Blog

Dr. Vincent Felitti spent three days in Juneau, Alaska this week as a guest of the Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) and its president, Dr. Rosita Worl . He was invited to speak about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experience Study and how it might benefit Alaska, specifically the Alaska Native community. Beginning with a radio appearance and a community reception with about 100 people in attendance, Dr. Felitti was well received. While in Juneau, he met with Alaska Native...

Cleaning up after a snowstorm is no small feat. While many U.S. cities see the threat of impending snow as routine, others are notoriously under-equipped to deal with snow emergencies. This lack of preparedness can strike particularly hard at wheelchair users, who already face difficulties navigating snow on their own. Although there is arguably a certain logic to which streets get attention from snowplows first, the priority in many cities seems to lie less with individual citizens and...

The pictures, for the most part, are prosaic, like outtakes from a yearbook photo shoot. One shows five members of an amateur rock band. Another depicts uniformed football players gathered for a team photo. In yet another, a man is shown carving an ice sculpture. Occasionally, though, the subject matter is much darker. [For more of this story, written by Pete Brook, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/real-san-quentin/462075/]

Readers discuss and debate the issue. To join in, email hello@theatlantic.com. 9:35 AM Could Keeping Depressed People From Guns Do More Harm Than Good? A reader makes several great points along those lines: You asked about policy measures that could be implemented to help lower rates of gun suicides, in particular whether people with mental illness or a history of suicide should be banned from purchasing firearms. I think that’s an extremely problematic idea for a number of reasons.

Washington State Teacher of the Year Nate Gibbs-Bowling made waves in the education world recently with his essay, “The Conversation I’m Tired of Not Having.” Gibbs-Bowling bluntly called out the lack of political will and urgency around educational equity, writing up front, “I want to tell you a secret: America really doesn’t care what happens to poor people and most black people.” He’s right — but goes on to draw an incomplete conclusion. As...

The old adage about pornography from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart—that it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it—could just as easily apply to NIMBYism. If the term were merely a catch-all for development opposition, then it would fit San Franciscans reflexively blocking infill proposals as well as Jane Jacobs stopping a highway through the Village. That one is clearly NIMBYism and the other closer to heroism suggests a need for greater verbal precision.

WHEN crack hit America in the mid-1980s, for African-Americans, to borrow from Ta-Nehisi Coates, civilization fell. Crack embodied instant and fatal addiction; we saw endless images of thin, ravaged bodies, always black, as though from a famined land. And always those desperate, cracked lips. Our hearts broke learning the words “crack baby.” But mostly, crack meant shocking violence, terrifying gangs and hollowed-out inner cities. For those living in crack-plagued areas, the...

When Abigail Kramer, a journalist and advocate on children’s issues, entered the world of Family Court, she was haunted by its infamous moniker: “The saddest place in New York.” Kramer found much that confirmed that assessment: “The courthouse is dismal in the particular way of municipal buildings that serve the very poor,” Kramer wrote in a recent report for the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs. “The walls and floors are scuffed.

Later today, the Ferguson City Council will meet to vote on a consent decree released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) after an investigation turned up evidence of civil rights violations . The document is a temporary agreement between the DOJ and the city of Ferguson, Missouri, that requires the city to reform its training, protocol, and community relations in order to avoid facing a lawsuit. The DOJ released the 131-page document late last month, giving the city council and the people...

The other week was momentous for those interested in the elusive goal of juvenile justice reform. On January 25, the Supreme Court ruled that people serving mandatory life sentences for murders they committed as juveniles must be allowed to petition for new sentencing or parole hearings. The same day, President Obama issued a ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in the federal system, citing studies of lasting psychological damage linked to the practice. [For more of this story, written...

As Ebola fades, a mental-health crisis is coming in its wake. At the height of the outbreak, West African countries that had no more than a roomful of doctors and too few nurses threw thousands of ordinary people—taxi drivers, accountants and college students among them—onto the front lines. Now, many of the Ebola fighters are battling their own, quieter afflictions. Alcoholism, depression and drug addiction are raging, health officials say, in countries that have even fewer...

   The first time Alexandrea Murphy heard someone at a meeting of the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative use the phrase, “Hurt people hurt people,” she scribbled down those four words so she wouldn’t forget.    In an area—Cook County, home to Chicago and the second most populous county in the nation—that has been plagued by devastating gun violence, that phrase helped her think differently about the rising number of shootings and deaths.