Danielle Levy

Sometimes a statistic really does what it is meant to do and hits a reader with the reality behind its number. Twenty percent of the world’s population has no access to electricity, and 95% of those live in sub-Saharan Africa. Those of us who live in the West depend on electricity for any number of what to us are necessities. We can comprehend that a few in remote areas would have electricity, but 20% or one in five speaks of a wide discrepancy. That is why UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon attending a meeting on how to improve the availability of energy, called for universal access to be implemented by 2030. Besides the obvious benefit of having available energy, Mr. Ban sees it as a means of revitalizing global economy. The lack of energy means that 2.7 billon people are without clean cooking facilities, not to speak of the fact that as a result of this lack 1.5 million people die each year from respiratory diseases. Let’s hope government and the private sector get together as Ban suggests and remedy what ought not to be given the possibilities of today’s world.

They’ve started something in several cities in Mexico we ought to emulate—Cannabis libraries. In Mexico City the library is in a corner on a lonely shelf labelled Biblioteca Canabica. Regardless of its size and place it contains books providing information for teachers, parents, teens and others to be better informed. It may be more true to say more accurately informed. The problem there as in the US, as it must be in any number of countries, is that information on marijuana is colored by which side you’re on. For those who think it should be legalized, it is risk free. For those who think it should continue to be criminalized, it is increasingly dangerous. Cannabis, marijuana, pot, weed, by whatever name is a drug, and like all drugs it has consequences, still it’s difficult to find accurate and reliable information. It’s illegal in Mexico and the library is part of an attempt to contribute to the growing debate there about whether or not it should be legalized. If Mexico can succeed, it shouldn’t be difficult for us to have a dedicated place online or in actual libraries where accurate information is easily accessible.

In California prisons, hunger strikes have began again in order to protest the fact that the promised reforms, subject of the last recent hunger strikes, have not yet happened. Prisoners are held in indefinite detention, in solitary confinement for years. For some release from solitary would mean they would have to inform authorities on who belongs to gangs. Prison officials say that holding human contact at a minimum is a way for them to hold violence down. Inmates went on a hunger strike to ask for a change in these policies. Those same prison officials have now threatened the inmates on hunger strike with additional sanctions if they persist. They would for example confiscate any of the snacks they may purchase from the canteen with their own money.
Many do not feel much compassion for prisoners. They are, they say, criminals paying for whatever wrong they have done. Regardless of the feelings of those many, punishing inmates for going on a hunger strike, when it is the only peaceful means of protest available to them shifts the onus of wrong—onto anyone who even thinks such a measure is appropriate.