Danielle Levy

Twenty of the U.S.’ 50 states allow some form of corporal punishment in their schools, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming. A new report done by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union reveals that more than 200,000 schoolchildren are subjected to some form of corporal punishment and that disabled students tend to be more often punished than others. The two organizations are urging lawmakers at the federal and state levels to ban nationwide physical punishment of students with disabilities.
We live in an era with more problems than we are able to solve. But this is one problem not only so egregious, it is one we can easily do something about. Spanking or physically punishing a child with autism, cerebral palsy or depression is something that ought to make us outraged enough to demand zero tolerance.

Back in the sixties when the environmental movement was a budding idea, population growth was talked about, and zero population growth—ZPG—a goal for many. Then the religious right came to the fore and rightly or wrongly ZPG came to be associated with birth control, abortions and other measures many felt were against their faith. The rationale was that the Bible said “Be fruitful and multiply”, The Lord would provide ergo population control was therefore an issue for liberals and other secular humanists. Now, decades later with deeper understanding of several issues including what threatens the environment, with a new emphasis on carbon footprints, water scarcity and food shortages, the issue of overpopulation—slated to be 9 billion by mid century—is once more gaining traction. Some even call it the elephant in the room.
It’s a hopeful sign. Let’s hope the traction gains momentum.

More and more would be employers are using credit checks to determine the fitness of a potential employee. Sometimes a stack of resumes can be quickly whittled after credit checks are run on applicants, discarding those with too much debt, a bankruptcy filing or the like. Those who believe in their use say credit checks indicate whether the potential employee exercised good judgment. Others are challenging the relevance of a credit check to positions like lifeguard or customer service where it is far from the skills required to be able to do the job. Not only has it become a discrimination issue, it has acquired a sense of urgency in an economy with high unemployment, where often those who need jobs the most are turned down based on their credit check.
Any index used in a punitive manner is bound to be discriminatory. Even if it reveals a problem in the history of a given employee, oughtn’t people to be entitled to second chances?