to overlook, and they teach us invaluable lessons about fluidity, relativity, flexibility and paradox. Such an increase in awareness, if skillfully applied, can lift a disciplined, adventurous artist permanently out of reach of the faded jaws of mediocrity."
In my mind the key idea here is that of being forced out of context. We don't necessarily require psychedelics for this, although they might offer a shortcut.
What we require is a bold new attitude and a sense of humility that accepts the ambiguity of many of our so-called truths, habitual thought patterns and cultural reality tunnels. By accepting the need to constantly de-condition our thinking to approach the world with new eyes, we can reconnect with our sense of awe and wonder.
As Michael Pollan wrote, "In order to see things as if for the first time, we must remember to forget." Bucky Fuller used to say "dare to be naive." Oftentimes, our sense of what we think we know is precisely what prevents us from approaching situations free of prejudice.
"Banality is a defense against being overwhelmed," Pollan wrote in his book "The Botany of Desire."
This makes perfect sense to me: In a world where disruption is the new normal, and technological change is happening at an exponential rate; a world where we are bombarded with media messages, and where "attention" is the new limited resource, it seems easier to recoil away from all the mindblowingness going on, and instead look for reasons to be bored. The mundane can be quite comforting for those terrified of leaving their comfort zone.
And this where I think my work serves the purpose of infecting people with wonderment. My short videos are "digital psychedelics" meant to "de-center" the self, dwindle the broadcast of the ego and provide people with a long view, "big picture" perspective on humanity, technology and how their symbiosis might make a dent in the cosmos.
As Alan Harrington wrote in "The Immortalist": "We must never forget we are cosmic revolutionaries."
Original article on CNN.com here.
http://thisisjasonsilva.com/
Do yourself a favor and watch these very short, very inspirational films. Silva talks fast, but stay with him... or just let it wash over you and feel it. His excitement is contagious.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lesula
A new species of monkey, the Cercopithecus Lomamiensis, or Lesula, has been discovered in the Congo. It is heartening in this day and age when we feel every inch of the planet has been dominated, exploited, or at least cataloged, that there are still new species to be discovered. And the Lesula is adorable. Look at those soulful eyes.
From a CNN article today.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/world/africa/dr-congo-new-monkey/index.html?hpt=hp_c3
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